Mourners recently filed into the garden of Philip Treacy’s Belgravia millinery emporium to pay their last respects to Mr Pig, the designer’s faithful companion of the past 12 years. Treacy, a former altar boy from Galway, chose not to arrange a full Roman Catholic requiem. Instead, friends from the worlds of fashion and entertainment were invited to attend a simple burial, followed by a celebration of Mr Pig’s life, featuring a tribute sung by Grace Jones, a eulogy from Treacy himself and a video montage by the film-maker Nick Scott, highlighting the jack russell terrier’s most egregious fashion moments. Kate Moss sent flowers.
In the words of his owner, Mr Pig was quite simply “beyond dog”. An adept self-promoter, he loved to take the limelight away from his camera-shy master. He appeared in every international edition of Vogue, and his cartoon-like appearance made him a popular model with the most famous photographers of our time — Snowdon, Mario Testino and Bruce Weber. He bounded up catwalks with Naomi Campbell and Honor Fraser, slept on a Versace cashmere blanket and had a cocktail named in his honour at the Sanderson hotel. Every year, he received a Christmas card from Camilla Parker Bowles. Isabella Blow was his godmother, and in Japan, he had his own fan club.
Like all the most charismatic fashion people, he knew how to get round the men on the door: he had a named security pass for the Design Museum and a special dispensation to attend gala dinners at the V&A. He was also the first dog allowed inside Broadcasting House.
“He was by my side, day and night, for 12 years,” says Treacy. “How many human beings could you say that about? He believed he was human. He used to sit there quietly, watching as I worked. He knew what I was doing. After a show, when it was just the two of us alone together, he would leap up in the air three times to tell me how much he liked the work. He was sensitive, he paid attention to everything, yet he could sleep through the loud techno music I played all night. I gave him a funeral because I owed him for all that he gave me.”
Indeed, Mr Pig even inspired Treacy to create a collection of ponyskin and gold-leaf dog collars for a dog-food brand, and a range of hats with “ears” for Valentino. His all-time favourite hat, however, was one bearing his own face, modelled last year by Alek Wek.
Although he met hundreds of the world’s most beautiful people — Salma Hayek, Madonna, Renée Zellweger, all the supermodels — he treated most of them with disdain, reserving his friendship for the few who met with his approval. Parker Bowles was one. Treacy recalls arriving for a fitting and watching open-mouthed as Mr Pig lay at her feet, gazing up at her adoringly. Marilyn Manson was another. “Seeing Mr Pig sitting cross-legged, the picture of innocence, beside Manson, the epitome of showbiz evil, was quite a shock,” says Treacy, who until the end remained intrigued by Mr Pig’s choice of friends.
With Jones, Mr Pig struck up not just a friendship, but an unconventional musical collaboration. “We would go to her hotel room and she would order up roast chicken on room service for Mr Pig,” says Treacy. “Then he would search out his special squeaky red toy wellington boot and play it melodically at both ends while she applauded. She always used to tell him, ‘Mr Pig, you and I have got to record an album. You’ve got talent.’”
In her funeral tribute, Jones summed up Mr Pig’s life as all “limousines and magazines”. But it was not always so. Born in London on August 10, 1992, to Pique, a jack russell crossbreed, Mr Pig came into Treacy’s life at a lonely time. Treacy had recently been made homeless, and his mother had died in the same year. A friend offered him a puppy, and he was originally assigned Mr Pig’s prettier sister, Linda. He decided, however, that he preferred her brother, a pale-pink, hairless scrap whom Treacy instantly christened Piglet. The prefix “Mr” was added when his precocious nature emerged.
Initially, Mr Pig was so minuscule that he slept in the palm of the designer’s hand. Later, when Treacy took lodgings at the Irish Club in Eaton Square, Mr Pig’s sleeping arrangements became more vexatious. The club had a “Strictly no dogs” policy. So the terrier, who was notorious for barking like a rottweiler, was smuggled in every night in a holdall. During this time, Treacy travelled abroad extensively, so Mr Pig was frequently dispatched to stay with the milliner’s sister. Weekend regulars on the coach to Oxford might recall a forlorn “HMV” dog sitting bolt upright in the seat behind the driver, accompanied only by a rucksack containing supplies for his trip.
For many supermodels, used to friendships based solely on the sterile environment of international departures, Mr Pig presented a rare opportunity to express unconditional love. Alas, he remained unimpressed by glamour and beauty. He once bit Kristen McMenamy’s hand. She did not attend his funeral. On another occasion, during the Paris couture shows, Treacy watched from behind his hands as Naomi Campbell petted Mr Pig — who was about to appear on the catwalk himself — on the side of the stage. “She kept saying ‘Little Pig, little Pig’ and so on. I was just praying he wasn’t going to bite.” Some people would ignore the warning signs, insisting “But dogs like me”, before receiving a sly nip. Treacy, though, is quick to defend his late companion: “In the course of his life, he only had 15 blood victims.”
He could be a social liability, too. The first time he met Christy Turlington, shortly after Treacy’s debut fashion show in 1993, the supermodel became aware of a large puddle beneath her feet during dinner. However, it did not impede the development of a long-lasting friendship between them. And, like many of us, he became rowdier as he got older, behaving notoriously badly at one of Elton John’s parties. Fortunately, Elton is a dog lover.
Often, Treacy worried that the dog’s cantankerous nature might be putting customers off. Mr Pig was happiest sitting in the window of his master’s gold-walled boutique, growling at anyone who dared to look in — he considered the hats to be his personal property. But Mr Pig picked his enemies as carefully as his friends. At the top of his list of foes (apart from delivery men from Fenwick) was a veterinary surgeon on London’s Elizabeth Street, where, in 1993, he had an unpleasant experience. From that day forward, Mr Pig would bark ferociously into the surgery’s letter box, and only twice, when he was diagnosed with a tumour, did he consent to being examined by any vet again.
This was to have an unforeseen impact on the fashion world. When pet passports were introduced, Irving Penn requested Mr Pig for a photo shoot in Paris. Unfortunately, without a clean bill of health from a vet, no pet passport could be issued. Hapless assistants from American Vogue were dispatched to scour the streets of Paris for a Mr Pig lookalike but, unsurprisingly, their mission proved fruitless. There was only one Mr Pig.
His last assignment, just days before he died, was a helicopter ride with Kate Moss to her country house. While his owner trembled at the turbulence, Mr Pig happily looked out of the window and didn’t turn a hair. As Jones put it in the closing line of her tribute: “At the end of the day, he wasn’t really a dog at all.”
- Mr Pig is survived by a sister, Linda, who lives in Luton
