Mills beloved to speak. “We used to name him the massive mouth,” says Lizzette Kattan, the previous editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar Italy. “One night time we have been in Rome, working till 2 or 3 a.m.,” she says. “He’d go to mattress after which the following day, I knocked on his door and he continued the identical dialog we left off that night time. I mentioned, ‘No, Joey let me have my cappuccino first!’ I discovered it actually enjoyable to be with him.”
Mates recall Mills as social. He appreciated to hit Studio 54, although Thomas says he wasn’t one of the best dancer. He didn’t have a long-term accomplice, which some chalk as much as dwelling by means of the AIDS disaster. :All he did was work for 20 years straight,” hairstylist Gary Evans says. “He by no means had time for a lover. He joked that he wished to marry Nelson Mandela when he got here house from jail.”
By the tip of the Nineteen Eighties, Mills slowed his breakneck editorial and runway present tempo, deciding to concentrate on non-public shoppers. A brand new technology of make-up artists was developing. The disco glamour he beloved was out, grunge was in. However associates say that all through his life, Mills stored any private disappointments to himself.
When he was recognized with lymphoma about 10 years earlier than his demise, Mills used to say it was “the identical illness Jackie O had,” as if he have been in good (and, to make use of his favourite phrase, “fabulous”) firm, in response to his buddy Vanessa Noel, a shoe designer.
At Thanksgiving, Noel would drop off a turkey for Mills and associates. “I would have to hold it,” Evans says. “Joey would say, ‘I am a blonde. I can’t carry that!’ [I’d say], ‘We like you, however actually, decide this turkey up.'”
“He had a generosity of coronary heart,” Thomas says. And an indefatigable spirit. Mills died in New York through the pandemic, and Noel recollects her final Zoom with him in his hospital room; she went makeup-free. “I advised him I used to be a large number, however he was so excited to see me, and mentioned that I used to be fairly.” Later that night, he died on the age of 80.
This story initially appeared within the June/July 2022 problem of Attract. Learn to subscribe right here.
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