(German Veruschka von Lehndorff), nee Countess Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lehndorff (Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff) - the first German actress. Also known as a photographer and artist. She was engaged in social activities in the field of gender policy.

Vera was born on May 14, 1939 at the family estate in the village of Steinort in the County of Angerburg., in East Prussia, in an aristocratic family. Her father, Count Heinrich von Lendorf-Steinort, a reserve lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, participated in the July 20 political conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. The plot was discovered by the Gestapo, Lendorf was arrested and executed on September 4, 1944. His property was confiscated, and his family was arrested and sent to labor camps, where he remained until the end of the war. Nineteen years later, his daughter Vera entered the world of designer clothes and glossy magazines.

After graduating from school, Vera entered the Hamburg School, which trained fabric artists for textile mills. However, the situation educational institution turned out to be too harsh for a girl accustomed to luxury, and she fled to Florence to learn how to draw.

In the late 50s, blondes in Italy were wildly successful. It was then that she wanted to come up with the image of such a girl, having seen that once, it will be impossible to forget her ever. At that time, she met Hugo Mulas, a successful photographer who was known as a portrait painter and street photographer. When he first saw Vera, Mulas experienced a real shock: talking with friends on the stairs of the Uffizi Palace, he saw the descending Aryan goddess, with a flexible body of a snake and a mop of hair the color of ripe wheat. The result of this meeting is an offer from Mulos to try himself as a model. So, since 1960, Vera began to work, having achieved notable success in this field.

Here is what her first agent said about Vera:

“She was like a deer, seemed both clumsy and graceful. Her mother wanted me to model Vera's younger sister. She was smaller, her hair was lighter and her face more beautiful, and yet she was not as magnificent as Vera. The next day, Charlotte March took some photos, and it turned out to be something unheard of!”

Vera decided to bring her first to Paris, but neither she nor her photo caused great enthusiasm there. French bohemia did not appreciate the lanky German woman, whose height was 186 cm. In Paris, Vera met Eileen Ford, head of the American modeling agency Ford Models., which beckoned her to pursue a career in New York: "We in America love everything, 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 service 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,” Verushka then admits in an interview.

After the unsuccessful, annoyed Vera von Lendorf returned to Europe. It was then, between the first and second trip to the States, that her alter ego, Verushka, was born. As follows from her memoirs, in the same year in Munich, she began to impersonate a mysterious Russian savage, brought to the West from the steppes of Eurasia by the hurricanes of two world wars. Surprisingly, it worked.

From the memoirs of Vera von Lendorf:

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

She created a legend that she came from Russia, where she was incredibly popular. When she was asked if there were any personal motives why she decided to create a Russian legend for herself, Vera von Lendorf answered in the negative.

“The pseudonym Verushka is a business. Pure business! she repeats. “A lanky young German woman named Vera had nothing to do in the fashion crowd.”

The German Fraulein, who went through Nazi concentration camps with her mother and sisters after the execution of her aristocratic father, is a gloomy and not the most suitable legend for a girl who decided to become a fashion model in the era of happy sixties. "In private life, a lot can be solved poetically, but in society the class struggle reigns."

In the 1960s, dropping the prefix aristocratic “von” and adding a plebeian Russian suffix to a name meant becoming part of a completely different myth - a dangerous myth of winners that horrified the Western world. “My name is Verushka,” she introduced herself to agents who were thoroughly saturated with the ideology of the Cold War. The prefix “background”, the father-officer who was shot for participating in the operation “Valkyrie”, the family estate near Koenigsberg confiscated by the Wehrmacht and several years in the Gestapo camps - all this remained in Vera's life. Verushka, on the other hand, had an amazing body, gorgeous blond hair, artistic taste and a firm intention to put these virtues into action.

So she became Verushka. She always wore black clothes and soft suede shoes with flat soles. She came up with a special relaxed gait, as if in slow motion. She had no biography, nor when 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. Verushka conquered everyone with her impudence.

At first, the 186 cm model seemed too tall and too strange. But then the strange turned out to be beautiful, and she became the biggest model of her time, the biggest in many ways: she was not only the tallest of all of that time, but also the most titled.

To gain a foothold in the modeling business and become a new face in the happy sixties era, which subsequently broke all moldy stereotypes, Verushka was helped by Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief of the American magazine "". Only she saw in the girl a representative of the new concept of a fashion model. She gave Verushka full carte blanche, as well as a permanent and a crowd of eminent photographers from the world who signed up for her weeks in advance. Even Irving Penn, one of the most brilliant photographers of the 20th century, waited three weeks for his turn. As a result of such work, Verushka appeared eleven times on the cover of Vogue magazine alone. All these pages were subsequently included in the gold fund of the magazine. In the fashion world, this is equivalent to eleven Oscars. In addition to the covers of Vogue, over a decade of modeling, Verushka has accumulated more than eight hundred covers of other fashion magazines.

With the advent of Verushka on the fashionable Olympus and in photo studios, new image models: a dispassionate mannequin who flew to Earth on the instructions of the Martians and melancholy looking at other people from the covers of glossy publications.

At the same time, Verushka starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film Blow Up, where she played a fashion model seducing David Hemmings' character. "Superman", "Naked Countess" - these are the epithets that Verushka was awarded by journalists after the release of the film. Despite the fact that the girl appears only in a five-minute episode, utters one single phrase “Here I am!”, And her name was misrepresented in the credits, Verushka was an incredible success. Frames with a fashion model lying on a carpet were recognized as the best erotic scene of the year. Twiggy, already a famous model at that time and not invited to the film, could only bite her elbows in a fit of envy.

