With her golden bronze skin, razor sharp bone structure and statuesque six-foot frame, Veruschka von Lehndorff was one of the most famous supermodels of the 1960s. Born into a wealthy family in 1939, Veruschka's early life was extremely traumatic. At the age of five, her father was hanged for trying to execute Adolf Hitler and her family was split up and sent to labor camps. By the end of World War II , she was left completely homeless and attended 13 schools before moving to Hamburg to study art. She was discovered by photographer Ugo Mulas in Florence who urged von Lehndorff to model full time.
Veruschka relocated to New York City where she got a contract with Ford Modeling Agency. Her big break in came in 1966 with a small part in Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up. Her role in the film lasted about five minutes but became so memorable, she was catapulted to world wide recognition. Appearing on eleven Vogue covers, Veruschka epitomized the newly liberated woman of the sixties. She worked with many famed artists and photographers such as Salvador Dali, Irving Penn, Franco Rubartelli, Henry Clarke and Richard Avedon who proclaimed her “the most beautiful woman in the world.” It is even said that she single-handedly started the trend to be stick thin, long before Twiggy hit the scene. At the peak of her career, von Lehndorff was earning as much as $10, 000 a day.
In 1975, she decided to retire from modeling and rediscover her first passion: art. Collaborating with famed sculptor and painter Holger Trülzsch, von Lehndorff created a series of avant-garde nude self-portraits. Though she escaped the public eye, her influence continues to be seen in the fashion world. Designer Michael Kors titled his 2002 runway collection for Céline "Veruschka Voyage”. Grace Coddington and photographer Steven Meisel recreated sixties images of Veruschka with model Natalia Vodianova for the May 2009 issue of Vogue. In 2010, Veruschka shocked everyone with her return to the runway at the age of 71, looking more beautiful than ever, for London designer Giles Deacon's presentation.
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