Video: Forgotten at home: how a Kiev woman in exile became a fashionable American designer
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The Valentino brand is known to all fashionistas in our country, but almost no one knows that in America in the 1930-1950s. was no less popular and successful brand Valentinafounded by a Kiev woman Valentina Sanina-Schlee … At home, she was the muse of Alexander Vertinsky, who dedicated several romances to her, and in emigration Valentina became one of the most popular designers in America, dressing famous Hollywood stars - Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Godard, Claudette Colbert and many others. However, she herself looked like a movie star.
Very little is known about the pre-revolutionary period of her life. She was born in Kiev in 1894, although in an interview with reporters she claimed that she was 10 years younger. After studying at the gymnasium, Valentina graduated from drama courses and performed on the theater stage. She did not have an outstanding acting talent, but attracted rave reviews for her beauty and wit. In 1918, Sanina moved to Kharkov, where she continued to work as a theater actress.
Once, in a cabaret at the Kharkov House of Artist, Sanina met Alexander Vertinsky. He later recalled their first meeting: “The serenely serene huge blue eyes with long eyelashes slowly looked at me, and a narrow, rare beauty, hand with long fingers reached out to me. She was very effective, this woman. Her head was exactly in a golden crown. She had slanted cheekbones, a beautifully curved, slightly ironic mouth. In addition, she looked like a fluffy Angora cat … I realized that I was dead, but I was not going to give up without a fight. Soon Vertinsky went on tour to Odessa, and Sanina, along with the retreating white army, ended up in the Crimea.
For a long time Vertinsky could not forget Valentina Sanina, devoted romances to her, even after many years he wrote poetry about her. She met the entrepreneur Georgy Schlee in Crimea and married him. They left for Turkey, from there they moved to Europe, and then settled in the United States. George became a successful theatrical impresario, Valentina first tried herself as an actress, and then took up clothing design.
In 1928, Valentina opened her fashion house "Valentina Gowns" in New York, which soon became very popular among the representatives of the Hollywood bohemia. All the most famous actresses wore Valentina dresses. Her outfits were distinguished by a combination of simplicity, convenience and luxury. She brought into fashion Chinese jackets and dresses with Japanese obi belts, turbans and veils, hooded dresses and coats, trousers and coolie hats. In the 1940s. Valentina has become one of the trendiest and most expensive fashion designers in the United States and the most sought-after fashion designer for Broadway productions.
The restrained elegance of the outfits attracted the attention of the Hollywood film star Greta Garbo, who became a regular client of the Valentina Gowns fashion house. It was Valentina who helped shape Garbo's unique style. They became close friends and often appeared in public in the same outfits, emphasizing their external resemblance.
However, this friendship unexpectedly ended in double betrayal. Once in Valentina's atelier, her husband met Greta Garbo and fell in love with her. The actress answered him in return, but he was not going to leave his wife, and at all social events they appeared three together. Later, Garbo even bought an apartment in the same house where the family lived. Valentina had to put up with the fact that Greta and George spent every summer together.
After the death of her husband in 1964, it turned out that he bequeathed all his fortune to Garbo, and Valentina was left with only an apartment in New York. At that time, her career as a designer had already ended. Until the end of her days, she could not forgive her ex-girlfriend for this betrayal. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the rivals continued to live in the same house. They even made a kind of schedule so as not to collide in the hall and not intersect anywhere.
At home, the name of Valentina Sanina-Schlee was forgotten. Her death in 1989 was reported only in the Western media. Many people learned about the designer thanks to the works of the fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev, who wrote about Valentina: “She possessed some incredible magnetism, which is now extremely rare. Such as she, at the beginning of the century, were called femme fatale."
When the sale of Greta Garbo's things took place at an auction in 2012, it turned out that every third thing had a Valentina label.
Majority chic Hollywood actresses of the 1930s. became style icons thanks to this designer.
Recommended:
Pauline Gebl is a French woman who followed her civil husband, the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov, into exile
The story of the Annenkov couple is one of the touching and tragic pages of Russia's past. Frenchwoman Pauline Gebl became one of the wives of the Decembrists who followed their husbands into exile. 30 difficult years in Siberia - such a price a foreigner paid to be close to the person whom she truly loved. In memory of the years of torment, she had a bracelet cast from her husband's shackles
What became famous for the first Russian woman-photographer, who took pictures of the Tsar and Kshesinskaya: Forgotten Elena Mrozovskaya
"Where to know on frosted glass, including the Severyanin" - this is how the famous poet wrote about the mysterious "Mrozovskaya studio" on Nevsky Prospekt. The first woman in Russia who was engaged in professional photography, she captured writers and scientists, actresses and aristocrats in her photographs, she was admired by contemporary photographers, but nowadays she is almost forgotten
In the shadow of Tereshkova: Why the first woman in outer space Svetlana Savitskaya became a forgotten hero
The name of the first woman-cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, is known to everyone, without exception, but Svetlana Savitskaya, who turns 71 on August 8, is rarely mentioned in the media. As a rule, she is called the second female astronaut in the world, forgetting that she was also a pioneer - after all, she became the first woman to walk into outer space. Why the "right to space" after Tereshkova was taken away from women for 19 years, and what happened to Svetlana Savitskaya after she ended her career
Fashionable 1980s hairstyles in photographs of the time: flecks and fashionable curls
In the 1980s, hairstyles were in vogue. It was at that time that the permanent burst into the life of women, and almost everyone had fashionable curls. These were large curls and very small "lambs", waves of hair that looked wet or just huge flecks. To all of the above, it remains to add only bright makeup - and the image of the fashionista of the 1980s is in front of you
Why the name of the most famous woman patron of the arts was forgotten at home: The dramatic fate of Princess Tenisheva
June 1 (according to the old style - May 20) marks the 153th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding woman, whose contribution to the development of Russian culture can hardly be overestimated. Princess Maria Tenisheva was a collector, philanthropist, public figure and enamel artist. Turgenev regretted that he did not have time to write a story about her, she posed for Repin, Serov, Korovin and Vrubel. Contemporaries called her "the heroine of our time" and "the pride of all Russia", and today her name is hardly known to the majority and is not honored