Veruschka von Lehndorff: from a concentration camp prisoner to the first supermodel. Veruschka von Lehndorff: barefoot countess Model Veruschka now

Today we want to introduce you to one of the most famous and successful models of the last century, whose photographs can easily claim the title of “work of art.”

Veruschka is a slender, aristocratic German beauty who simply blew up the modeling business in the 60s and became a real legend of her time: she herself told photographers the price for a photo shoot with her, and they literally lined up to work with the model.

Veruschka was once greatly helped by the editor-in-chief of American Vogue magazine Diana Vreeland (who also discovered Twiggy to the world). It was thanks to Vreeland that the model had a full-time stylist, and never ran out of offers from publications and photographers. However, at the very beginning of her career, managers of modeling agencies simply refused to promote such a textured girl as Veruschka, considering her too thin, tall and angular.

How Countess von Lehndorff became a supermodel

Countess Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lehndorff, by right of birth, could have enjoyed the idle social life of high society in Germany if she had been born 20-30 years earlier. But, alas, the girl was born at a terrible time: it was 1939, fascism was spreading in Germany as quickly as the plague in England in the 17th century. Vera's father, Count Heinrich von Lehndorff-Steinort, a Wehrmacht reserve lieutenant, was on the list of those who were against Hitler's policies. Of course, this subsequently affected the life of the entire von Lehndorff family: in 1944, the Count was accused of participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Henry was executed, his property, including the family castle, was confiscated, and his wife and daughters were sent to a fascist concentration camp.

After her imprisonment, Vera and her mother and sisters were forced to wander for some time to the homes of distant relatives and acquaintances. During their childhood and adolescence, the girls changed at least 10 schools. Having matured, the future model decided to seriously devote herself to her main passion - drawing: she entered the Hamburg Art School.

When Vera turned 18, the girl went to Florence for the summer: she wandered around the picturesque city and made her sketches. It was there that the famous photographer Hugo Mulas noticed her. He invited the girl to try herself as a model, and she did not refuse.

Later, it was at the suggestion of Hugo that Vera went to conquer Paris, which, unfortunately, met her with hostility. At the castings, Vera received refusal after refusal, but the difficulties she experienced in childhood sufficiently strengthened the girl’s character, and she was not going to give up so easily.

To become unique and memorable, Vera spent hours training her smooth, relaxed gait, which would later become her trademark. She did not allow herself to be timid even in front of the famous “bosses” of the modeling business and always behaved a little brazenly. The girl also came up with a pseudonym for herself - the diminutive “Verushka”, which sounded quite strange, given her tall stature. And her efforts were not in vain: soon Verushka, who signed a lucrative contract with the best modeling agency of her time, Ford Models (USA), was known to the whole world.

She was considered strange, unusual, arrogant, but in the photographs Verushka looked like a goddess come to life, and customers were ready to pay fabulous money for these photographic masterpieces.

Veruschka today

Filming, a dizzying modeling career and crowds of fans - Veruschka easily exchanged all this for a quiet life in a Brooklyn apartment, where, in addition to her, today 8 cats live. She retired from modeling in 1975 at age 36. Then the famous model decided to devote herself to drawing and hone her photography skills. According to the woman herself, she was completely disappointed in “fashion”.

Veruschka Von Lehndorff

A chiseled body, long legs, graceful hands, complemented by a head with a shock of wheat-colored hair, icy blue eyes, a scattering of freckles on the face and plump, smooth lips. All this belonged to the very first supermodel of the world fashion industry, who at the peak of her fame earned fabulous money. She even smoked cigarettes with extraordinary grace, which only added to her respect. The name of this outstanding woman, remembered by millions of people, Veruschka von Lehndorff.

Veruschka Von Lehndorff 1975

Nowadays, few people know that the long-legged beauty survived imprisonment in a concentration camp as a child and outright poverty in the post-war years. Although the initial stage of her life was completely different. Vera Gottliebe Anna von Lehndorff, and this is the name given to her at birth, was born on May 14, 1939 in the family of a wealthy Prussian aristocrat, a hereditary officer of the German army, Count Heinrich von Lehndorff-Steinort. Like the absolute majority of the Prussian aristocracy, he was not delighted with Nazism, which reigned in Germany, but did not resist its arrival.

Photo Johnny Moncada

The first years of the girl’s life were spent in the family castle, in which Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop held meetings from time to time. In addition, Hitler’s secret headquarters “Wolfschanze” (“Wolf’s Lair”) was set up nearby. These facts in themselves indicate that Count von Lehndorff-Steinort enjoyed serious confidence from the fascist leadership. It is unknown what the girl’s fate would have been like had her father continued to maintain this trust. However, life made its own adjustments.

