The Woman Who Made Janis Joplin Look Like Janis Joplin Her Name Was Linda Gravenites Nobody Knows It

The Woman Who Made Janis Joplin Look Like Janis Joplin Her Name Was Linda Gravenites Nobody Knows It

The most recognizable image in rock and roll history may be Janice Joplain at a microphone. The feather boa in her hair, the layers of beads, the psychedelic fabrics, the specific visual maximalism that said, “I am here. I am taking up space. I am not going to make myself smaller for you.

” That look was not an accident. It was not something Janice assembled from thrift stores on her own. It was designed. It was constructed. It was created by hand by a woman named Linda Gravenites. And almost nobody knows her name. This is her story. Linda Gravenites was born Linda Anne Mlan on December 23rd, 1939 in New York City.

 By the mid 1960s, she was living in San Francisco, part of the Bay Area creative world that was assembling itself in those years. She was a costume designer and seamstress, someone who made things with her hands, who understood fabric and form and what clothing does to a person on a stage. She was married to Nick Gravenites, the Chicago bluesman and songwriter who had come to San Francisco and embedded himself in the music scene.

 In spring 1967, Janice Joplain found her own apartment in San Francisco. She moved in with Linda Gravenides. They shared a space. They shared a life in the specific way that people who live together share a life. The mornings, the conversations, the texture of ordinary days. And Linda began making clothes for Janice, not because anyone asked her to, because she could see what Janice needed.

 The visual identity that Linda Gravenites created for Janice Joplain between 1967 and 1969 is in retrospect one of the most significant contributions to rock iconography ever made. Before Linda, Janice dressed the way she dressed, like a girl from Texas trying to be a San Francisco hippie. After Linda, she dressed like Janice Joplain.

 the feather boas, the layered beads, the embroidered vests, the specific combination of excess and intention that communicated something the moment she walked onto a stage. Before she opened her mouth, the audience already knew they were in the presence of someone who was not performing modesty. Linda made that declaration visual.

 Fabric by fabric, stitch by stitch, the Monteray outfit in June 1967. Linda’s work. The cheap thrills era stage looks Linda’s work. The specific feathered maximalism that appeared in every photograph from those years. Linda’s hands. In the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine, Janice Joplain publicly praised Linda Grainites for her costumes.

 Vogue, not a rock magazine, not a counterculture publication. Vogue, the most authoritative voice in American fashion, received a credit from Janice for the woman who made her look. That credit is in print. It has always been in print, and still nobody knows her name. Living with Janice Joplain during the cheap thrills recording sessions meant living with everything that came with Janice Joplain.

 The specific documentation of what happened during those sessions, the musical breakthrough, the pressure, the substances is part of the historical record. And in that record is this. Linda Gravenites revived Janice Joplain from a heroin overdose. Not a paramedic, not a roadie, not a manager, her roommate, her costume designer, the woman who was there because they lived together and who found her and brought her back.

 That is the specific intimacy of what Linda Gravenites was to Janice Joplain. Not the public relationship, not the manager or the label or the producer, the private one, the person who was there at 3:00 in the morning when the music stopped and the night became what it was. She saved her life. Once in the documentation that exists, probably more times than that, the Cosmic Blues Band toured Europe in spring 1969. The reviews were bad.

 The critics who had loved Janice Joplain with Big Brother found the new band unfocused, overproduced, wrong. The drinking was increasing. The heroin was harder to manage on the road than it had been at home. Linda Gravenites was watching all of this. At some point during the European leg, she made a decision.

 She would not go back to America with Janice. She stayed in England instead. The stated reason was that she would embroider jackets for George Harrison. The real reason, which anyone who has spent time with the accounts of that period can see, was simpler and harder than embroidering jackets for a beetle. She had been there since the beginning.

 She had made the costumes. She had shared the apartment. She had saved her from at least one overdose. She had watched the ark of what was happening, and she could not watch anymore. This is not a criticism of Linda Gravenites. It is an honest accounting of the specific terrible position of being the person closest to someone you cannot save.

 The choice to stay in England was an act of self-preservation from someone who had already given a great deal. She stayed. Janice went back to America. And then in February 1970, when Janice went to Brazil, Linda went with her. The Brazil trip is one of the most documented episodes in Janice Joplain’s final year. She stopped using drugs and alcohol entirely while she was there.

 She was healthy. She was happy. She met a man on the beach named David Kne House and fell into the kind of romance that happens when you are finally free of the thing that has been consuming you. Linda Gravenites was with her in Brazil. She was the friend who came along. She took the photographs, the images of Janice at the Rio Carnival, the photographs of Janice and Knee House on the beach, the visual record of the happiest weeks of Janice’s final year.

 Those photographs exist because Linda was there. She had been there for the worst of it. She was there for the best of it. The woman who made the feather boas was also the woman who photographed the healthiest Janice of the last years of her life. Janice Joplain died on October 4th, 1970. Linda Gravenites had been through everything with her.

 The apartment in spring 1967, three years of costumes, the Vogue credit, the overdose, she pulled her back from Europe, the staying in England, Brazil. She outlived Janice by 32 years. Linda Gravenutz died in 2002 in California. She was 62 years old. In the decades between Janice’s death and her own, she gave interviews. She appeared in documentaries.

 She was part of the record that people assembled about what that world was and who Janice Joplain actually was. But her name never became famous. The feather boa became famous. The beads became famous. The look became one of the most reproduced images in rock history. Linda Gravenites made the feather boa. She made the beads. She made the look.

 And she saved the life of the woman who wore it. at least once at 3:00 in the morning during the recording of Cheap Thrills when nobody else was there. The next time you see that image, the feather boa, the beads, the full Janice Joplain visual declaration, you now know who made it. Her name was Linda Gravenites. Subscribe.

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