| Saturday 23 September 2000 |
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Stylist to the stars takes her own life
Tonjua Twist was a star you never knew. As a fashion stylist, she was in the image business, creating looks for such celebrities as Cindy Crawford, Michael Jackson and, for the last four years, Mariah Carey almost exclusively. Virtually every style associated with the pop superstar was Twist's. The trend of low-slung jeans with a ripped waistband came out of a photo shoot of Carey for her 1999 single, "Heartbreaker", when Twist simply ripped off the waise of Carey's Levis to make her look sexier.
Trashy-chick airbrushed T-shirts were Twist's too, like the one on the cover of Carey's 1999 album, Rainbow, which sold 8 million copies. For a while, it seemed like every idea Twist executed wound up in the pages of "Women's Wear Daily", "Cosmopolitan", or "In Style" magazines. She was flying on private jets, and sleeping in $700-a-night hotel rooms. It appeared that Tonjua Twist was living an amazing life, until last May, when she ended it - allegedly swallowing more than 70 tranquillisers, antidepressants and sleeping pills in her Marian Del Rey, California, apartment. She was 36 years old.
The fashion world is ego-driven, a place where snobbery triumphs sincerity and cattiness is commonplace. But Twist was special, and photographers and celebrities sought her out. "I've been in this business in New York City for 15 years, and there was nobody nicer. Nobody," says Wayne Scot Lukas, a celebrity fashion stylist who knew Twist for about 12 years.
Twist began her career after graduating in 1987 from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. She started as an assistant at "Vogue". She became the fashion editor at "Self" in 1988, did a stint at Glamour in 1994, then went freelance, styling for David Letterman, Bill Murray, Christina Ricci and many others.
Professionally, Twist was known for her ability to put people at ease. In 1996, Tom Tavee, freelance photographer who worked with Twist on about dozen shoots, was photographing jazz vocalist Kevin Mahogany for the cover of his 1997 album "Another Time Another Place". Twist was styling the shoot, which was supposed to capture Mahogany driving a red Chevy Capri over the Manhattan Bridge in New York. But Mahogany was nervous, Tavee recalls. Twist's maternal instinct led her to offer to ride with him, curled up on the floor in the passenger seat of the car. "She kind of held his hand across the bridge," says Tavee. Mahogany immediately relaxed. Photographer Chris Buck, who worked with Twist on a Chris Farley shoot, adds, "She had a wonderful sense of humour... It wasn't just about fashionable clothes with her."
Twist was fastidious, organised and committed to her job, which required combining mass-market trends with sophisticated looks to burn her clients into the public's memory. It was a mart approach, and when it worked, Twist fuelled a star's popularity by facilitating a visual and emotional connection between artist and fan.
She was a master of facades. But unfortunately, one of Twist's greatest creations was the mask of happiness that she made for herself: While her apparent joy for life and for her career touched almost everyone she worked with, inside, overwhelming sadness brewed. Many of her closest friends and family didn't even know that she was depressed until after the suicide.
Tonjua Lynn Twist was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 12, 1964, the first of three daughters for Martin Twist and Saundra Curry Twist. They were poor, uneducated, young parents. "This was not your typical little Kentucky family," says younger sister Tyra Twist-Amrein. "This was something out of Jerry Springer."
Life inside the Twist home was miserable. Martin was "abusive physically, mentally and verbally," says Twist-Amrein. Martin denies that he physically abused his daughters. He allows that he "smacked" Twist - Amrein once when she snuck out of the house. "I just don't think there was [physical abuse]," says Martin, "but it depends on your yardstick. I did paddle the girls - I won't deny that."
The family struggled financially until Martin started Coal-brokerage Company in the mid-70's. The business quickly took off, and by 1980 Martin says his company had revenues of $30 million. In 1977, he moved his family to the east end of Louisville, the "prominent side of the tracks," as Twist-Amrein puts it.
When Tonjua was 16, her mother was killed in an accident after her car slipped on a patch of ice and hit a tree. Tonjua was devastated by the sudden death. Escape became her coping mechanism. She spent hours painting in the basement with headphones on. "Tonjua was a hider," remembers Twist-Amrein.
Two years after her mother died, Tonjua, then 18, gave birth to a son, who immediately was put up for adoption. But her sisters and friends didn't learn of the child until days before Tonjua's funeral. Martin and his now ex-wife were two of only a handful of people who knew; they kept Tonjua's secret until her death. Tonjua had managed to hide the pregnancy on her petite, lithe body wearing baggy clothes then she buried the whole experience after the birth.
In October 1994, Twist took an assignment from Mariah Carey, who soon hired her for more appearances and videos. By 1997, Twist was devoting nearly all of her time to the pop star. It was a dream gig; Twist was associated with one of the biggest names in music and earning about $300,000 a year. She went on tour with Carey and spent the last three years at her side. Still, living your life in the service of a celebrity can be draining, especially, if, as in Twist's case, it was difficult to say no.
Last year, in Amsterdam during Carey's Rainbow tour, Carey asked Twist about a favourite dress that she wanted to wear. Twist couldn't find it among the truckload of costumes. So she frantically called her friend Beth Fredrick and Fredrick's husband, Don Palmer, In New York, and gave them meticulous instructions about how to get into her Manhattan apartment and locate the dress among the racks of clothing. Assuming they found the dress, Fredrick and Palmer were to purchase a one-way plane ticket for it leaving that afternoon from New York. "Tonjua told us they were willing to buy a ticket for the dress - buy the dress a seat on the plane," says Palmer. The dress eventually turned up in Carey's travel gear.
