Video: Veruschka von Lehndorff: a difficult path from a concentration camp prisoner to the first supermodel
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Fate the first supermodel in the world history of fashion made such zigzags and unexpected turns that Veruschke von Lehndorff (Vere Gottlieb Anne von Lehndorf-Steinort) I had a chance to learn both complete poverty, and unheard of wealth and luxury, to play the role of a German aristocrat and a Russian spy who changed sex. As a child, she was a concentration camp prisoner, but she managed not only to survive, but also to achieve success - to become the first supermodel.
She was born in 1939 in Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) into an aristocratic family. The Lehndorff family lived in a huge mansion with a hundred rooms. Vera's father at one time actively contributed to Hitler's coming to power. But one day he witnessed the murder of Jewish children, which forced him to reconsider his views. He became an anti-fascist underground fighter who in 1944 took part in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Hitler. As a result, the father was executed, the mother was imprisoned, and Vera was sent to a children's concentration camp, where she stayed until the end of World War II.
After the war, Vera studied art, first in Hamburg, then in Florence. There she met the photographer Hugo Mulas and began working as a model. Later in France, she met Eileen Ford, the head of a prestigious modeling agency, who offered her to work as a model in the United States. Having not achieved significant success there, Vera returned to Germany and decided to change her image.
To attract attention, the girl called herself Russian, came up with the pseudonym Verushka (with an emphasis on "y"), threw away the aristocratic prefix "von" from her name, wore all black, which was not mainstream in the 1960s. It worked, the unusual model was increasingly invited to participate in the filming. It was then that there were rumors about her that she was in fact a Russian spy who had changed her sex.
In 1966 she starred in a short episode with Michelangelo Antonioni (the film "Magnification"). This role brought her unprecedented popularity. She even worked with Salvador Dali. During this period, Verushka earned 10 thousand dollars a day. Veruschka was not only the tallest (186 cm), but also the most titled supermodel, who has repeatedly been on the cover of "Vogue" and more than 800 times on the covers of other magazines.
In 1975 Vera von Lehndorff unexpectedly decided to end her modeling career, due to a conflict with the new editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. In 1985 she took part in a body art show again. In the photo sessions of avant-garde artists, she reincarnated as exotic animals, stones, a peeled wall, a rusty pipe. Now Veruschka lives in the USA, periodically takes part in filming and shows, for example, as a guest model at the Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2000.
“Fashion and death go side by side,” says Veruschka. - Fashion also consists of death. What is in vogue today will go away tomorrow. And so every year. Helmut Newton once told me: "You know, we work to fill trash cans." And he's right. In the end, all of our photographs end up in a trash heap, among kitchen scraps and old rags … Delightful trash that has lost its meaning."
And in the 1970s, only Veruschka could compete in popularity Gia Marie Carangi: the tragic story of one of the first supermodels
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