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964
Photo Johnny Moncada

Count Heinrich von Lehndorff joined the conspirators who organized the assassination attempt on Hitler in the summer of 1944. It is believed that he radically changed his opinion about the Nazis after seeing how they killed Jewish children. The attempt was unsuccessful, and all the rebels were subjected to brutal repression. Count Heinrich von Lehndorff-Steinort stood trial in September 1944 and was executed in Berlin's Plötzensee prison on September 18 of the same year.

Since the entire family, including Vera’s grandparents, were declared state criminals, they were arrested and their possessions were confiscated. Vera and her sisters ended up in the Bad Sachs concentration camp, where their last names were changed. The girl had to study in thirteen schools, including the Waldorf Institute, a convent and a village school. She was lucky: she did not die and lived to see the liberation brought by the Allied forces. However, there was no question of returning home: Germany was divided into zones of occupation, and her homeland - East Prussia - became part of the USSR.

The girl grew up and became interested in painting. She first studied fine art in Hamburg, at a school that trained fabric artists for textile mills, and then went to Florence to study drawing. And it was there that an event occurred that completely changed her life: the girl met Hugo Mulas, a successful photographer who was known as a portrait painter and an employee of fashion magazines. Seeing Vera for the first time, Mulas experienced a real shock: while talking with friends on the stairs of the Uffizi Palace, he saw an Aryan goddess descending, with the flexible body of a snake and a shock of hair the color of ripe wheat. The result of this meeting is an offer from Mulos to try himself as a model. Soon Vera appeared on the cover of Constanze magazine.

From sunny Italy, the girl moved to Paris, but neither she nor her photo aroused great delight there. French bohemians did not appreciate the lanky German woman, whose height was 186 cm. In Paris, Vera met Eileen Ford, the head of the American modeling agency Ford Models, who lured her to continue her career in New York: “We in America love everything, well, you know, big." Cinderella believed the fairy and in 1961 bought a ticket for a transatlantic flight. By the way, the girl’s mother had to sell a teapot with a family monogram from a Saxon set in order to send Vera money for a ticket. However, Eileen behaved completely unexpectedly: “In New York, Eileen pretended to see me for the first time,” Veruschka then admits in an interview.

To attract attention, Vera took a decisive step: she, a Prussian aristocrat, called herself Russian and came up with a pseudonym Veruschka and started wearing black clothes. Rumors soon spread that she was not a Russian agent who had changed her gender.

From the memoirs of Vera von Lehndorff:

“The nickname Verushka is a business. Clean business! A lanky young German woman named Vera had nothing to do in the fashion scene.”

“I decided to turn into a completely different person. And enjoy it. I began to invent this new person - I decided to become Verushka. My childhood name was Verushka. This means "little Faith". And since I was always too tall, I thought it would be funny to be called Little Vera. And it was great to have a Russian name, because I was from the East myself.”

She dressed in black from head to toe - we must remember that at that time black had not yet become a fashionable uniform, girls wore colored ones. She wore a huge hat over her flowing blonde hair. She moved as if in slow motion and spoke to the photographers casually, in her “Slavic accent”: “Hi, I saw your pictures in Vogue and thought it would be interesting if you took a picture of me.”

Photographers see hundreds of girls every day. This means that my girl, my Veruschka, had to be immediately different from everyone else. I looked so strange and acted so boldly that even the great Irving Penn timidly asked, “Would you mind trying on a few dresses for Vogue?” And soon everyone wanted to work with me.

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964
Photo Johnny Moncada

However, her modeling career in the USA did not work out. The girl returns to Europe, to Munich, and after a while makes a splash by starring in a five-minute episode in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up.

1994

In 1963, in Rome, Veruschka met Vogue photographer Franco Rubartelli, who made her his muse. The acquaintance grew into a long collaboration and romance - Veruschka lived for several years with a brilliant and explosive Italian in Rome. They chose clothes, looked for exotic locations for filming and went there together - without stylists, assistants, makeup artists and hairdressers.

The most significant photo shoot in the Arizona desert, taken in 1968, was the most significant of their collaboration. The shot in which Veruschka is wrapped in a cocoon has become iconic, a true classic of photography.

VOGUE US, 1968. Photo: Franco Rubartelli

Verushka did everything herself, created her own image and her own performance, and fashion editors completely trusted her. So she worked not only with Rubartelli, but also with Richard Avedon, Peter Beard and Irving Penn.

Photo: Johnny Moncada. Sardinia, 1964
Vogue 1962 – 1964

In the mid-1960s, Veruschka enjoyed incredible popularity, earning up to 10 thousand dollars a day. She became the biggest model of her time, the biggest in many ways: she was not only the tallest of all the top models of that time (186 cm), but also the most titled.