Salvador Dali also helped to maintain a new image in the modeling business. In 1966, the aged surrealist staged an eccentric action, using naked Verushka, doused with shaving foam from newfangled spray cans. After this performance, they saw in Verushka a kind of supernatural being that can turn into anything. So Dali infected Verushka with body art and love for bodily transformations. Vera herself became an independent artist, engaged in body art. Over the next ten years, with inexhaustible enthusiasm, she will paint herself not only in exotic animals, gangsters, homeless people, Hollywood stars, plants, clouds, poisonous caterpillars, but also in stones or bales of rags.

In the 1960s, there was perhaps no model more scandalous than Verushka. However, her scandalousness is not sex and drugs, like many of her colleagues. She was “qualitatively” different: aristocratic origin and independence, a brilliant artistic education and a vivid imagination allowed Verushka, calmly undressing naked, to become a work of art and an artist who creates it, hand and brush at the same time. In the cinema and on the stage, she could transform into any star, into any human type brought to the utmost grotesque. In this, in addition to the aerobatics of the model, which is able to dissolve in any image, there is something that goes beyond the limits of ideas about both art and man. After all, Verushka dissolved not in an image dictated from the outside, but in herself and the world around her - organic and inorganic.

“In all my transformations,” says Vera von Lendorf, “the wonderful thing 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.”

At the peak of her popularity, Verushka was earning $10,000 a day. A successful modeling career continued until 1975, when, after a quarrel with the new editor of Vogue magazine, Grace Mirabella, Verushka decided to leave the fashion world. The subject of the quarrel was the desire of the editor to radically change the model, 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 was not going to change either. “Look for another fool for this,” the model replied to a request to change her hairstyle to a square that was relevant at that time. And Vogue, of course, found it.

Only 10 years later, in 1985, Verushka returns and takes 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 either a cobblestone, or a rusty pipe, or a peeling piece of wall, began to buy galleries contemporary art. Verushka began again from time to time to take part in shows as a guest model. In the 90s, she made a video art "Buddha's Back", where she transformed into a New York bum. Sprawled in a puddle, mixed with garbage, ashes and city dirt, Verushka froze in the frame as a serene corpse, asleep in nirvana from the waste of American consumerism. A few years later, two months after 9/11, the supermodel's bum transformation was shown alongside the prophetic New York on Fire installation. In 2000, Verushka appeared at the Melbourne Fashion Festival, which was held in Australia.

In 2006, she played the role of Countess von Waldstein in the film Casino Royale. Participated in the creation of several documentaries.

Among Verushka's boyfriends, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman were seen, but against her background, men of average height looked slurred and unconvincing. Only next to Peter Fonda, with whom Verushka had a stormy romance, with his 190 cm height, the supermodel looked emphatically feminine.

Verushka managed to safely squander all her fortune and in currently lives in an apartment in Brooklyn, USA, overlooking a picturesque landfill.

Verushka almost completely retired, focusing on art. She occasionally participates in fashion as a guest star. Collections were dedicated to her, Mr. and Paco Rabanne, the famous cosmetic "MAC" even released Veruschka lipstick, and the pop group "Suedes" placed her photo on the cover of their album.

Now the former supermodel Verushka lives with her friend, musician Misha Vashke, and eight cats. Every morning Verushka puts on dark

Veruschka is a famous model and actress of the 1960s. Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lendorf - full name a Prussian countess who was destined to go down in history as the first German supermodel. She was born on May 14, 1939 in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Russia's Kaliningrad). The Lendorf family lived in a huge mansion that belonged to this noble family for more than one generation. Luxury was an essential attribute of their status, but Vera did not have time to fully experience it on herself. Her father, Count Heinrich von Lendorf-Steinort, faced with Hitler's atrocities face to face, joins the Resistance Movement against the Nazi regime in Germany. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Fuhrer, in which Vera's father is directly involved, he was executed on September 4, 1944, and the girl and her family were sent to labor camps, where she remained until the end of the war.

After graduating from school, Vera enters the Hamburg School, which trained fabric artists for textile mills. That's just the atmosphere of the educational institution is too harsh for a girl accustomed to luxury, and she runs away to Florence to learn how to draw.

In the late 50s, blondes in Italy were wildly successful. As Vera herself recalls, people quit their jobs just to stare at them. She then wanted to come up with the image of such a girl, having seen that once, it would be impossible to forget her ever.

It was at that time that she met Hugo Mulas, a photographer known as a successful portrait and street photographer. Mulas, seeing Vera for the first time, experiences a real shock: he was talking with friends on the stairs of the Uffizi Palace, when an Aryan goddess descended to meet him, with a flexible body of a snake and a mop of hair the color of ripe wheat. The result of this meeting is an offer from Mulos to try himself as a model.

The girl brings her first portfolio to Paris, but neither she nor her photos cause great enthusiasm there. French aesthetes, having appreciated the lanky German woman (her height was 180 cm), send her to the States, where long legs were at a premium. The girl's mother then had to sell a teapot with a family monogram from a Saxon service in order to send money to Vera for a ticket.

