PHOTO: Supermodel of the 1950s and ’60s Jean Newington. Photo: Nigel Scot McNeil
Jean Newington was one of Australia’s top supermodels in the 1950s and ’60s when she was gracing the pages of Vogue and the catwalks of New York and Paris, but by the time she died two years ago, aged 83, she was reduced to living in a falling-down terrace in Woollahra.
By the time Westpac took possession of the Queen Street house from her estate earlier this year, the furniture, knick-knacks and “collectibles” that crammed the rooms had been removed and sold off, and fresh paint, polished floors and styling rendered the interiors almost unrecognisable.
The three-bedroom house with no parking sold for $2.8 million under the hammer soon after, thanks to the efforts of two bidders who pushed it above the $2.7 million guide of Phillips Pantzer Donnelley’s Catherine Dixon.
It was a celebrated sale typically with no acknowledgement of the fashion icon who had called it home.
Newington was a long-time Woollahra local who despite retreating from society soon after her husband Jacques Bonnet died in 2014 was still regaled years after she died as a bohemian eccentric by some and a hoarder and recluse by others.
Her modelling career started in 1955 when, as a Dover Heights Domestic Science High School student, she was discovered by a photographer and soon after won the Australian Photographer’s Model of the Year contest.
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