How an unhappy first love helped a fashion historian to succeed in life: Alexander Vasiliev

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today everyone knows him as a fashion historian and host of the popular show "Fashionable Sentence". And Alexander Vasiliev has more than 120 designed performances in 30 countries of the world, an incredible collection of fashion, which contains more than 65 thousand exhibits, a virtual interactive museum of fashion and style and the "Lilia Alexandra Vasiliev" prize established by him, awarded for achievements in the field of design and atmosphere of the interior. But all this might not have happened, if not for his first love, which made him give up everything and leave for an unfamiliar country.

Following the first love

He was born into a very famous theatrical family. From his father, People's Artist of Russia Alexander Pavlovich Vasiliev, the creator of scenery and costumes for more than 300 theatrical productions, he inherited artistic talent, and thanks to his mother Tatyana Vasilievna Gulevich, a dramatic actress and one of the first graduates of the Moscow Art Theater School, which served at the Central Children's Theater, he was infected with a love of art for life.

It was Tatyana Vasilieva who had a hand in the fact that the first glory came to Sasha Vasiliev at the age of eight. It was she who brought him by the hand on television and proposed her son's candidacy for the main role in the TV show "Zhenya on the contrary," where the boy played the role of a pupil of an orphanage. After its release, the little actor began to receive bags of letters. Tatyana Vasilievna brought them home by taxi and made them write an answer to each one on postcards.

But still, much more than the stage work of Sasha Vasiliev was attracted by the backstage. Already at the age of five, he began to create his first costumes and sets, however, so far for the puppet theater. At 12, he already designed the fairy tale "The Wizard of the Emerald City", preparation for which took two whole years.

It so happened that the last school year he studied at a very prestigious Moscow school with Anton Tabakov, Elena Ulyanova and other children of celebrities. It was there that he met his first love - Masha Lavrova. The girl reciprocated him and, perhaps, in the future, young lovers would create their own family, raise children and be completely happy.

But Maria's parents divorced, and her mother married a French architect. She was allowed to go abroad with her husband, she naturally took the children with her. Alexander Vasiliev, who was finishing his studies at the staging department of the Moscow Art Theater School at that time, was ready to immediately leave after his beloved, but no one would give him permission without good reason.

Then Alexander Vasiliev took a desperate step, deciding at all costs to reunite with Masha. He met a French woman, Anne Bodimon, who was studying Russian. With her, he entered into a fictitious marriage with only one purpose: to leave for France. By that time, his career as a theatrical costume designer had already begun to take shape, but Alexander dreamed of the one he loved. For more than a year he was waiting for permission to leave, constantly collecting some documents. And in 1982, 23-year-old Alexander Vasiliev still ended up in Paris.

Rejected feelings

He left his family, not knowing when he could see his parents and sister again, but nothing scared him then, because he was flying towards a new life. In Paris, he settled not far from the Perneti metro station, on rue Benard, house 27. Alexander Vasiliev will forever remember this address and, as he will later tell, he was dear to him with sobering memories.

For almost a week, he went daily to the house where Masha lived, but each time a closed door was waiting for him. And then they phoned and made an appointment in a cafe near the Luxembourg Gardens. Alexander Vasiliev came before Maria and already from the way she approached him, I realized: her feelings for him had already cooled down.

While he was waiting for the opportunity to come to Paris, she met and fell in love with another person. Of course, it hurt him to hear that another had appeared in her life. But he found the strength to remain in a foreign country for himself and for many years was a friend of the girl who became his first love. Then she told him: "Paris is the place where you will find the source of your knowledge." And he really found it. He lived in this magical city for a quarter of a century, worked with many very famous actors and directors, met with representatives of the first Russian aristocracy, wrote the book "Beauty in Exile", reprinted 18 times. But all this was later.

At first, he took up any job: washed glasses in a Russian pancake shop in Montparnasse, pasted posters and even sang Russian songs with his fellow Slovak in the street. This was normal for the initial period. But after only a month and a half, Alexander Vasiliev received his first contract for "Pope John" directed by Eva Levinson in Poitiers, and then in Paris. Life really started to play with new colors. It is for this that he is still grateful to Maria Lavrova, the girl who rejected his feelings.

The moment came when Anne Bodimon, his fictitious wife, decided to end this marriage. She met a man with whom she planned to create a real family. Then Alexander Vasiliev, who had already managed to obtain a residence permit in France, moved to a very poor area of Paris. Ironically, on the same street where he now lived, Maria and her chosen one settled just a few houses from him. It seems that he constantly felt the presence of his beloved girl next to him, and once she herself appeared on his doorstep.

The biggest regret

Maria at that time was expecting a child from a man whom she then considered her destiny. But the journalist Luke, barely learning about her friend's pregnancy, disappeared from her life. Knowing that Alexander's feelings for her had not cooled down, she probably hoped that he would accept her along with her unborn child. But Alexander Vasiliev, by his own admission, was not ready for such a turn of events. How he was not ready to raise the son of a man for whom he felt a strong personal dislike. Today Alexander Alexandrovich admits: he very much regrets his cowardice. It would be better if he raised someone else's son than had no children at all.

Alexander Vasiliev never married, but all his life he has been helping his friend Maria. He saw her son grow up, he knows that in childhood she called him, as the fashion historian himself was once called - Grusha.

As a result, his life was very successful. He was able to travel around the world, wrote several books, became a television presenter, and most importantly, a very respected and successful person. And all this thanks to Masha, after whom he went to a foreign country and to a city that became for him no less native than Moscow, where Alexander Vasiliev was born and raised.

To many the host of "Fashionable Sentence" seems eccentric, however, everyone who had a chance to personally meet Alexander Vasiliev notes the incredible charm, subtle humor, sharp mind and amazing vitality of the man who is often called the Keeper of Fashion. He knows six languages, needs to take care of someone, and builds his life in accordance with his own principles, trying to learn from every encounter given to him by fate.