In New York in 1961, a girl meets hundreds of models in front of the agency doors, literally stepping on each other's heels. In general, the “states” also did not accept Vera, and she returned to Europe, annoyed. In the same year, in Munich, a completely new personality appears. Vera pretends to be a mysterious Russian savage, discards the prefix "background" and takes the pseudonym "Verushka", with an emphasis on the second syllable, rightly believing that a lanky German woman named Vera has nothing to do in a fashion party. After all, with her past (fascist concentration camps and aristocratic origins), it was unrealistic to become a supermodel in the happy sixties era. Having created such a legend for himself, Verushka lays a good foundation for his success and worldwide fame.

Several fateful names helped Verushka to gain a foothold in the modeling business and become the face of a new era. One of them is Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief of American Vogue magazine. It was she who saw in the girl, whom the hardened European connoisseurs of beauty could not break, the representative of the new concept of a fashion model. She gave Verushka full carte blanche - a permanent stylist and a crowd of photographers who signed up for a photo shoot a month in advance. The result of their joint efforts are eleven Vogue covers, which later became part of the magazine's golden fund.

With the advent of Verushka on the fashionable Olympus, a new image of the model settles in photo studios forever: this is a passionless mannequin that flew to Earth on the instructions of the Martians and melancholy looking at other people from the covers of glossy publications. Salvador Dali himself contributed to the consolidation of the new image. In 1966, this aged surrealist staged an eccentric action involving a naked model covered in shaving foam from newfangled spray cans. After this performance, they saw in Verushka some kind of supernatural being that can turn into anything. With the light hand of Dali, Verushka becomes an ardent fan of body art and bodily transformations. Over the next ten years, she will paint herself with tireless enthusiasm in exotic animals, gangsters, homeless people, Hollywood stars, plants, stones, clouds, poisonous caterpillars and more.

During the same period, Verushka starred in a five-minute episode of Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film Blow Up. In it, she plays a fashion model who seduces the hero David Hemmings. Despite the fact that the girl utters one single phrase, and her name was misrepresented in the credits, Verushka was a resounding success. Frames with a fashion model lying on a carpet are recognized as the best erotic scene of the year. Twiggy (also a famous model of that time), not invited to the film, bites her elbows in a fit of envy.

Among Verushka's boyfriends, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman were seen, but against her background, men of average height looked slurred and unconvincing. Only next to Peter Fonda, with whom Verushka had a stormy romance, with his 190 cm, the supermodel looked emphatically feminine.

At the peak of her popularity, Verushka earns $10,000 a day. A successful modeling career continues until 1975, until she quarrels with the new editor of Vogue magazine, Grace Mirabella. The subject of this quarrel is the desire of the editor to radically change the image of the model, making it more accessible to most women. After that incident, Verushka decides to leave the fashion world. Only 10 years later, in 1985, the model returns, taking part in a body art show in Tribeca. A wide variety of images were again intertwined on her body.

After that, Verushka began again from time to time to take part in shows as a guest model. So, for example, she appeared at the Melbourne Fashion Festival, which was held in Australia in 2000. The supermodel currently lives in Brooklyn, USA.

I became a fan of Verushka from the moment she floated into the frame of Antonioniev's "Blowup" with the words: "Here I am." Her regal appearance changed fashion. But to fashion, especially modern, Verushka is almost hostile. She is offended when she is called a model for old times' sake. Even more offended when called the first supermodel. Although, it would seem, this title does not suit anyone more than her, with her incredible height for the sixties, forty-third foot size, alien androgyny and a detached melancholy look.

The current Verushka prefers to call herself an artist. And between fashion and art, he builds 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 with me.

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

When she walks into a bar, for a moment 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. Loose gray hair, a bandana on his head, khaki military pants, heavy boots, a gray chiffon blouse worn over a black T-shirt, tiny dark glasses on a chain on his chest. I greedily look at her face up close and see on it all the traces of time and not a single trace of a plastic surgeon. But she still has the same high cheekbones, the incredible beauty of the bones of her face and shining bright 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 feel like sitting in a dark bar. “Let's go to the roof, it's so beautiful there,” she says in a low, husky voice with a thick German accent. On the rooftop, she orders an appel syringe and immediately starts feeding sparrows cookies. Birds flock to her in a small flock, feeling not so much a life as a kindred spirit - Verushka fanatically loves all living creatures. Cats, dogs, sparrows... It always seemed to me that Verushka herself looked like an exotic animal. She moved in a smooth and unwieldy catlike manner, she liked to paint her body like a panther or a tigress, she waved her long arms like wings. This is how Isadora Duncan would probably dress and look today. When I tell her about this, she laughs with a chesty laugh:

But I dreamed of being a dancer. She went to a ballet class, but at the age of fourteen she was already as tall as she is now. When we got to pointe shoes, it became clear that with such feet and with such growth, a ballet career was impossible. But I also tried to move in a special way on the set. 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 has been an invention of herself by another. Countess Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lendorf, born into a wealthy Prussian family in Königsberg, daughter of an officer who was hanged in September 1944 for participating in the anti-Hitler conspiracy. A little girl sent with her mother and sisters to concentration camp. A lanky teenager who has changed thirteen schools and is haunted by the demons of her past. Pretty blond student of the German textile institute. A student of the 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, absolutely new woman, similar to Barbie, sent from the Andromeda Nebula, with a strange name Verushka and no less strange legend.