‘Veruschka – Poesia di una Donna’, 1970
Franco Rubartelli

The model's successful career continued until 1975, when, after a quarrel with the new editor of Vogue magazine, Grace Mirabella, Veruschka decided to leave the fashion world. The subject of the quarrel was the editor’s desire to radically change the model’s image, making it more accessible to most women. The tall, aristocratic German woman not only did not fit into the new ideal of American beauty, but she was not going to change. “Look for another fool for this,” the model responded to a request to change her hairstyle to the bob that was current at that time. And, of course, I found Vogue.

by Peter Lindbergh

I think Veruschka came into conflict with the era of the seventies itself - prosaic, bourgeois, down-to-earth. New times did not need aliens. Veruschka was involved in photo projects, performances, acted in films, transformed into men, and created installations. And she became fanatically interested in body art, which she became interested in while still working as a model - on filming in Africa with Peter Beard, she disguised her body either as wild animals or exotic plants, using shoe polish instead of paint.

Photo Art Kane 1963

Only 10 years later, in 1985, Veruschka returned and took part in a body art show in Tribeca. A wide variety of images were again intertwined on her body.

In the 80s, her eccentric sessions with avant-garde photographers, where she pretended to be a cobblestone, a rusty pipe, or a peeling piece of wall, began to be bought by contemporary art galleries. Veruschka began to take part in shows again from time to time as a guest model.

Photo Bert Stern – Veruschka 1970

In the 90s, she made the video art “Buddha’s Backside,” in which she transformed into a New York homeless person. Sprawled in a puddle, mixed with garbage, ash and city dirt, Veruschka froze in the frame as a serene corpse, asleep in a nirvana of the waste of American consumerism. A few years later, two months after 9/11, the supermodel's homeless transformation was shown alongside the prophetic installation "New York on Fire." In 2000, Veruschka appeared at the Melbourne Fashion Festival, which was held in Australia.

After retiring from fashion, Veruschka began working with the German artist Holger Trülsch, who became her personal and professional partner for many years. She is credited with many novels - with Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Peter Fonda, Warren Beatty. But if they were, they quickly ended.

The main men in her life were only those with whom she was connected through work and creative collaboration. She lived with Rubartelli for five years - he literally tortured her with his pathological jealousy and hot machismo. She stayed with Trulsch much longer - and still maintains an excellent relationship, she talks to him on the phone every day. Her last companion was her assistant, artist and musician from the GDR, Misha Waschke, who was thirty years younger than her and who several years ago left her for a young Russian girl.

Photo Franco Rubartelli

Verushka never had her own children, although she says that she adores children, and they adore her.

Veruschka managed to safely squander her entire fortune and currently lives with her eight cats in an apartment in Brooklyn, USA, overlooking a picturesque landfill.

Photo Franco Rubartelli 1969

Veruschka retired almost completely, concentrating on art. She occasionally participates in fashion shows as a guest star. Karl Lagerfeld, Michael Kors, Helmut Lang and Paco Rabanne dedicated collections to her, the famous cosmetics brand MAC even released Veruschka lipstick, and the pop group Suedes placed her photo on the cover of their album.

Many consider her one of the three - after Leni Riefenstahl and Marlene Dietrich - great German women of the twentieth century.

Photo Franco Rubartelli

Photo Johnny Moncada

Veruschka splashing in the ocean, American Vogue Brazil 1968
Photo Franco Rubartelli

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964
Photo Johnny Moncada

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Lying in a hammock
Photo Franco Rubartelli

Santo Domingo 1968
Photo Franco Rubartelli

Portrait of German countess and fashion model Veruschka wearing a headscarf, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 1967

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964
Photo Johnny Moncada

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Vogue 1962 – 1964

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Photo Johnny Moncada

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Photo Peter Lindbergh

Photographer Franco Rubartelli shoots a self portrait with Veruschka
ca January 1968

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Franco Rubartelli
May 1970

Giorgio di Sant’Angelo styling Veruschka for photo shoot 1968
Photo Franco Rubartelli

Veruschka with Salvador Dali

Veruschka DW Kultur Berlin

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Photo Franco Rubartelli 1966

Veruschka Von Lehndorff
Photo Franco Rubartelli 1968

Photographer Horst P. Horst, Mellen juxtaposed Veruschka Von Lehndorff with George Segal’s Walking Man at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1966

Veruschka with a few fake freckles wearing a short blond wig holding a baby doe
Photo Franco Rubartelli 1967

Veruschka Von Lehndorff

Head and shoulder shot of model Veruschka looking into the camera wearing Sant’ Angelo collar 1968
Photo Franco Rubartelli

Photo Franco Rubartelli 1970

Franco Rubartelli, Vogue, April 1967

Verushka reclining in the red arizona desert in a brown double belted knit dress with a gold chain-link medallion belt by lotte worn with a wide brimmed

Veruschka And David Hemmings In Blow Up, 1966

Born a countess, raised as a fugitive, became famous as a supermodel. One of the most famous German women of the 60-70s talks about how important it is in this world to be unlike anyone else.

