Jean Shrimpton

Jean Shrimpton was one of the first supermodels and one of the glamorous figures of the 1960s.  

Born in High Wycombe, Bunkinghamshire, she graduated from Lucie Clayton's modelling school at the age of seventeen in 1960.  She emerged as an icon of the Swinging Sixties, thanks in no small part to the photographer David Bailey with whom she had a very public romance.  

Bailey once said of Shrimpton: "She was magic and the camera loved her too. In a way she was the cheapest model in the world - you only needed to shoot half a roll of film and then you had it. "She had the knack of having her hand in the right place, she knew where the light was, she was just a natural."

A habitué of London's nightclubs she never felt entirely comfortably with her celebrity status and famously used to take her knitting with her to wile away the night.

She left Bailey for movie star Terence Stamp and together they became one of the great celebrity couples of the decade.  She later starred alongside Paul Jones in the 1967 movie Privilege. 

In 1965, Shrimpton famously caused a sensation on a visit to Australia when she wore an early version of the miniskirt to the Victoria Derby race during Melbourne Cup week.  

Shrimpton eventually found a more enduring love with her photographer husband Michael Cox, with whom she has a son, Thaddeus, born in 1979. They currently run a small hotel in Penzance, Cornwall.