I've modeled before, but everyone said I was too lanky. In Paris, Eileen Ford, the director of the famous American modeling agency, saw me: “Come to America, they love such tall blondes there.” I obeyed, came to New York, called her from the hotel: "I'm that tall girl from Paris." And she said, "I don't remember you." I spent several months in America, then returned to Europe and decided: “We need to make sure that I am remembered - immediately and forever. Someone needs to be invented." And so Verushka was born.

Why Verushka?

It's in Russian - 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 in full swing, and everything 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 the collective Eastern Europe.

Did you pretend to be Russian?

No, I answered vaguely that I lived on the border. In essence, 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 be exposed. This evasiveness of my biography details played into my hands, created such a mysterious aura. It was so great to come up with another person and play that other person. Yes, with such success.

On her first visit to New York, no one remembered the German Fraulein 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, the girls wore colored ones. She wore a huge hat over her flowing blond hair. She moved as if in slow motion and spoke casually to the photographers 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 girlfriend, my Verushka, should have been immediately different from all the others. I looked so weird and acted so cocky that even the great Irving Penn timidly asked, “Would you mind trying on some dresses for Vogue?” And soon everyone wanted to work with me.

Verushka became a sensation fashion world 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, Verushka amusingly imitates how she drew vowels when she pronounced her invariable: It is so-o-o bo-o-oring.

Diana was more than anything afraid of the boring. I was always in exaltation and wanted everyone around to be exalted too. I could call her in the middle of the night and tell her that I had an idea for a certain shoot in China. And she replied: “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 just to show clothes, I need an idea, meaning in photography. After all, what happens? Photography is what the photographer wants. Clothes - such as the stylist wants. Well, what am I doing? And I was lucky that Vreeland suggested a photographer with whom I could create myself.

Vreeland introduced her to Franco Rubartelli. The acquaintance grew into a long collaboration and romance - Verushka 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 image and her 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 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. Then they looked at fashion as something frivolous, entertaining. Now times are gradually changing, fashion designers are making art projects, exhibiting in museums. But then! When I took up art, no one took me seriously, everyone just laughed: “Ah, that same Verushka from Blow-Up!”

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

I think Verushka came into conflict with the very era of the seventies - prosaic, bourgeois, mundane. The new time did not need aliens. Verushka was engaged in photo projects, performances, acted in films, transformed into men, created installations. And she became fanatically interested in body art, which she became interested in while still working as a model - on the set in Africa with Peter Beard, she disguised her body either as wild animals or as exotic plants, using wax for shoes instead of paint.

Even then I wanted to somehow get out of human form. Not just put on or change clothes, but change skin.

Having retired from fashion, Verushka began working with the German artist Holger Trulsch, 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 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 machismo. She stayed with Trulsch much longer - and still has an excellent relationship, she talks to him on the phone every day. The last companion was her assistant, the artist and musician from the GDR Misha Vaschke, who was thirty years younger than her and who several years ago left her for the sake of a young Russian girl.

Verushka never had her own children, although she says that she loves children, and they love her.

For them, I am like a fantasy woman from a fairy tale. And I myself have a lot of children, I still perceive life as a game.

Do you live alone?

Well, yes, with their 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 being in love. Are you not? Do you see this sparrow wanting to peck at my cookie? I'll soak the cookies in your tea to make him feel better, okay?

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

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

They said about me that I earned millions. Nonsense! Money has never meant much to me. And Rubartelli even persuaded me that all the money went to his account. I was not like those girls who made a fortune in their modeling career. Like Linda Evangelista or Claudia Schiffer. I have always been an artist first and foremost. Filmed mainly for Vogue, did only four or five advertising campaigns. Yes, and then they paid not so much for it.

In conversations with Verushka about fashion, I feel an unhealed wound, an old resentment. She talks about models with a strange mixture of jealousy and pity. It upsets her that they walk the catwalks like robots, not communicating with the public in any way (“It was not like that in our time!”). She is frightened by their abnormal thinness (“I was also thin in Blow Up, 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 know what retouching was at all, everything was honest!”).

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

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

Finally, there is another vexing question that modern culture is obsessed with. Youth and old age. What I thought about, waiting for Verushka at the bar and preparing for the fact that I would have to watch the destruction of absolute beauty. But my obsession with it 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 a panic, they begin to look younger, to have operations. And I think that late beauty is the most interesting. In youth we are all pretty, but that is the natural beauty of youth. But then we become beautiful.

She is still working on several art projects at the same time - and videos, and photos, and transformations. The last passion is the paintings that she creates from the ashes.

She was born a countess, grew up a runaway, became famous as a supermodel. One of the most famous German women of the 60s and 70s talks about how important it is in this world to be like no one else.

Everything is like in a scary fairy tale

She was born a countess with an old castle in East Prussia and a rich pedigree shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lendorf was the name of a plump Aryan baby from a wealthy aristocratic family.
On their estate, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop hosted the Nazis, and next to Lendorff Park was the Fuhrer's headquarters, known as the "Wolf's Lair".
Ribbentrop arranged film screenings in their castle and even gave the three Lendorf daughters a pony - so he wanted to win the favor of the little ones.
No one knew that behind the facade of an exemplary German family, close to the highest Nazi circles, there was a military resistance fighter - Vera's father. He joined the militias after witnessing the massacre of over 7,000 Jews in Soviet Borisov. Before his eyes, the Nazis smashed children's heads on lampposts. Returning home, Heinrich Lendorf said to his wife: "We must do something immediately."