Everything is like in a scary fairy tale

She was born a countess with an ancient castle in East Prussia and a rich family tree just before the outbreak of World War II. Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lehndorff was the name of the plump Aryan baby from a wealthy aristocratic family.
On their estate, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop received the Nazis, and next to Lehndorff Park was the headquarters of the Fuhrer, known as the “Wolf’s Lair.”
Ribbentrop organized film screenings in their castle and even gave the Lehndorffs' three daughters ponies - so he wanted to woo the little ones.
No one knew that behind the facade of an exemplary German family, close to the highest Nazi circles, was hiding a military resistance fighter - Vera’s father. He joined the militia after witnessing the murder of more than seven thousand Jews in the Soviet city of Borisov. In front of his eyes, the Nazis smashed children's heads against lampposts. Returning home, Heinrich Lehndorff said to his wife: “We must do something immediately.”

He took part in Operation Valkyrie in Königsberg and was detained and hanged in 1944. Vera was five years old. The girls and their mother were sent to a special camp for children of traitors.
Thanks to the countess's connections, they managed to get out and avoid being sent to Siberia. From that moment on, the nomadic life of the Lendorfs began. They were left without a home and livelihood with the stigma of being relatives of a state criminal. Vera changed 13 gymnasiums, the family moved every year, staying with friends.
Having achieved fame and success, Vera continued to change countries, not becoming attached for long to either places or people.

I am convinced that a person is created by the place in which he lives. If fate pulls a person out of where he grew up and throws him into another place, it is almost a miracle if he takes root.

The appearance of Veruschka

By adolescence, not a trace remained of the well-fed baby from the count's family - tall, thin, blond, with huge feet, Vera stood out from the crowd of her peers. They teased her with a stork, and the girl herself was embarrassed by her appearance and tried to stay away from her classmates.
Vera loved to draw and studied in Florence to become a textile artist. Her attention was always occupied by nature, especially stones. She once spent an entire semester painting a single rock.

In Florence, she was noticed by photographer Hugo Mulas, who advised the girl to become a model. Vera went to Paris, but turned out to be too unconventional for Europe. But there she met the co-owner of the American Ford Modeling Agency, Eileen Ford, who said that Vera’s unusual appearance would be a success in America.
The first conquest of New York turned out to be a failure. Eileen Ford did not recognize the girl, and other agents did not want to take Vera, who did not fit into the format.
Vera Lendorf went home, and after a while Veruschka, a mysterious beauty of either Russian or Eastern origin, arrived in the United States.
Dressed in the unpopular color black, she came up with an original, smooth gait, like in rapid. She communicated casually even with the most eminent photographers, looked halfway and expressed complete indifference. Almost immediately, photographers lined up; they had to sign up for a shoot with Veruschka a week in advance.

I wanted to come up with a girl who is so interesting to look at that once you see her, you will never forget her. And everything became very easy. I had complexes, but this trick, as if I was different, helped me, and I became different. Under the mask lurked a timid, insecure creature, but Veruschka hid it.

Model

A stunning success for the fashion world and for Veruschka herself was her creative union with editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland. It was this woman who initiated the transformation of fashion into art. She allowed Veruschka a rare privilege for a model - to propose ideas and be a full participant in the artistic process.

Diana was completely crazy! I wouldn't want to work for her at Vogue. She was eccentric and very demanding. People around her could work day and night, only to then bring their ideas and hear: “This is boring!” Diana had a fire in her and truly loved what she did. She had poor vision, and by the end of her life she was almost blind. One day I asked her: “How do you choose bags, shoes, dresses?” And Diana replied: “I already know what everything in this life looks like!” She took the thing in her hands and asked, stretching out the vowels in her own manner: “What color is it - blue, blue, like the sky at sunset or at dawn, darker or lighter than the moonlit night?” This was all Diana.

In the mid-1960s, Veruschka starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up, after which she became truly famous.
Veruschka will appear on the cover of Vogue a record number of times - 11. The romance with the magazine will end with the change of editor-in-chief. Grace Mirabella takes Diana Vreeland’s place and immediately tries to reconcile Veruschka:

Veruschka's melancholy face, stamped with decadent sadness, has more than once become the subject of comments from editors and photographers. Everyone wanted a smiling beauty looking into the frame.

This is perhaps the biggest difficulty in working with Americans. Everything about them is imbued with the notorious idea of happiness. My neighbor in New York, when we bumped into each other in the elevator, would tell me how he was doing before I had a chance to ask him about it. But even worse, behind their question “How are you doing?” nothing is real - they don't care how you are doing.

