Tina Chow

Tina Chow is a recurring but lightly sketched presence in Andy Warhol’s diaries, defined less by biography than by acts of hospitality and social connection. She obtains a crystal, helps gather friends around Jean-Michel Basquiat, and arranges a London dinner for Warhol against his stated preference for a quiet arrival. Across these brief appearances, she helps turn Warhol’s wide social circle into specific scenes: a small dinner, a packed guest list, a phone call whose contents she may not know.

A Presence in Warhol’s Social World

The diary records Tina Chow in the orbit of Warhol’s work and friendships, but does not offer a continuous account of her life or explain how she first entered that circle. The wider setting was one in which Interview had become a glamorous magazine and a regular source of new faces and celebrity encounters for Warhol. The entries place Tina within this social world without establishing that she worked for the magazine or took part in its editorial operations.

That distinction matters to the shape of her portrait. Rather than supplying background, the diary catches her through small actions and brief reports: she goes out to get a crystal; she telephones about a dinner; she makes sure a gathering happens. Her significance in these pages lies in the scenes she helps bring together, not in a narrated personal history.

The Crystal and the Office

One diary entry notes that Tina went out and got her crystal. In the same passage, Warhol complains that the crystal in the office kitchen still is not repelling the cockroaches. Vincent reports seeing them running around the stove, even beneath its glass, and Warhol says he will take the crystal back to Dr. Bernsohn again.

The juxtaposition is concrete but does not establish that Tina acquired the office crystal, or that the two crystals were intended for the same purpose. The diary keeps the details separate: Tina gets hers, while the office object fails at its supposed task. Its kitchen setting makes that failure difficult to ignore. Instead of an abstract belief in crystals, the entry gives a stubbornly ordinary test of efficacy—roaches in and around the stove—and Warhol’s practical response is to return the troublesome object to the person associated with it.

Organizing a Dinner for Basquiat

Tina also called Warhol about a dinner for Jean-Michel Basquiat, scheduled for nine o’clock and described as a very small gathering. Basquiat’s mother and her friend were there. Warhol brought one of his own old hairpieces as a present: a Paul Bochicchio wig, framed, with “’83” written on it, though he did not know when it was originally from. The entry gives no indication that Tina chose or presented this gift; it was Warhol’s contribution to a dinner she had helped arrange.

The scene brings intimate and eccentric details together without making the occasion grand. The gathering was small, included Basquiat’s mother, and centered on a personal gift that carried Warhol’s own image and history in material form. Tina’s role is the initiating call and the arrangement of the dinner. Warhol’s account does not describe her feelings about the gift or the guests, so the scene’s meaning rests on what it records: she brought people together, and he arrived with an object that made the occasion unmistakably his.

London: Hospitality and a Hidden Call

On arriving in London, Warhol checked into the Ritz Hotel. Tina Chow called to say that dinner was arranged, although he had asked her not to hold a party for him. He went anyway, cabbing to Mr. Chow’s, where she had assembled a large group. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Nick Rhodes, and Billy Boy were among the guests, along with Tessa Kennedy, Jennifer D’Abo, Ramon, Robert Tracy, Rifat Ozbek, Manolo Blahnik, and Jerry Zipkin. Warhol found the evening enjoyable and said that everyone had been sweet to them.

Her choice to proceed despite his request gives the episode its small reversal: Warhol arrives wanting to avoid a party and finds himself welcomed into one. The account presents Tina not just as someone who extends an invitation but as the person who has gathered a company capable of making the welcome feel expansive. The guest list, rather than any description of the room, conveys the reach of the occasion.

At another stop at Mr. Chow’s, after Warhol and his companions had said goodbye to people they had just seen, Grace Jones was making phone calls to Rome. Warhol added that he did not think Tina knew. The diary does not explain the calls or what Tina might have made of them. The detail instead gives her social world an edge of partial knowledge: people can share a gathering without sharing every conversation. Together, the dinners and the unexplained call leave Tina’s portrait defined by connection, hospitality, and the limits of what Warhol’s brief entries disclose.