He participated in Operation Valkyrie in Königsberg, was detained and hanged in 1944. Faith was five years old. The girls, along with their mother, were sent to a special camp for the children of traitors.
Thanks to the connections of the countess, 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 a livelihood with the stigma of 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 being attached for a long time either to places or to 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 Verushka

By adolescence, there was no trace left of the well-fed baby from the count's family - tall, thin, blond, with a huge foot, Vera stood out from the crowd of her peers. She was teased with a stork, and the girl herself was embarrassed by her appearance and tried to stay away from her classmates.
Vera loved to draw, she studied in Florence as a textile artist. Her attention was always occupied by nature, especially stones. She once spent an entire semester painting a single stone.

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 non-standard for Europe. But there she met the co-owner of the American Ford Modeling Agency, Eileen Ford, who said that in America, Vera's unusual appearance would be a success.
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 Verushka arrived in the USA - a mysterious beauty of either Russian or Eastern origin.
Dressed in an unpopular black color, she came up with an original smooth gait, like in rapid. She talked cheekily even with the most eminent photographers, looked sideways and expressed complete indifference. Almost immediately, photographers lined up, it was necessary to sign up for shooting with Verushka a week in advance.

I wanted to come up with a girl who is so interesting to look at that if you see her once, 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. A timid, insecure creature lurked under the mask, but Verushka hid it.

Model

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

Diana was absolutely 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, then bring their ideas and hear: “This is boring!” Diana had a fire, and she truly loved what she did. She could not see well, and by the end of her life she was almost blind. Once I asked her: “How do you choose bags, shoes, dresses?” And Diana answered: “I already know how everything in this life looks like!” She took a thing in her hands and asked, drawing out vowels in her own manner: “What ooooooo does sheaaaaa bloom - blue, blue, like the sky at sunset or at dawn, darker or lighter than moonlight night?” This was all Diana.

In the mid-1960s, Verushka would star in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up, after which she would become truly famous.
Verushka 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. The place of Diana Vreeland is taken by Grace Mirabella - and immediately tries to subdue Verushka:

The melancholy face of Verushka with the seal of decadent sadness has repeatedly become the subject of comments from editors and photographers. Everyone needed a smiling beauty looking into the frame.

This is perhaps the biggest difficulty in working with Americans. They are all saturated with the notorious idea of ​​happiness. My neighbor in New York, when we bumped into each other in the elevator, told me about how he was doing before I had a chance to ask him about it. But even worse, what's behind their "How are you?" nothing is real - they don't care how you do.

Artist

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

During this strange surreal experience, I thought: how else can you use the body in art?

By the beginning of the 70s, Verushka was finally disappointed in her modeling career - it was too easy and boring to be a clothes hanger. Neither success nor fees attract her, Verushka never paid much attention to money.

They said about me that I earned millions. Nonsense! Money has never meant much to me. And Rubartelli even persuaded me that all the money went to his account. I was not like those girls who made a fortune in their modeling career.

An affair with the artist Holger Trulzsch becomes for Verushka the beginning of immersion in real art. Together they created a unique series of works "Metamorphoses". With the help of paint, Vera merged with environment- nature, city, houses.

We were especially attracted to all sorts of damaged materials and rusty surfaces. We were attracted by the traces of the coming, it is everywhere and everywhere. Nothing lasts forever. Coming to my heart. It's mesmerizing, it's wonderful. A wall crumbling from time can be so attractive. This scares many. 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 have always wanted to go beyond my limits. Change not only dresses or hair, but also skin.

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

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

I don't want to be against age

After decades of wandering, Verushka returned to her native Germany. Now the artist lives in a modest apartment in East Berlin and continues to make art. She did not marry, did not give birth to children, devoting herself entirely 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 the lookbook of the Swedish brand Acne Studios. In unisex clothes - 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 see beauty in it. 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 a panic, they begin to look younger, to have operations. And I think that late beauty is the most interesting. In youth we are all pretty, but that is the natural beauty of youth. But then we become beautiful.”

“71-year-old model Verushka returns to the catwalk”, “The legendary model of the 60s led the parade of pensioners” - what nonsense! Verushka squeamishly threw away the paper and lit a cigarette impatiently. Participation in London Fashion Week was a complete failure, she herself was aware of it, but why trumpet her age like that? The newspaper photograph lying on the table seemed to speak for itself: ridiculous make-up, a dress with a deaf collar, a pink boa on her head ... Is this what respectable countesses look like? And all because of the rogue Gilles - this slippery bespectacled type lured her into his show in order to expose her to ridicule and raise her own rating.

No, she, Vera Gottlieb Anna von Lendorf, will not allow this. Now she will call Gilles Deacon and express everything that she thinks about him! Squinting, Verushka began clicking the buttons on her phone. Having got in the wrong place a couple of times, wandering in the darkness of anger and myopia, she finally stumbled upon the chirping voice of a design assistant who asked her to wait. A tune played on the phone. It was one of those sudden, intoxicating melodies that marked the beginning or end of a movie, an episode of someone's life or death. For Verushka herself, in just two minutes, this music has become something more - more than herself and than this unfortunate Gilles, who is about to come up to the pipe and begin to cook compliments in his impeccable English. Then she won't survive. Verushka hurried to hang up the phone.

