Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni was hired to work at Andy Warhol's studio four days before Warhol's death on February 22, 1987. Although their working relationship was brief, Fraser-Cavassoni (Sam Spiegel: The Biography of a Hollywood Legend) had met the pop artist seven years earlier, when she was 16. In 1980, Fraser-Cavassoni, the daughter of novelist and historian Lady Antonia Fraser and step-daughter of playwright Harold Pinter, was already running with a fast, glittery crowd and was months away from an affair with Mick Jagger ("Mick had the power to intoxicate") that landed her, Jagger and Jerry Hall in national tabloid headlines.
The bewigged Warhol is definitely a supporting player in this flashy, name-dropping memoir, but fortunately Fraser-Cavassoni's jet-set life, celebrity encounters and high-profile jobs make for a fast read and a gossipy good time. With jobs at Interview, Women's Wear Daily and W magazines, she was at all the art, fashion and film parties. Anna Wintour helped her get hired working under Karl Lagerfeld at the Chanel Studio, while aging cosmetics pioneer Estée Lauder threatened to have her deported.
When the focus turns to Warhol and the running of his empire after his early death (he died at 58 from complications after gall bladder surgery), Fraser-Cavassoni offers a front row seat at the jockeying for power, the marketing of his image and the posthumous publication of Warhol's diaries in 1989, which caused uproar among fashionable society. After Andy reads like a delicious gossip column covering the wild antics of those in the art and fashion world. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant