Tippi Hedren Talks Alfred Hitchcock, Edith Head, and Her Granddaughter, Dakota Johnson Inline

  • On her modeling career
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    On her modeling career

    Hedren was discovered, she says, getting off a streetcar coming home from West High School in Minneapolis. “This lady handed me her card and said: ‘Would you ask your mother to bring you down to Donaldson’s department store? We’d like to have you model in our Saturday morning fashion shows.’ I mean, that was so much fun! It was a wonderful time in my life.” After moving and working in Los Angeles, Hedren adds, “New York was waving its flag, so I got on a train. I had enough money to get me there, sitting up on the train, enough to keep me at the Barbizon for women in New York, and if I didn’t make it, I had enough to get me back on the train.”

  • On fashion in the 1950s
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    On fashion in the 1950s

    Hedren largely raised daughter Melanie Griffith as a single mother, and a stylish one at that. In the 1950s, Hedren explains, “we dressed more than we do today. Jeans are almost acceptable anywhere [now], which is kind of sad. There was a dress code when I first started to model; I even wore high heels all day.”

  • On working with Edith Head
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    On working with Edith Head

    “I loved that woman; we had a wonderful relationship and we were really, really good friends. We had fun together, too,” says Hedren. “In The Birds, I wore the same thing. You know, I had that green dress with the green jacket, but I had six of them. Well, they had to do that; the movie took six months to make. Edith Head was wonderful, she was so, so creative. I was able to sit in on a meeting with her and Alfred Hitchcock, and it was amazing the capability that she had to turn her clients around to thinking her way. She always won. She was brilliant.”

  • On wearing fur
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    On wearing fur

    “In those days everybody wore fur coats and there wasn’t really that awareness about how cruel that is. I donated [this coat] to some organization that used the fur coats for dog beds. I thought, That’s perfect!”

  • On glamour
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    On glamour

    “I knew a thing or two about fashion myself after all those years modeling,” writes Hedren in her memoir, “so Edith and I spoke the same language, which made our working together even more meaningful.” On the phone, Hedren explains that she had black and white versions of this fitted dress. “It had bones; they [were] very comfortable though—I never felt them. It’s not really bone, it was just plastic that kept the bodice straight. [This dress] was beautiful.”