"I can't imagine how Tonjua could have had a second of personal time when working with Mariah", says Carey Bennett, a costume designer who worked with Twist on Carey's wardrobe. Prior to concerts, Twist would set up the Nascar-like pit stops Carey would take between songs to change outfits. During the concert, Twist was on-call to negotiate any clothing crisis that might occur. After the concert, Twist would supervise the packing of clothing and the loading of the trunks onto the tour truck. Then Twist would need to plan for Carey's next outfit. After three years of this gruelling schedule, according to Martin, she was burned out and "needed to be doing more than picking out tennis shoes," he says.
Last December, Twist told her family she was getting a long-overdue break from the nearly non-stop touring. Carey had invited Twist and her boyfriend, Stevie Salas, to Acapulco for a millennium party. But instead of letting her lounge on the beach, "Mariah used her like a little servant," says her sister Tyra, sending Twist on all-day errands. (Salas confirms this account.) Carey's manager, Louise McNally, who was also in Acapulco at the time disagrees: "Tonjua was not someone who got pushed around," says McNally, adding that Twist was asked to run one two-hour errand. There's no question that working for Carey was difficult, but for someone like Twist, who seemed to live to please other people, it could be dangerously consuming. Still, Twist looked like a consummate pro to those who knew her: happy with both the status and challenges of the job, even if she was physically and emotionally exhausting herself.
But Twist wasn't only having problems with her work; she had health worries, too - a "uterus problem," as she called it, that, she told her friends, would eventually require surgery. And her relationship with Salas was also deeply troubled. Salas is a second-tier musician who has played backup guitar for Rod Stewart, and Terence Trent D'Arby. Now he is a solo artist with a small fan base in Asia. For more than 12 years, until Twist's death, the couple broke up and got back together countless times.
In her relationship with Salas, as in her job, Twist was the peacekeeper and the nurturer, always trying hard to make things work out, while Salas played the role of temperamental star. She arranged her schedule around his and doted on his domestic and emotional needs. "You could see how hard she worked for it - she catered to him, always at his beck and call," says Twist's friend David Gilbert. "He'd be gone for a few weeks. He'd come back and say 'Oh, I'm going out to a party with my friends, and you're not invited.'" Twist's devotion confounded her friends and co-workers. "Everyone kind of scratched their heads and wondered why Tonjua put up with it," says Tavee.
But rather than pull back from the relationship after Carey's tour finished in the spring, Twist plunged in even deeper. On the theory that things would never work out between them if she stayed on the East Cost while he lived in California, the stylist made a crucial decision. She left behind the support system she had built during the 17 years lived in New York and moved into a Marina Del Rey apartment with Salas.
About one month after moving in, Twist discovered that Salas was seeing another woman. She told Beth Fredrick that Salas asked her to check his e-mail when he was out of town. "There were several [e-mails] from a woman [Salas] had been seeing while [Twist] had been on the road," Fredrick says. "He didn't have the guts to break up with her face-to-face." Salas says that he did not instruct Tonjua to go into his e-mail account and adds, "I didn't leave her for another girl... I just couldn't be her boyfriend anymore."
Twist and Salas broke up for the last time. She was crushed, and her depression worsened. Even with all of their problems, she had regarded Salas as the one stabilising force in her life. Just before she died, says Carey Bennett, "We talked about this mess of a relationship and how it was all exacerbated by the fact that she had been on tour with Mariah. She had given everything to Mariah and had come back [to find] no life left."
A few weeks after the break-up, David Gilbert had a sick feeling something was wrong. For three days he had been trying to get Twist on the phone. Since the Salas debacle, Gilbert and Twist had spoken almost daily - sometimes more than once - because "she was hysterical 24 hours a day for two weeks," Gilbert says. "At eight in the morning she would call me crying; at midnight she would call me crying". He found the sudden quiet frightening.
On Thursday, May 25, Gilbert notified the police that Twist was missing. Technically, she hadn't been gone long enough to qualify as a missing person, so the police did not follow up on the call. The next morning, Gilbert, who lives nearby, drove to Twist's home to check it out for himself. One blind in the bathroom was tilted upward. Gilbert peeked through the space and noticed that the antiquated electric heater built into the ceiling had been left on. "That's a big fire issue, and she's just too responsible and organized. She wouldn't have left that on," says Gilbert, who again alerted the local police. They arrived soon after and broke into Twist's home.
Twist's body was lifeless on her bedroom floor. She had overdosed on a mix of prescription medications and over-the-counter sleeping pills two days earlier. "Somewhere between 70 and 100 tranquillisers, antidepressants, a couple bottles of Tylenol PM and a couple of super-strong pain medications that were [Salas's]," says Gilbert.
Gilbert didn't get back to his apartment until 5 A.M. the following day. It was 8 A.M. in Louisville, and with a pit in his stomach, he picked up the telephone, and called Martin. Martin's reaction to the call was as Gilbert expected: "Wails, Moans, Screams," Gilbert recalls. "That was brutal."
Gilbert echoes most of Twist's friends and relatives when he describes his guilt for not having recognized the extent of her depression. In hindsight, the signs were there. At 36, she was approaching the same age at which her mother died; the son she had never known of or spoken of was turning 18, and her reproductive system was faltering. In one phone call between Gilbert and Twist three weeks before she killed herself, she talked about suicide.
"You're depressed and I get it." Gilbert had told her. "I know what you're saying, but you need to go to a psychiatrist." Gilbert says Twist was completely lucid in her response. "I am just not interested in life," she said. "I am just not interested in it." I don't like the way people treat one another."
Carey, however, maintains that Twist kept her torment so well hidden that it was impossible to see, despite their almost daily contact over three years. "The Tonjua I knew was the life of the party," says Carey. "She had an incredibly uplifting personality that must have been covering a lot of sadness." (US Weekly)
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