Latest news with #Esti
Daily Maverick
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
The rebellious girl from Brakpan, SA who unlocked Grace Jones's voice
In the fever-dream swirl of 1970s Paris – where the air reeked of Gauloises, champagne and possibility – a South African model named Esti Mellet-Mass was about to change music history. Herman Lategan uncovers the unlikely story of how a rebellious girl from Brakpan helped launch one of pop culture's most enigmatic and fearless figures: Grace Jones. Rebel glamour The 1970s were a time of glorious excess. Studio 54 ruled New York. The Factory pulsed in London. Paris shimmered with champagne-soaked soirées. Amid this glitzy chaos rose a woman who defied categorisation: Grace Jones. With her angular face, defiant stare and vocals that sounded like velvet on fire, she carved her name into the cultural firmament. Jones was more than a singer. She was a symbol – of sexual rebellion, racial power and androgynous style. In a world that boxed women into softness, she was all sharp edges and attitude. Her music, a volatile cocktail of disco, dub and danger, became anthems of the underground. And yet, once upon a time, she wasn't sure she could sing at all. Enter Esti Esti Mellet-Mass was born in Brakpan, a South African industrial mining town steeped in grit and conservative tradition. Her parents – an unusually liberal doctor and nurse – nurtured her curiosity. After a stint studying art at Stellenbosch and a crown as her university's RAG Queen, Esti fled the stifling parochialism of apartheid-era South Africa with a few friends and R500 in her pocket. London was the first stop. Catalogue modelling paid the bills. Then came Paris, the true catwalk of dreams. Brunettes were in demand. Esti signed with an agency and walked into a whirlwind of high fashion, late nights and global jet-setters. She crossed paths with a cadre of future icons: Jerry Hall, fresh from a beach discovery, a young Jessica Lange and Grace Jones – at the time, a fiercely stunning model with a secret weapon no one had truly unlocked. Grace, interrupted Esti and Grace hit the clubs hard. 'She loved singing 'Dirty Ol' Man' by The Three Degrees,' Esti recalls. 'She'd act like she was in the group. And she could really sing.' Grace was magnetic, wild and untouchable – but hesitant about her own voice. Esti wasn't having it. By then Esti was dating a dashing Bulgarian producer named Stephan Tabakov. When she told him Grace had the pipes, he wanted to hear them. Grace, eavesdropping, was livid. 'Oh, she was stubborn,' Esti says. 'She didn't take orders. Especially from men. Or from me, for that matter.' Still, Esti coaxed her into singing that same club favourite. Stephan was intrigued. He invited her to the studio – but insisted she take lessons first. Grace stormed off. Esti offered to pay. Grace relented. A star, begrudgingly, was born. Grace would later write in her memoir, I'll Never Write My Memoirs: 'Esti told her boyfriend, 'Oh, Grace knows how to sing'. I was beating her up in a state of alarm.' But it worked. Her early sessions with Stephan led to the smoky seduction of La Vie en Rose, and the slow-burning fire of a global career. The afterlives of women Jones ascended – hula-hooping in latex before the Queen, slapping Russell Harty on live British TV and lighting joints on stage in Johannesburg. She was a hurricane in heels, and she made sure the world took notice. Esti, meanwhile, continued modelling in Europe before returning to South Africa, where she became one of the country's most sought-after interior designers. She lives in Cape Town, working on her memoirs. From Brakpan to the boulevards of Paris, Esti Mellet-Mass's story could have ended in the footnotes. But without her, the world might never have heard that voice. And Grace Jones might never have become, well, Grace Jones. On Monday, 16 May, it is her birthday: Happy 77th birthday, Grace. From South Africa, with a wink. DM
Los Angeles Times
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘We Were the Lucky Ones' author revisits WWII Europe with less satisfying results