Artist

Working with another great artist, Salvador Dali, will help Veruschka reconsider her views on the capabilities of the human body. She became a model in Dali's performance, where he completely covered Veruschka's naked body with shaving foam.

During this strange surreal experience, I began to think: how else can the body be used in art?

By the early 70s, Veruschka was completely disillusioned with her modeling career - it was too easy and boring to be a clothes hanger. She is not attracted by either success or fees. Verushka has never paid much attention to money.

An affair with the artist Holger Trültzsch becomes the beginning of Veruschka's immersion into real art. Together they created a unique series of works “Metamorphoses”. With the help of paint, Vera merged with the environment - nature, city, houses.

We were especially attracted to all sorts of damaged materials and rusty surfaces. We were attracted by the traces of what was coming, it was everywhere. Nothing lasts forever. What suits my heart. It's mesmerizing, it's beautiful. A wall that is crumbling over time can be so attractive. This scares many people. What comes to me does not inspire fear. Rather, it promises liberation.

She tried to completely dissolve in the surrounding world, to become naked matter.

I always wanted to go beyond my limits. Change not only dresses or hair, but also skin.

She transformed herself into men, Hollywood stars, prostitutes, and homeless people. She pretended to be forest moss, an animal, and painted herself with her favorite stones. Even now her photographs look unusual, but in those days no one did this.

Helmut Newton once told me: “You know, we work to fill garbage cans.” And he's right. In the end, all our photographs end up in the trash heap among kitchen waste and old rags. Most magazines end up there. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, crumpled and dirty glossy covers with your face on them. Delightful rubbish that has lost its meaning.

I don't want to be against age

After decades of wandering, Veruschka returned to her native Germany. Now the artist lives in a modest apartment in East Berlin and continues to make art. She did not get married, did not give birth to children, and completely devoted herself to creativity.

Those who expected to see fading beauty in Verushka over the years were disappointed. Last year, the 78-year-old model starred in a lookbook for Swedish brand Acne Studios. In unisex items - youth hoodies, oversized jeans and leggings - she is still the same androgynous alien with a detached look.

Years bring not only wrinkles, but also spiritual maturity. I am one of those who sees beauty in this. Perhaps I will be one of the first to say: “Give us something to demonstrate, despite the wrinkles.

“Everyone is obsessed with the idea of youth. Each jar of cream says anti-age. But I don’t want to be against age, I don’t want to fight with it and with nature. This is wrong, because it drives people into panic, they start looking younger and undergoing operations. And I think that late beauty is the most interesting. In our youth we are all pretty, but this is the natural beauty of youth. But then we become beautiful.”

I became a fan of Veruschka from the moment she floated into the frame of Anthony’s “Blow-Up” with the words: “Here I am.” Her regal appearance changed fashion. But Veruschka is almost hostile to fashion, especially modern fashion. She is offended when she is called a model out of old memory. She is even more offended when they call her the first supermodel. Although, it would seem, this title suits no one more than her, with her incredible height for the sixties, forty-three foot size, alien androgyny and a detached melancholy look.

The current Verushka prefers to call herself an artist. And between fashion and art he is building a real Berlin Wall. It is in East Berlin that she lives, having returned to her homeland after many years spent in Italy, London, Paris and America. And it was here that she finally agreed to meet me.

I'm waiting for her in the bar of the Hotel de Rome. I've conducted hundreds of interviews in my life as a journalist, but I've probably never been so worried. And not just because I love her. I just know that she is now seventy-three years old. And more than anything else I am afraid of what time does to beauty.

When she walks into the bar, for a minute I think she's no older than thirty-five. She is just as graceful, just as majestic, just as thoroughbred as she was forty years ago. Flowing gray hair, a bandana on his head, khaki military pants, heavy boots, a gray chiffon blouse worn over a black T-shirt, tiny sunglasses on a chain on his chest. I eagerly look at her face up close and see all the marks of time on it and not a single trace of a plastic surgeon. But she still has the same high cheekbones, incredibly beautiful facial structure and sparkling light eyes. There is so much life in it that you simply stop thinking about the work of time, and therefore the work of death.

It's a hot sunny day outside and she doesn't want to sit in a dark bar. “Let’s go to the roof, it’s so beautiful,” she says in a low, hoarse voice with a strong German accent. On the roof, she orders an apfel syringe and immediately begins feeding cookies to the sparrows. Birds flock to her in a small flock, sensing not so much life as a kindred spirit - Verushka fanatically loves all kinds of living creatures. Cats, dogs, sparrows... It always seemed to me that Verushka herself looked like an exotic animal. She moved in a fluid and loose feline manner, she loved to paint her body like a panther or tigress, she flapped her long arms like wings. This is probably how Isadora Duncan would dress and look these days. When I tell her about this, she laughs with a chesty laugh:

But I dreamed of being a dancer. I went to ballet class, but at the age of fourteen I was already as tall as I am now. When we got to pointe shoes, it became clear that with such feet and such height, a ballet career was impossible. But even during the filming I tried to move in a special way. I always wanted to be different, unusual. In every image, in every role, in every picture. Do you understand?

