LEE STARKEY. THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF "BEATLE" RINGO STARR IS TODAY A FASHION DESIGNER AND HAS OPENED A FASHION BOUTIQUE IN HOLLYWOOD
1991, October 17th - ¡Hola! magazine, Spain
The Yesterday and Today of the protagonists of the news
LEE STARKEY. THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF "BEATLE" RINGO STARR IS TODAY A FASHION DESIGNER AND HAS OPENED A FASHION BOUTIQUE IN HOLLYWOOD
The mythical Hollywood of the big stars looks at Lee Starkey, youngest daughter of Ringo Starr, the ex-member of The Beatles. Lee is now twenty-one years old, but she seems younger (“People look at me" –she explains– "and still think that I’m thirteen”) and she has become owner of a “boutique” in the elegant district of Los Angeles, where she sells bright spangles trousers, daring miniskirts and psychedelic fur tunics like if they were hot pastries. The shop is at the heart of the most fashion district of LA, Melrose Avenue, where famous stars like Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Julia Roberts make their purchases.
“Daddy hasn’t helped me with money”, tells Lee, while she shows us her most favourite clothes designed by herself and her thirty-year-old partner Christian Paris. Lee continues explaining that her father gave her moral support and brought lots of friends to the opening of the boutique, which was last month [sic]. “He’s much exited" – she remarks – "that in the end I’ve found something that I love to do”.
Lee Starkey – that’s Ringo’s real surname – was five years old when her mother, Maureen, and her very famous father divorced in 1975. Both of them married again: her mother with Isaac Tigrett, Hard Rock Cafe founder, and Ringo with the actress Barbara Bach. However, when the youngest daughter of the former Beatle opened her “boutique” in Hollywood both parents attended with her brothers Zak, 25, and Jason, 24 [sic], to wish her luck.
“I’m not an expert of The Beatles”, admits Lee with a smile, adding next: “If I want to know something about them I ask to my father. But I’m a drawer and designer of sixties fashion. Is in those years where I find my inspiration. I’ve tried to bring the vibrations, the colours and the freedom of that style to the nineties”.
In what there is not any doubt is that with their store, Planet Alice, Lee is making a good business, showing that her idea was spot on. Lee, before being devoted to this, tried to introduce herself to the acting world, went to a make-up school and even she wanted to play drums. In the end she met her partner, Christian Paris, a well-known clothes designer of whom she says: “We are very affectionate to each other and this is platonic”. Paris was already owner of a Planet Alice shop in London, namely in Portobello. Also he owns one of the most fashionable discotheques in London, Alice in Wonderland. Now attending to Lee’s wishes, he has opened a new “boutique” in Hollywood.
“We opened it a month ago, but I can already say that Lee's idea has been successful. The sales demonstrate it”, says Christian, happy, after they’ve achieved to sell clothes that worth 1000$ to a group of Latin visitors from Miami, that they were dressed with clothes bought in Planet Alice. “Lee has a lot of energy and wonderful ideas" – he continues – "and when she starts to work, like today, the cash begins to sound”.
Ringo Starr and his first wife, Maureen, parents, like we’ve said before, of three children Zak, Jason and Lee, where divorced sixteen years ago, after having lived a great love story since their adolescence. Maureen was eighteen years old when she married Ringo. She worked then in a hairdresser of Liverpool and after marrying she passed of living in a modest neighbourhood with her family to a luxurious and elegant mansion in Tittenhurst Park, without limitation of expenses. However, those happy years would leave to the fret when Ringo, crawled by a vortex of the fame and the popularity, began to stop worrying of her and began to be related with other women. In the divorce demand that finally she had to outline, Maureen mentioned a model, Nancy Andrews, a young and very pretty dark-haired Californian woman, as the cause of the end of her marriage. This romance, however, didn't have a happy ending and time later the famous Beatles' drummer got married with the actress Barbara Bach, who had been married an Italian producer before. "I had never wanted to get divorced" - said Maureen later -."I adored Richie (it is this way she called to Ringo) and I felt a great affection and respect towards him." When her lawyer told her that to obtain the separation she should say to the judge that she didn't stand to live beside his husband, she cried bitterly and time later recognized: "I shouldn’t never have said that, because it was not true."
The three children of the marriage continued living with their mother, giving them Ringo Starr a generous pension. However, with time, Maureen claimed in the tribunals an increase of it sustaining that, used to the deluxe life that her husband had accustomed them, she had requested little money. "The boys continue living with me" - she said - "and for them I take this step." Each one followed their own road later and, in 1985, Ringo and Maureen became grandparents. Their older son, Zak, then aged nineteen years old and being drummer like his father, had a daughter named Tatia Jayne. Ringo Starr was the first member of the Beatles to become a grandfather. In that occasion Ringo Starr himself, his former-wife, Maureen, and with them their other two children Jason and Lee, they went together to the hospital where the little girl was born. Maureen Kox [sic] - this was her maiden name - married time later the millionaire Isaac Bach [sic] and in 1987 they had a daughter.
Pictures by Vanegas Barrand (Keystone-Nemes)
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Our translation.