After all, she is a hereditary German aristocrat, and all these scandals and showdowns are useless to her. “To be above circumstances,” her father, Count Heinrich von Lendorf-Steinort, taught her and her two sisters. Caring, attentive, he used to put his babies on his knees and open a book in front of them, pressing his lips to their warm tops. And then he even started a leapfrog all over the family mansion, until the little ladies rushing in all directions caught the eye of the more strict and down-to-earth Frau Lendorf. Now who was not to occupy the aristocracy and secularism! Three births did not spoil her amazing figure at all ...

The thought of a fourth sister, born to her mother in prison, where they ended up after the execution of their father, did not want to fit in Vera's head. For behind this child, who had just emerged from the depths of Vera's memory, there was a line from his father's farewell letter: "A child whom I will never see." Now my sister is already 67, she has her own family ... But she remained an integral part of the world split in half, that dark side of it, where Vera preferred not to meddle even in her thoughts. She now so needed the light and warmth of her parents' house, where even the portraits of the ancestors of the Lendorf clan still hung in their places, from where she could escape to a shady garden or Masurian Lake.

... Standing knee-deep in water, involved in a game led by him alone, he and his father caught sunbeams on coastal stones, counted glare on polished pebbles. Father, being an amazingly subtle and sensitive observer, taught little Vera to understand and feel nature.

As a tribute to her boundless love for her father, Vera will then go to art school, do body art and disguise her body under the same stones she adores. But my father doesn't know about it. He does not even know that she has become the world-famous model Verushka. I wonder what the count would say if he saw his daughter performing acrobatic pirouettes naked in the middle of the wild savannah? Or climbing a tree, like a giant caterpillar, all black with shoe polish? Perhaps he would smile with his full, perfectly shaped lips and ask her to be modest. After all, if anyone from the Lendorf family was against Vera's career, it was her mother. A straight, prim, ideal German wife, she wished her girls the same fate in the future ...

Well, three of the four daughters followed in her footsteps: they got husbands, gave birth to children. And only one of them sacrificed personal happiness for the sake of a career. Eleven Vogue covers - is it a joke? Vera looked at the newspaper photograph looming in front of her, took it in her hands and threw it into the bucket in one fell swoop. Filling garbage cans with herself - that's what she spent her life on!

... Count Steinort ended his life on the gallows after participating in the assassination attempt on Hitler. Watching her mother read the last letter from her father, written by him in prison, five-year-old Vera understood little.

Later, from a book about her father, she will learn the details of the execution, from random childhood memories she will put together that monstrous puzzle.

With the execution of the count, their situation only worsened: the family castle and property were confiscated, and the pregnant Frau Lendorf with her three young daughters was sent to prison. However, neither the horrors of prison life nor poverty affected Vera as much as the sight of a tiny room with a hook suspended from the ceiling. After 60 years, she will visit the place of her father's execution and from there she will be carried unconscious in her arms.

After being released from prison, years of wandering followed. Under the changed surnames, five of them (the baby born in prison was named Katarina) wandered among relatives and acquaintances in search of shelter. During this time, Vera managed to change 13 schools, among which there was even a convent. By the way, looking at her lanky figure in the mirror, 14-year-old Vera seriously considered becoming a nun. Complexes, complexes haunted her day and night. They seemed to trip her up, and she stumbled in the most unexpected places. Long arms hung like whips...

How she dreamed of being like one of the Hollywood film stars, or at least her older sister Nonka, the only one who inherited her mother's grace and refinement, her father's restrained aristocracy. Next to her, Vera felt like an ugly, useless duckling. Therefore, when a photographer, a friend of her mother, invited Vera to pose, she shook her head negatively and tried to hide. The pictures were eventually taken, and one of them even got on the cover of the Constanta magazine. But it meant absolutely nothing. Vera was sure that all this was set up by her mother, who was already worn out looking at her notorious daughter. Of course, there was no question of any modeling career. However, fate decreed in its own way ....

Studying at an art school in Hamburg, painting classes and numerous trips to the open air, Vera was rather bored. She wanted to try something new and, on the advice of photographer Hugo Mulas, whom she met by chance in Florence, she began to work as a model. I must say without much success. A girl with a height of 1.86 and an androgyne body was not really wanted to shoot. In dark clothes, she walked like a gloomy shadow through the auditions and everywhere she heard only one thing: “You don’t fit.” She already thought that a modeling career was not for her, but ...

A sudden phone call interrupted her thoughts. “Probably, this is Gilles - he wants to apologize for his meanness,” Vera thought and picked up the phone.

Is that Donna Vera? - Asked on the other end of the wire.

Yes, it's me, - she answered with her usual hoarse bass voice. There was a microscopic pause during which Vera had time to think about quitting smoking. Otherwise, she risks losing her voice and whispering alone with herself for the rest of her life.

Oh, cara mia, Verushka! It's me, your Franco! - an ever-increasing wave of enthusiasm captured the invisible interlocutor and now threatened to wash it away. - Well, why are you silent, answer something. Maybe you don't remember your Franco?

A funny Italian accent mixed with studious English pissed her off and she laughed. Of course she remembers. How to forget. Although they had not seen each other for 40 years, she still remembered their first meeting - there, in Rome in 1963, in a tiny photo studio, where Vogue photographer Franco Rubartelli invited her, an aspiring model, and offered cooperation. By that time, Vera had already managed to transform from a modest Aryan girl into the Russian gold-haired Verushka. Many photographers and agents now willingly pecked at the legend she invented about Slavic origin and at the unusually catchy name, Rubartelli was among them.