I understand perfectly. Her whole life and her whole career is an invention of herself by another. Countess Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lehndorff, born into a wealthy Prussian family in Königsberg, was the daughter of an officer who was hanged in September 1944 for participating in an anti-Hitler plot. A little girl sent with her mother and sisters to a concentration camp. A lanky teenager who has changed thirteen schools and is haunted by the demons of her past. A pretty blond student from a German textile institute. A student at a Florentine art school, who was once seen on the street by photographer Hugo Milas. A beginner and not the most successful model, falling out of all the model stereotypes of that time. And finally, a completely new woman, similar to Barbie, sent from the Andromeda nebula, with the strange name Veruschka and an equally strange legend.

I already worked as a model, but everyone said that I was too lanky. In Paris, Eileen Ford, director of the famous American modeling agency, saw me: “Come to America, they love such tall blondes.” I obeyed, came to New York, called her from the hotel: “I’m that tall girl from Paris.” And she replied: “I don’t remember you.” I spent several months in America, then returned to Europe and decided: “We need to make sure that they remember me - immediately and forever. We need to invent someone." And so Verushka was born.

Why Veruschka?

That's Russian for little Vera, right? I decided to become Russian. I thought it was funny to be so long and be called small.

When Vera became Verushka, the Cold War was at its height, and everything connected with Russia seemed dangerous and mysterious. Among the famous Russians who lived in the West at that time was Nureyev - his appearance was a real sensation, artistic and political. And Veruschka became the only girl from the collective Eastern Europe.

Did you pretend to be Russian?

No, I vaguely answered that I lived on the border. In essence, this is true: I was born in Konigsberg - as if between Russia, Poland and Germany. But I was afraid to say directly that I was Russian. I was afraid that I would meet someone who spoke Russian and would be exposed. This evasiveness of mine in the details of my biography played into my hands and created such a mysterious aura. It was so cool to come up with another person and play that other person. And with such success.

On her first visit to New York, no one remembered the German Fräulein named Vera. Everyone remembered Verushka. She dressed in black from head to toe - we must remember that at that time black had not yet become a fashionable uniform, girls wore colored ones. She wore a huge hat over her flowing blonde hair. She moved as if in slow motion and spoke to the photographers casually, in her “Slavic accent”: “Hi, I saw your pictures in Vogue and thought it would be interesting if you took a picture of me.”

Veruschka became a fashion sensation and the favorite model of Diana Vreeland, then editor-in-chief of Vogue. Vreeland, who hates everything bourgeois and ordinary, fell in love with her exotic appearance, her melancholy, and her legend. Remembering Vreeland, Veruschka amusingly imitates how she pulled out her vowels when she pronounced her invariable: It is so-o-o bo-o-oring.

Diana was afraid of boring things more than anything else. I was always exalted and wanted everyone around me to be exalted too. I could call her in the middle of the night and tell her that I had the idea for such and such a shoot in China. And she answered: “Amazing! Do it!" She never said: it is difficult, problematic, expensive, and so on. If she liked the idea, then she did everything to implement it. And I quickly realized that it’s not enough for me to just show clothes, I need an idea, a meaning in photography. After all, what happens? Photography is the way the photographer wants it. Clothes are the way the stylist wants them. Well, what am I doing? And I was lucky that Vreeland suggested a photographer with whom I could create on my own.

Vreeland introduced her to Franco Rubartelli. The acquaintance grew into a long collaboration and romance - Veruschka lived for several years with a brilliant and explosive Italian in Rome. They chose clothes, looked for exotic locations for filming and went there together - without stylists, assistants, makeup artists and hairdressers. Verushka did everything herself, created her own image and her own performance, and fashion editors completely trusted her. So she worked not only with Rubartelli, but also with Richard Avedon, Peter Beard and Irving Penn.

It's not like that now, is it? - she asks several times. - Girls no longer influence the process, they are dolls in the hands of a whole team of stylists. I couldn't do that, I had freedom. If I do something, I have to create it myself. And this should make sense. Fashion is over. I do art.

You are unfair to fashion, because fashion created Verushka. And then you played and worked with this myth.

I became too famous in fashion, and this played a fatal role. Back then fashion was looked at as something frivolous and entertaining. Now times are gradually changing, fashion designers are making art projects and exhibiting in museums. But then! When I took up art, no one took me seriously, everyone just laughed: “Oh, that same Veruschka from Blow-Up!”

