Duran Duran

Duran Duran appears in the diaries through snapshots of its members entering Andy Warhol’s social and professional orbit. Two visits, months apart, register the group’s youth and striking visual presentation, with Nick Rhodes’s makeup and stature singled out in particular; the record is of people seen at close range, not of the band’s music or wider career.

Visits to Warhol’s Circle

On August 23, 1982, members of Duran Duran came by and brought girlfriends whom the diary described as bigger and taller than the young men. The brief note makes the visitors’ contrasting physiques the scene’s memorable detail. It offers no account of a performance or an interview, instead locating the group in the stream of young people who passed through Warhol’s world.

Nick Rhodes at the Office

On January 7, 1983, Nick Rhodes visited Warhol’s office with his girlfriend, Julie Anne. Rhodes was twenty and Julie Anne was twenty-three. The diary emphasized his appearance: he wore twice as much makeup as she did, though he was half her height. The compressed comparison records a carefully noticed inversion of conventional expectations about height and cosmetics, without explaining what either visitor thought of it.

A Fragmentary Record

These entries give Duran Duran a small but distinct place in Warhol’s diary: first as a group arriving with girlfriends, then through the more individualized portrait of Rhodes and Julie Anne. Their focus on age, stature, and makeup shows what the diary preserves about celebrity encounters—a passing social presence rendered through immediately visible details. The available account does not extend to the band’s songs, performances, or subsequent history.