He immediately saw in her a future star - well, if not a star, then an extraordinary personality for sure. He was older than her by two years. His childhood dreams of becoming a naval officer, like his father, were shattered into reality. With a career as a diplomat, too, nothing came of it. After the death of his father, he generally lost life guide. While still a student at Cambridge University, in one of the London pubs, he met a pretty waitress named Françoise, who very soon became his wife. And then just as soon cuckolded him with some photographer. Upon learning of his wife's betrayal, Rubartelli was beside himself. Wanted to kill both lovers. But instead, for some reason, I went to a nearby store and bought an old Leica camera. Still going crazy with jealousy, he took the unsuspecting Francoise to the beach, drove him into the water and forced him to swim in the sea right in his clothes. ...

Out of 36 non-professional shots, he chose only one and sent it to Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. Everyone around, including Francoise herself, claimed that nothing would come of it: the pictures are good, but with haute couture have nothing in common. The envelope that arrived a week later shocked Francoise, her photographer lover, and Franco himself: the American Vogue offered him a contract for a million dollars!

Listening to all this, Vera was silent and smiled. Her own revelations seemed somehow timid and insincere. In fact, she only thought of one thing. Looking at this slightly uncouth Italian, gradually being drawn into the magnetic field of his burning eyes, she felt something that could not be called love. Rather, it was a passion - sudden and so painful for her inexperienced young heart. That evening, forgetting all the rules of decency, she unexpectedly said to herself: “I don’t want to return to the hotel. I want to stay with you". Did Franco want this? As it turned out later, he was stunned by the behavior of the young lady, who so simply and unambiguously offered herself to a man she hardly knew. However, in 9 years living together this was not Vera's only oddity ...

- Verushka, I want to congratulate you on your next debut. You were the best this fashion week. The best, do you hear me? - came from the tube. Vera couldn't believe her ears. Since when did Rubartelli flatter her?

You're lying, old ladies' man, you saw perfectly well what your stellina has become. By the way, you yourself still prefer the young ones ...

What are you talking about? I can't hear anything, bad connection...

Do not deny, I saw everything with my own eyes.

What did you see? Where? - the cry in the tube was replaced by a cough.

On your facebook page! How many of these Venezuelan whores have you already pawed? I know you fled to Venezuela just for them. “The most beautiful on earth,” as you once deigned to put it. So, next time, if you want to call me, find a better excuse! Vera pressed "reset". How dare he even call her after so many years of silence? And congratulations on being on a show she'd rather forget? Thank God, she had the sense not to marry this Italian. And what would happen if she gave birth to a child from him - a little black-haired shooter who steals fruit in the market and pulls cats by the tails?

... Someone rubbed against her leg, and then howled in a long way. “God, I completely forgot to feed my children! Now, now my dears…”, - Vera, like a real nanny, began to cook food in a saucepan, whispering the most affectionate words that she knew. Meanwhile, the whole honest family gathered in her small kitchen - 13 cats and 2 dogs. They have long become a part of her life, she was confident in them, as in herself. That's who will not offend her and will not betray! Having finished with the cooking and put everything on the plates, Vera took a breath. V Lately she was tormented by heaviness in her chest. Consequences of long-term experience of smoking. It's nothing you can do. Vera took out a pill with a habitual gesture.

The conversation with Rubartelli never left her mind.

“Love is born, lives and dies. And you are lucky if your love turned into friendship, because too often it turns into hatred, ”she didn’t take these words once said by Rubartelli seriously, but kept them in her memory in case they were suddenly needed.

It seems that this moment has just arrived. But she used to be so happy...

That morning, after her first night with Franco, she flung open the windows of a tiny hotel room in the center of Rome. She wanted to shout about her happiness to the whole city, shout with all her might, until the shutters in the house opposite were flung open, and some respectable Italian woman would not threaten to call the police. Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. And even if it did, it would not have darkened her mood in the least. From now on, she was in love with Rome and made plans about how she would stay here forever, how she and Franco would rent an attic, where she could paint, and he could photograph.

… “Nothing keeps me in Rome anymore. Tomorrow I'm leaving for the Bahamas. If you want, you can come with me,” said Franco over dinner. Of course she wants to. After all, there is nothing to keep her here, if he is not around.

Two weeks in the Bahamas flew by like a dream. Verushka bathed a lot, almost did not get out of the water, feeling in it, as in a cradle. The azure ocean absorbed her body, then for the first time she wanted to dissolve in it without a trace, get rid of her physical shell, but at the same time continue to live ... When she went ashore, she could not take her eyes off the outlandish flowers. She needed to become a part of the splendor that unfolded before her - a flower, an animal or a simple stone, and at the same time remain a person, the only one of the people to whom this was available.

One fine day, having mixed paints, Verushka began to apply them on her naked body with precise strokes.

"Well, who do you want to be?" Rubartelli asked her.

He himself inspired her to this experiment and now watched how his girlfriend's body was being transformed. Impatiently squeezing the camera, he waited for that cherished moment when the work would be completed and it would be possible to press the button.

Soon, photographs of the model Verushka, disguised as a cheetah, lay on the table of the editor of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, and never left him again. Orders poured in like from a cornucopia. Now Vera was under the gunpoint of the Rubartelli camera for days and at the same time did not feel any fatigue. Picking up a mirror, she studied her body, looking for the right angle, checking if the light was set correctly.