Many explain Veruschka's departure from fashion as a conflict with Grace Mirabella, who came to replace Diana Vreeland in American Vogue in 1971. She demanded that Verushka shorten her long hair, look at the camera (Verushka often looked “past”) and smile invitingly in order to be clearer and closer to her readers.

Even then I wanted to get out of my human form. Not just putting on or changing clothes, but changing skin.

Verushka never had her own children, although she says that she adores children, and they adore her.

For them, I am like a fantasy woman from a fairy tale. And there is a lot of childishness in me; I still perceive life as a game.

Do you live alone?

Well, yes, with my cats. It's my choice to live alone. The day belongs only to me, I am completely free. It's good for creativity. Although I love the feeling of falling in love. Aren't you? Do you see this sparrow wants to peck my cookies? I'll soak the cookies in your tea to make him feel better, okay?

She speaks about these sparrows and about her cats with the same tenderness with which others talk about children (in New York there were ten cats, in Berlin there were only three). Because of them, she refuses many trips - she is afraid whether her neighbor will feed them on time. Veruschka is a vegetarian and condemns herself for that famous photo for Vogue on safari, where she, dressed in Yves Saint Laurent, stands with a rifle in her hands, like a proud white colonial hunter.

By the way, she never earned any money during her modeling career - after the interview she took me to show me her apartment on Bizet Street, which was quite modest.

They said about me that I earned millions. Nonsense! Money has never meant much to me. And Rubartelli completely persuaded me that all the money should go to his account. I was not like those girls who made a fortune from their modeling careers. Like Linda Evangelista or Claudia Schiffer. I have always been an artist first and foremost. She shot mostly for Vogue, and did only four or five advertising campaigns. And they didn’t pay that much for it back then.

In conversations with Verushka about fashion, I feel an unhealed wound, an old resentment. She speaks about models with a strange mixture of jealousy and pity. She is upset that they walk along the catwalks like robots, not communicating with the public in any way (“It wasn’t like that in our time!”). She is frightened by their abnormal thinness (“I was thin in Blow-Up too, but that’s because I had dysentery before filming”). She is uncomfortable with the depressive mood that is so often felt in modern photo shoots (“I always had such a mixture of melancholy and a barely noticeable smile”). She is disgusted by the fact that digital special effects can kill individuality and turn everyone into beauties with equally flawless faces and bodies (“We didn’t even know what retouching was, everything was fair!”).

Another painful topic is plagiarism. Veruschka is deeply offended when she sees how shamelessly others use ideas and techniques that were born in pain and many years of searching. Annie Leibovitz, with whom Veruschka was well acquainted, took her famous photograph of Demi Moore in a men's suit painted on a naked body, inspired by similar works by Veruschka and Truelsch. Mick Jagger in his video used a technique where the girl separates from the wall - just like Veruschka did in “Transfigurations”. And even Cindy Sherman, with her transformations into different characters, clearly works in the style of Verushkin’s series of self-portraits, where Verushka turns into Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, a homeless person, or a trophy wife.

I try to explain to her that in the modern world the line between plagiarism and inspiration has become very thin.

And finally, another nagging question that plagues modern culture. Youth and old age. What I was thinking about while waiting for Veruschka in the bar and preparing for the fact that I would have to watch the destruction of absolute beauty. But my obsession with this seems offensive and absurd to her.

Everyone is obsessed with the idea of youth. Each jar of cream says anti-age. But I don’t want to be against age, I don’t want to fight with it and with nature. This is wrong, because it drives people into panic, they start looking younger and undergoing operations. And I think that late beauty is the most interesting. In our youth we are all pretty, but this is the natural beauty of youth. But then we become beautiful.

She still works on several art projects at the same time - videos, photographs, and transformations. Her final passion is the paintings she creates from ashes.

The legendary 60s gave the fashion world a lot: miniskirts, many styles for self-expression, dramatic changes in the concept of “feminine attractiveness.” This is the time of cutting off all unnecessary things and freedom.

The boundless feeling of freedom is dictated by various historical events, including Yuri Gagarin's flight into space. A person understands that boundaries are arbitrary and begins to erase them. The fashion world, of course, does not stand aside. The primacy of space style in the collections of fashion designers, leveling floors, getting rid of external shackles. In terms of appearance, hair and curvaceous figures can easily be called such. Therefore, short haircuts and a boyish body type are becoming relevant and fashionable. We immediately remember the legendary Twiggy.

But... 10 years older than her, she was more in demand Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lehndorff, better known as Veruschka.

Where they love everything huge

Her passion is painting and art. She entered the Hamburg school, which trained textile artists for textile factories, but successfully left it. Vera went to Florence to improve her painting skills.

