Verushka model biography

Her royal phenomenon changed the fashion. Offended when it is called a model according to the old memory. It is even more offended when called the first supermodel. Although, it would seem, this title is no longer suitable for anyone than it, with its incredible for the sixties, forty -third legs, alien androgenicism and detached melancholy gaze. The current Verushka prefers to call herself an artist.

And between fashion and art builds a real Berlin wall. It was in East Berlin that she lives, returning to her homeland after many years spent in Italy, London, Paris and America. And it was here that she finally agreed to meet with me. I am waiting for her at the Hotel de Rome bar. For my journalistic life, I interviewed hundreds of interviews, but probably never so worried. And not only 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 with beauty. When she enters the bar, it seems to me for a minute that she is no more than thirty -five. She is as graceful, as majestic, as thoroughbred as forty years ago. Loose gray hair, a bandana on the head, Khaki military pants, heavy boots, a gray chiffon blouse, worn over a black T -shirt, on the chest - tiny dark glasses on the chain.

I eagerly look at her face close and see all traces of time on him and not a single trace of a plastic surgeon. But she has all the same high cheekbones, incredible in beauty, the back of the face and shining bright eyes. There are so many life in it that about the work of time, and therefore about the work of death, you just stop thinking. On the street is a hot sunny day, and she does not want to sit in a dark bar.

On the roof, she orders an apfelshprin and immediately begins to feed sparrows with cookies. Birds fly to her with a small flock, feeling not so much to live as a soul mate - Verushka fanatically loves all kinds of living creatures. Kotov, dogs, sparrows always seemed to me that Verushka itself looked like an exotic animal. She moved in a smooth and developed cat manner, she loved to paint her body under a panther or a tigress, she waved her long hands, like wings.

So, probably, Iceedora Duncan would have dressed in our days. When I tell her about this, she laughs with a breast laugh: - But I dreamed of being a dancer. I went to the ballet class, but at the age of fourteen it was already as high as it is now. When they reached the Poins, it became clear that with such feet and with such an increase, a ballet career was impossible.

But I tried to somehow move on the set. I always wanted to be different, unusual. In each image, in every role, in every picture. I understand perfectly. Her whole life and her whole career is the invention of herself different. Countess Vera Gotlib Anna von Lendorf, born in a rich Prussian family in Koenigsberg, the daughter of an officer hanged in September for participating in an anti -Hitler conspiracy.

A little girl sent with a mother and sisters to a concentration camp.

A lanky teenager who replaced thirteen schools and pursued by demons of the past. A pretty blond student of the German Textile Institute. A student of the Florentine art school, who was once seen on the street photographer Hugo Milas. A beginner and not the most successful model that falls out of all model stereotypes of that time. And finally, a completely new woman, similar to Barbie, sent from Andromeda’s nebula, with a strange name Verushka and an equally strange legend.

In Paris, Iin Ford saw me, director of the famous American modeling agency: “Come to America, they love such high blondes there.” I obeyed, came to New York, called her from the hotel: "I am the tallest girl from Paris." And she replied: "I do not remember you." I spent several months in America, then returned to Europe and decided: “I need to make me remember - immediately and forever.

It is necessary to invent someone. ” And so Verushka was born. I decided to become Russian. I thought it was funny - to be so long and be called little. When Vera became a Verushka, there was a cold war in the midst, and everything that was connected with Russia seemed dangerous and mysterious. Of the famous Russians in the West, Nureyev lived then - his appearance was a real sensation, artistic and political.

And Verushka became the only girl from collective Eastern Europe. In fact, this is true: I was born in Koenigsberg - 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 speaks Russian, and I would be exposed. This evasion in the details of the biography played into my hands, created such a mysterious aura.

It was so great - to come up with another person and play in this other. Yes, even with such a success. On her first visit to New York, no one remembered the German Froilyayin named Vera. Verushka was remembered by everyone. She dressed in black from head to toe - we must remember that then Black had not yet become a fashionable uniform, the girls wore color.She put on a huge hat on loose hair.

She moved as if in a slow shoot and spoke with photographers carelessly, with her “Slavic accent”: “Hello, I saw your pictures in Vogue and thought that it would be curious if you shot me.” So, my girlfriend, my Verushka, was supposed to immediately differ from all others. I looked so strange and behaved so boldly that even the great Irwin Penn timidly asked: “Would you not mind trying on a few dresses for Vogue?

Verushka became the sensation of the fashion world and the beloved model of Diana Vriland, the then editor -in -chief of Vogue. Vriland, hating everything bourgeois and ordinary, fell in love with her exotic appearance, and her melancholy, and her legend. Remembering Vriland, Verushka amusingly imitates how she pulled vowels when she pronounced her unchanging: it is so-o-o bo-o-adjing.

I was always in exaltation and wanted everyone around the exaltation too. I could call her in the middle of the night and tell me that I had the idea of ​​such and such a shoot in China. And she replied: “Amazing! Do it! If she liked the idea, then she did everything to implement it. And I quickly realized that it is not enough for me to just demonstrate clothes, I need an idea, meaning in the photo.

After all, what happens? Photography is the way the photographer wants. Clothing is the way the stylist wants. Well, what am I doing? And I was lucky that Vriland told me a photographer, with whom I could create myself. Vriland introduced her to Franco Rubartelli. The acquaintance grew into a long cooperation and the novel - Verushka lived with a brilliant and explosive Italian in Rome for several years.

They chose clothes, searched for exotic places for filming and went there together - without stylists, assistants, makeup artists and hairdressers. Verushka did everything herself, created her image and her performance, and fashion editors completely trusted her. I could not, I had freedom. If I do something, I have to create it myself. And this should be meaning.

Fashion is over. I am engaged in art. And then you played and worked with this myth. But then! When I took up art, no one took me seriously, everyone just laughed: “Ah, the same Verushka from“ Photo Equipment ”! I think Verushka came into conflict with the very era of the seventies - prosaic, bourgeois, mundane. The new time did not need alien. Verushka was engaged in photo projects, performances, starred in cinema, transformed into men, created installations.

And she was fanatically carried away by the body art, which she became interested in, still working as a model-on the set in Africa with Peter Bird, she masked her body either under wild animals, then under exotic plants, using Vax for boots instead of paint. Having gone out of fashion, Verushka began to work with the German artist Holger Trailsh, who for many years that became her personal and professional partner.

But if they were, they quickly broke off. The main men in her life were only those with whom she was connected by work, a creative community. She lived with Rubartelli for five years - he literally tortured her with his pathological jealousy and hot mastic.