Georgia Hunter's 2017 debut novel, 'We Were the Lucky Ones,' recounted the seemingly miraculous survival of a Polish Jewish family during the Holocaust. Faithfully adapted into an excellent Hulu limited series, the panoramic tale hewed closely to the details of Hunter's own improbable family history, highlighting instances of fortitude, resourcefulness and luck. Despite occasionally pedestrian prose, the novel was a swift read that, like a memoir, drew power from its authenticity. In that respect, it was a hard act to follow. Hunter's second novel, 'One Good Thing,' shares similar settings and themes, along with a propulsive narrative. But it is a more conventional work of historical fiction, and less satisfying as a result. Its central story, about a young woman and toddler in flight through war-ravaged Italy, is an invention. Ancillary characters, such as Italian cycling champion and Resistance hero Gino Bartali, have real-life counterparts. In an author's note, Hunter suggests that Lili, her fictional protagonist,was partly inspired by her mother as well as the author herself, and that Lili's (too-good-to-be-true) love interest incorporates characteristics of Hunter's father and husband, 'two of the kindest, most loving men I know.' But the story's many twists and hair's-breadth escapes — its devolution into a Holocaust picaresque — lack the foundation of historical truth that undergirded the writer's debut effort. 'One Good Thing' arguably has one advantage over its predecessor: 'We Were the Lucky Ones' juxtaposed alternating narratives involving two parents, five siblings and various spouses and partners. The plethora of characters made for some confusion. In this new novel, the author focuses mainly on the challenges of one woman trying to find refuge in World War II Italy. The book begins as a testament to various forms of love, but especially to the bond between two Jewish best friends living in Italy: Lili and her more assertive Greek pal from university, Esti. It's December 1940, and Europe is already at war; Mussolini's government has enacted anti-Jewish racial laws, and Esti is giving birth. With her husband Niko away, only Lili is there to get her to a hospital. Theo is born at an inopportune time for Jews, whose rights are increasingly circumscribed in the country. A planned beach getaway by Lili and Esti implodes when a hotel clerk refuses to honor their reservation, a foreshadowing of far worse indignities to come. Both Niko and Esti connect with the Italian underground. Niko returns to Salonica, Greece, in an effort to help his parents, while Esti becomes a champion document forger, providing her family, Lili and others with false 'Aryan' papers that will prove crucial to their survival. In Niko's absence, she and Theo move in with Lili, and together they relocate to the town of Nonantola to help refugee children. They confront Allied bombs, German persecution, Italian collaboration and hunger. Priests and nuns are mostly helpful, but not always. Italy's allegiances — first to the Axis powers, then to the Allies — shift and fragment with the tides of war and politics. As one character notes, it's hard to keep up. As Italian Jews are being rounded up and deported by the Germans (with an assist from local fascists), the two friends find their way to Florence. Esti's skills are in demand. But when thugs invade the convent where they are hiding, Esti, trying to help another woman, suffers a near-fatal beating. Fearing another raid, she begs Lili to leave the convent — with Theo in tow. She promises to meet them in Assisi when she recovers. What is a best friend to do? A reluctant Lili assents. From the convent, she and Theo travel — by train, truck and bike, and too often on foot — from one hiding place to another, where they are helped by a series of good Samaritans, Resistance sympathizers and partisan fighters. The underground network holds. For a toddler, Theo behaves surprisingly well, and Lili eases nicely into the maternal role. After Lili and Theo reach Assisi, she receives bad news: the thugs have returned to the convent and taken her friend away. Each hardship and adventure that Lili faces bleeds into the next, with moments of respite and, occasionally, better food. Over time, she grows stronger, physically and psychologically. After a stint in the forest with partisans, Lili and Theo arrive in Rome, settling into a safe house apartment. There, Hunter, clearly a romantic at heart, provides her heroine with a potential partner: an American soldier, Thomas, whom Lili meets on the city's streets. Separated from his regiment in the fighting, Thomas was captured by the enemy but has tunneled his way out of prison. Now it is Lili's turn to provide a hiding place. The attraction simmers. 'She's never met anyone so helpful or so honest — with himself or with her,' Hunter writes. 'Someone so comfortable in his skin.' The three of them become an impromptu family. And family, as her readers know, is everything to Hunter. Even as the war tips in the Allies' favor and Rome is liberated, Lili and Theo's peregrinations aren't over. There are more reunions, including with Lili's long-absent father. There is also loss, or at least the likelihood of loss. And, finally, as for many in Hunter's own family, a rose-tinged American future. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.