And there, on the stairs of the Uffizi Palace, the long-legged 20-year-old blonde was noticed by photographer Hugo Mulas. The first supermodel believed that God deprived her of beauty: her legs were too long, angular, bony knees and a height of 186 centimeters. But Mulas thought differently: he photographed her and sent her to Paris with the first portfolio in her life.

It must be said that in Paris the overgrown German woman was not appreciated: she was advised to go to the USA, where “they love long legs and everything huge.” Veruschka's mother, the widow of a Wehrmacht officer who participated in the assassination attempt on Hitler, who went through concentration camps and suffered hardships after a luxurious life in a mansion with a hundred rooms, sold a teapot with a family monogram from a Saxon service and sent money for a ticket.

In New York, no one was particularly expecting her; in the agencies, models lined up, showed themselves in all their glory, and every now and then you could hear: “You are just lovely. Next!” Vera had to return to Europe, to Munich. It was then that she decided to change her life and started... with a name.

She cut off everything unnecessary, namely the “background” particle, which indicated an aristocratic origin. In addition, she added a Russian suffix to her name, resulting in the affectionate “Verushka.”

I decided to turn into a completely different person and enjoy it. One that, once you look at it, you can no longer forget!

During the Cold War, this could easily be called a challenge to the model society, and this is precisely what played into its hands. There were rumors that Veruschka was a Russian spy who had changed her gender.

The first to believe in Veruschka was the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Diana Vreeland, who gave her complete creative freedom, a permanent stylist and photographers. During this period she met photographer Franco Rubartelli. Verushka became his only model, and he became her first serious hobby for 5 years.

In 1966, surrealist Salvador Dali staged a performance of dousing a naked Veruschka with cans of shaving foam. He instilled in her a love of body art.

By 1970, Veruschka appeared on the covers of more than 800 magazines, 11 of them were the covers of the world famous Vogue magazine, which in the fashion world are equivalent to the Oscars.

After Antonioni's film Blow-Up, in which she played herself and uttered just one phrase, “Here I am!”, Veruschka woke up famous. After the premiere of the film, the model was bombarded with compliments, including “naked countess” and “superman.”

“She looked like a deer, she seemed clumsy and graceful at the same time. Her mother wanted me to make Vera's younger sister a model. She was shorter, her hair was lighter and her face was more beautiful, and yet she was not as gorgeous as Vera! — her first agent Dorian Lee said about Vera.

Her success is due not only to her extraterrestrial appearance, which was so in demand at that time, but also to her arrogance.

I never felt like a typical model. A model is someone who sells someone else's products. Or yourself.

When Verushka was asked to show her portfolio, she said that she already knew what she looked like and would like to see what they could do with her face. She has the gift of transformation, no less!

Artistic education, vivid imagination and obvious dissimilarity from other models allowed Veruschka, stripping naked, to become a work of art. She could transform into any star, whatever, into any animal or even object.

At the peak of her popularity, Veruschka earned $10,000 a day. And in 1975, she left the modeling business due to a disagreement with the new editor-in-chief of Vogue, Grace Mirabella.

Mirabella advised Veruschka to simplify her appearance, to become closer to the average concept of American beauty. But this was not part of the aristocratic model’s plans.

She suggested that the editor-in-chief look for another fool and returned to Germany, where she took up body art with Holger Trultsch.

The beautiful thing about all my transformations is that I was allowed to get out of the captivity of my body, to create at least the illusion that you are leaving yourself.

Since then, Verushka pretended to be trees, stones, animals, clouds.

In the 80s, these avant-garde photo shoots were bought up by contemporary art galleries.

Fashion and death walk side by side...

In the 80s, the artist presented the installation “New York on Fire,” namely, she built and burned a model of her beloved city. In 20 years this will be called the 9/11 prophecy.

According to Veruschka, “fashion consists of death.” What is in fashion today will be gone tomorrow. And so every year.

In the end, all our photographs end up in the trash, among kitchen waste and old rags. Delightful rubbish that has lost its meaning.

All over the world she is considered a living legend. Fashion stores are named after her; the collections of Paco Rabanne, Helmut Lang, Karl Lagerfeld, and Michael Kors are dedicated to her. The cosmetics brand MAC named a shade of almost black lipstick after her, and the pop group Suedes put her photo on the cover of their album.

The flamboyant 74-year-old aristocrat still stands out from the crowd and surprises! If earlier, outside of filming, Verushka chose black clothes and suede flat shoes, which were completely unfashionable for that time, now she wears bandanas or hats, long cardigans, tunics with leopard print leggings, rough boots or platform sandals, glasses with bright lenses .

She is an avant-garde artist who paints with paints, but uses her own body instead of a canvas.