Video: Forced emigration of the "Soviet Twiggy": why one of the most successful fashion models of the 1960s. had to leave the USSR
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
She was one of the most famous Soviet fashion models 1960s not only in the USSR, but also abroad. Galina Milovskaya was called "Russian Twiggy" because of the external resemblance to the Western model and non-standard parameters at that time: with a height of 170 cm, she weighed 42 kg. Milovskaya's photo was published in the American magazine "Vogue". The girl then could not imagine what a scandal would break out because of this photo shoot …
Galina Milovskaya never dreamed of a modeling career - firstly, a profession with such a name did not exist then, and secondly, the status of a “clothing demonstrator” was not at all prestigious. The girl wanted to become an actress and entered the theater school. B. Shchukin. A friend told her that the All-Union Institute for the Assortment of Light Industry and Clothing Culture needed fashion models, and Galya decided to try herself in this role. She saw this occupation as just a part-time job for a scholarship.
Even among the fashion models, Galina Milovskaya looked very thin, such parameters were not in great demand then, but she was hired to work. And soon she became one of the most popular and successful models of the Moscow House of Models. When the International Fashion Festival was held in Moscow in 1967, Galya made a strong impression on Western couturiers and journalists. Then she was nicknamed "Soviet Twiggy".
Many foreign publications wanted to hold a photo session with an unusual Soviet model, but two years later, only the photographer of the magazine "Vogue" Arnaud de Rone managed to achieve this. For filming in the Armory Chamber and on Red Square, it was required to obtain permission from the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Kosygin. At the same time, the fees for the shooting went to the state treasury, the model did not receive a dime. Milovskaya became the first Soviet model who was given the opportunity to work with foreign photographers.
These photographs were later reprinted from Vogue by the Soviet magazine America, and then a huge scandal erupted. In one of the photographs, Galina was sitting on a pavement in Red Square, in trousers, legs apart, and even with her back to the portraits of party leaders and the Kremlin wall. Today this photo seems completely harmless, but then it was seen as anti-Soviet.
“At the Vialegprom swimwear show, the leaders of my course somehow found themselves, both, by the way, were under 80 years old,” recalls Galya. "I fell so mentally in their eyes that they showed me the door." After that, Milovskaya had to leave the school, she also lost her job as a fashion model. Another photo session added fuel to the fire: this time she became a body art model of the artist Anatoly Brusilovsky, who painted her body with flowers. Photos were published in the Italian magazine "Espresso", which became the reason for another scandal. After that, one could forget about the career of a fashion model in the USSR, and any other work.
Galina Milovskaya had no choice but to emigrate abroad. In 1974 she left for Israel, then moved to Italy, then to Great Britain. She participated in fashion shows, starred for European magazines and was a fairly popular model. Despite the fact that Galina herself emphasized that she only participated in interesting art projects, never considered herself a political emigrant and did not fight against the system, they wanted to see her abroad in this role and called her "Solzhenitsyn of fashion."
On one of her trips, Galina Milovskaya met the French banker Jean-Paul Dessertin. Already 15 minutes after they met, he proposed to the girl, and she accepted him. After marriage, Galina left the modeling business, entered the Sorbonne film directing department, and then graduated from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
Today Galina Milovskiya-Dessertin makes documentaries. The most famous of them are These Crazy Russians, about Russian avant-garde artists who emigrated to France in the 1970s, and The Moment When Memories Come, about the inhabitants of a nursing home. Her daughter became an ethnographer and specialist in Guinea. The family lives in Paris.
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