Marie was born in 1950 to a mother of very odd circumstances, who came from East Coast old money, but had become a communist during her collegiate studies in Europe. Her family and all of New York high-society hated her for her radical ideals while the socialist intelligentsia hated her for her aristocratic upbringing. After a scandal on the front pages of an early tabloid, she took Marie to live a life of seclusion in a giant penthouse on the park.

Marie was dressed in plain blouses and A-line skirts that her mother cut and sewed out of her own couture gowns. Her education consisted entirely of Marxist theory and movie-star magazines. At sixteen, Marie asked her mother for a tube of lipstick and was promptly accused of being a bourgeois pig and thrown out of the penthouse forever. Her mother killed herself soon after, and Marie never saw her again. The will stipulated that her mother’s fortune go entirely toward the aid of the communist party, but they didn’t accept a dime.

Penniless and dressed in a shirt-dress cut from raw silk, purple Givenchy, Marie somehow managed to secure a job as a waitress at a diner, which is where she first met Andy. Andy Warhol was a man obsessed with fame and scandal, and he recognized the young waitress serving him eggs immediately due to her resemblance to her mother. “Oh wow-w-w-w,” he deadpanned.

Marie’s only dress was starting to tatter. Her make-up, which she had finally been able to buy herself, was applied garishly, as well as incorrectly. Andy immediately took to her. He whisked her away under his wing to his factory, which was already becoming one of the most glamorous and notorious places in all of New York City, and soon the diner was gone forever.

Andy’s publicity machine turned Marie into the talk of the town. She still dressed in designer clothing cut into boxy dresses. She slept on a pile of Chairman Mao and Elizabeth Taylor prints, using one of Nico’s giant fur coats as a blanket.