Beautiful and Damned

Talitha Dina Pol Getty was born in Java, and was the second wife of John Paul Getty, of the oil Getty's. She married Getty in a white mini-skirt, trimmed with mink. The Getty's became part of "Swinging" London's fashionable scene. John Paul Getty was described as "a swinging playboy who drove fast cars, drank heavily, experimented with drugs and squired raunchy starlets."

Talitha Getty is probably best remembered for an iconic photograph taken on a roof-top in Marrakesh, Morocco in January 1969 by Lord Patrick Lichfield. Talitha's stylish look seemed to typify the hippie fashion of the time and became a model over the years for what, more recently, has been referred to variously as "hippie chic", "boho-chic" and even "Talitha Getty chic". Although, in her lifetime, Talitha Getty, who was only thirty when she died, was not much known to a wider public, fashion gurus of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have often written of her and Marrakesh (a major destination for hippies in the late 1960s, as illustrated by the song, Marrakesh Express by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as virtually synonymous.

Talitha Getty died of a heroin overdose in Rome, Italy on July 14, 1971. She died within the same twelve month period as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Edie Sedgwick and Jim Morrison, other cultural icons of the 1960s.