What happens when a Sixties It girl airs her dirty laundry?
In the case of Pattie Boyd — one of the great models and muses of her generation — you get a couple of psychedelic minidresses, the odd finely printed silk skirt by Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé, and a stack of love letters which detail the juicy, epic battle between The Beatles’ George Harrison and Eric Clapton for her heart.
Herein lies the premise (OK, it’s not exactly how the auction house put it) of the 79-year-old’s Christie’s sale — 111 lots, on view for all in London from tomorrow. The four-time Vogue cover star — who enjoyed a passenger seat in the writing of music history as the wife of Harrison, 1966 to 1977, and Clapton, 1979 to 1989, and who is the inspiration behind their distinguished love songs Something and Layla, respectively — raised eyebrows when she decided to put a “random” selection of her personal items under the hammer. Highlights include reams of photographs she took herself, illustrations by Ronnie Wood, the original painting from Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album cover and a diamond watch.
She came upon the idea at the end of last year, after “clearing out some things”, she says nonchalantly in her soft, proper English accent. “I find it really easy to accumulate things well past their sell by date. Suddenly I remembered I’ve got loads of clothes in one trunk, some letters in another…”
The uncovering of the latter — hand penned notes from her ex-spouses, both in twenty-something love-stuck dazes — has seen the recent resurfacing of one of music’s greatest love triangles. “The letters are quite revealing,” she says.
“What I wish to ask you, is if you still love your husband, or if you have another lover? Is there still a feeling in your heart for me,” Clapton scribbles on one note dated October 5, 1970, highlighted “express…urgent”, and addressed to one Pattie Harrison (estimate £10,000 to £15,000). The following year, on a page ripped from a copy of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, he pines: “Why do you hesitate, am I a poor lover, am I ugly, am I too weak, too strong, do you know why? If you want me, take me, I am yours.” (Estimate £10,000 to £15,000).
“It kind of breaks my heart,” Boyd says of them now, with affection. “It was so beautiful, something that would only happen to anybody once in a lifetime. To experience that sort of passion which is so desperate — it doesn’t carry on for the rest of our lives, and I’m lucky to have had that experience.” Her marriage with Clapton broke down (the couple’s failed attempts at conceiving with the help of IVF fractured their relationship) after his repeated affairs — including one with Lory Del Santo, which resulted in the birth of his child Conor. Pattie eventually left Eric.
When she uncovered them, “I read them and it brought me to tears,” she says. “Why would I want to keep them? I know how they affect me. I appreciate the beauty and the emotion in the letters, but I don’t need them. They would be more interesting to somebody else, or a museum.”
Those from Harrison are heartwarming — one, scrawled on the back of a Trader Vic’s bar card in green biro, simply reads: “Pattie, don’t forget I love you — George”. Did he leave notes like that around often? “I suppose he did,” she says. “It’s amazing that I’ve still got it.”
She happily swoons at the recollection of first meeting the Beatle, when she was dressed as a schoolgirl for the 1964 Beatles film Hard Day’s Night. “I thought he was absolutely gorgeous — my gosh, so good looking. If you see any photos of him you’ll see what I mean; the most beautiful face and the most wide, warm, chocolatey eyes,” she says. “So sweet and so shy. I was very, very shy in those days, and I think we sort of understood each other. You communicate in a different way when you’re shy.” Her affection hasn’t gone anywhere — she says when she hears Something today “it takes me back to the moment. You bet it does and — I love hearing it”.
What followed — one hell of a trip to the epicentre of Beatlemania — was not for the faint of heart, though. “It was kind of irritating,” she says. “Whenever we went anywhere, there’d always be lots of people following us or asking for George’s autograph. We could never sit down and have a nice meal. It was really, really full on.”
A place they found respite was in Rishikesh, at the foothills of the Himalayas, in 1968. Her photographs — 18 original shots, which include pictures of all four Beatles taking part in the extended course of transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, are for sale (estimate £3,000 - £5,000) — document a moment that went on to see “a revolution in Eastern Mysticism” across the Western world. Could it have happened now? “No,” says Boyd, “we’re all so much more aware of different cultures these days. In the Sixties it was a little more interesting because we didn’t really know that much.”
What amuses her today is that the craze never totally faded. “I get lots of letters from young 14-year-olds saying how much they love The Beatles,” she says. “A journalist came to George and my house in Surrey in 1986 and said, quite seriously, when do you think the bubble is going to burst? This journalist is probably well dead by now — still people love The Beatles.” Indeed, Sir Sam Mendes is directing four biopics, one for each Beatle, set for release in 2027. “I’d have Taylor Swift play me. She’s very beautiful, smart as a whip,” she says, as she has in not a few interviews before — let’s call it manifesting.
But it is seeing young girls leaning back into Sixties style today that shocks her most. “It’s extraordinary. I walk along any of the streets in London and I’ll see a girl wearing exactly what I would,” she says. “It’s kind of freaky, but girls just love the clothes that we used to wear.”
A Biba exhibition — focused on the landmark Sixties Kensington boutique — opens at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey this month, and blatant nods to the Swinging Sixties were commonplace during the autumn/winter 2024 fashion shows, from Dior to Celine. As a muse for the seminal Sixties and Seventies designer Ossie Clark (“he could have a piece of cloth on a table and just cut it, he knew exactly what he was doing and it was riveting to watch him”) and model for Mary Quant, you can bet Boyd was on every moodboard. As for being pinned up as an It girl, though, Boyd is happy to take it or leave it. “I don’t think of it as demeaning, but it’s not a compliment. It’s more like a back-handed compliment,” she says.
Now she is happy (when we speak she has just returned from a three-week jaunt in Morocco because “last year February was the most miserable month”) and married to property developer Rod Weston. She is also one year off being an octogenarian and altogether less micro-mini (more “off-beat, but elegant”) when it comes to her dress.
In fact, when I ask if she would slip into any of the floaty, green chiffons she is putting up for sale, she is aghast. “I wouldn’t wear short dresses now! I don’t think it looks good on an older figure — short dresses are great on little skinny figures. You know I’ve been eating all my life, I’m not a size six or eight any longer — obviously.”
She’s grown out of the clothes, but what of the rest of it. Would she change how anything played out? “No, I would keep everything how it’s been,” she says, without a pause for doubt. “However it’s been — it’s meant to be.”
Pattie Boyd’s love lessons
She’s captured (and broken) many hearts — here is what Boyd has learnt along the way
Write a love letter — it’s much more emotive and beautiful if something is written down by hand. An awful lot can be told about a person through graphology — you can’t really tell anything about somebody who has written to you on an iPad.
Be sensitive — It’s so easy to hurt another person because really, truly we’re all so fragile, and you never know what’s going on in somebody’s head. You can’t be selfish in a relationship, sometimes you have to hold back on certain things that you would normally just blurt out.
Don’t keep secrets — If you’re upset, or if you’re worried about something, it’s essential to let it be known. Do not bottle it up.
