International Velvet

International Velvet was the Andy Warhol "superstar" who was the immediate replacement for Edie Sedgwick in the Warhol retinue. Born Susan Bottomly into a venerable New England family (her father served as a district attorney in Boston), she attended boarding school, but was expelled four times. In 1966, the rebellious deb met Warhol at a party in Boston. Simultaneously, her modeling career was launched independent of Warhol when she was featured on the front cover of Mademoiselle magazine. She was 16 years old

Bottomly hooked up with Warhol after she moved to New York City that summer. She began living at the Chelsea Hotel, financed by her allowance from her family. Warhol factotum and superstar Gerard Malanga shacked up with Bottomly at the Chelsea for the first couple of months of her stay in Gotham. According to Warhol, the smitten Malanga wrote poems about her.

Warhol's personal and professional relationship with Edie Sedgwick, his greatest creation and -- for a time in 1965, his constant companion -- had fractured due to the erratic behavior linked to her drug use (addicted to speed, she was a raving paranoid by 1966). Edie had virtually abandoned Warhol to became an acolyte of Bob Dylan, becoming a virtual "sex slave," in her own words, to Dylan's right-hand man, Bob Neuwirth. Susan Bottomly took Edie's place, and Warhol began escorting her to clubs, restaurants and art shows.

The Machivellian Warhol used Bottomly in the mind-games he played with his own acolytes, the assistants, hangers-on and others who hung out with him at The Factory, his industrial loft living/work space. He played Bottomly off against the others in the Warhol crowd while exploiting the well-heeled Bottomly, who like fellow "poor little rich bitch" Edie Sedgwick, had family money that she used to pick up the tab for Warhol's gallivants about town. Unlike Edie, whose family was eccentric and plagued by mental illness, Bottomly's well-to-do and influential father, a member of the Eastern Establishment, introduced Warhol to to potential financial backers.