Sometimes dissatisfied with the result, Vera fell into depression: childhood fears and complexes came out, did not allow her to rejoice at success. Rubartelli, shocked by the behavior of his muse, tried to console her, but Vera was adamant. Again and again she locked herself in the studio, already without Franco, but not in order to work, she just wanted to be alone as a child. At such moments, she remembered her father, analyzed her life, which her mother called only “cheap” and “dissolute”. But it was her life and only she could manage it. A few hours later, Vera opened the doors of the studio, where Rubartelli, who had been guarding her all this time, flew in. Throwing himself at the feet of his supernova, he promised to take a vacation, go with her to anywhere in the world and even stay there forever ... She wanted only one thing - to continue working.

Working as a model became for her not just a means of earning money, but a revelation - a revelation about herself, about her body, which still holds many unexplored treasures.

“By the way,” Vera turned to the still kneeling Rubartelli, “what did our beloved Diana come up with for us this time?” “Shooting in the wild jungle, departure tomorrow at 5 am,” he whispered kissing her hands.

These shots in South Africa nearly ended up being their last. Fascinated by the process, they did not notice the approach of a lioness with cubs, who had already chosen a half-naked Verushka as the main dish. Someone from the film crew saw the beast hiding in the bushes and drove the jeep. Throwing props, he and Rubartelli in two minutes raced across the sun-scorched savannah, the wind blew their flushed faces, and everything that happened seemed like a bad dream. But then a herd of zebras blocked their way. The crazed animals deafened with their stomp, their attacks on the flimsy jeep became more and more aggressive. Frightened Vera was already saying goodbye to life, she was sure that this was the end. But this was not the end.

Vreeland, obsessed with outdoor photography, soon sent them to Antarctica, where, against the backdrop of endless snow, Vera demonstrated the virtues of a new fur coat and almost caught pneumonia. But one shoot stood out to her in particular.

…an early summer morning in 1968. The Arizona desert. The entire film crew fusses around Verushka, swaddled like a child and tied with leather straps. Behind - a week of hard work and tens of meters of the best fabric, which the famous designer Giorgio di Sant'Angelo managed to turn into a luxurious cocoon. Verushka was wrapped in it. Neither alive nor dead, she stands in the middle of the desert under the mercilessly scorching sun and waits for Rubartelli to make that one shot that will conquer everyone.

A burning pain pierces her numb body. And now, lo and behold, Rubratelli waves her hand, which means that all her suffering has come to an end. Slowly, as if on slow motion film, he approaches her, but suddenly his face begins to darken, his features distort with fear. Before his eyes, his incomparable Verushka falls like a felled tree - falls face down right on sharp stones! “After such falls, they don’t live,” said the doctor, bending over the awakened Vera, “but you were lucky, you had a good bulletproof vest.” Not listening to his words, Vera demanded to immediately bring a mirror - she needed to make sure that everything was in order with her face. “Don't worry, you don't have a bruise or abrasions. I repeat, you are very lucky, ”said the doctor and noiselessly left. “What about the photo shoot? Did you get that shot?" - Faith shifted her gaze to standing next to Rubartelli. "Everything is fine. The pictures are already in editing. Diana is delighted,” he answered quietly.

“Still, she wouldn’t be delighted,” Vera thought. A shot taken a few minutes before fainting will be published in Vogue and will become a cult - a real classic of photography.

However, the world fame overtook the model Verushka much earlier - in 1966, after the release of the film "Blowup" by Michelangelo Antonioni. And her five-minute appearance in the frame was recognized as the most erotic scene in the history of cinema. It is terrible to think that all this could not have happened, if she had listened to Rubartelli. Upon learning that Verushka was going to act in films, he strictly forbade her to even think about it. In fact, Rubartelli was furious - considering Verushka his property, he could not accept the fact that she was getting out of his control. “You have no right to control me. You are nothing to me!" Vera finally shouted and slammed the door.

Arriving in London, Vera immediately found herself on film set. Although her own scene was episodic and far from it, she greedily absorbed everything that happened. Here, from around the corner, in a luxurious car, indifferently half-embracing the steering wheel with a strong hand, drove main character. Leisurely parking, he jumped out of the car and looked around. His gaze was not directed at anyone in particular, but the sadness contained in it could only be associated with one of those present - with the model Verushka. As if having heard her thoughts, he already openly looked in her direction and, smiling, disappeared into the doors of the pavilion. That time, Vera returned to her room earlier than usual.

A strange young actor named David did not get out of her head.

Soon they were to have a joint scene, and Vera imagined with horror how she would play passion in front of him. In fact, you don't have to play anything. Passion was already written on her forehead when she saw David, half-naked, exchanging caresses with Vanessa Redgrave or somersaulting in the company of underage whores. That one of them was rising star Jane Birkin, she didn't care. Verushka was generally invited here as a superstar and did not intend to share her stardom with someone, and even more so the man she liked. And then the X-day came. Vera stood at the mirror from the very morning, examined her face, combed her hair for the twentieth time.

Her weightless black dress, embroidered with beads and glass beads, seemed to her a triumph of eroticism and taste. In general, it was difficult to call it a dress - rather, a convention, which at the right time could be easily got rid of. ... On the set, vanity reigned. Entertainer David Hemmings, dressed in a baggy blue shirt, also did not sit in one place. Impetuousness, impatience have always been in his repertoire. But this time he looked especially excited. Faith, on the contrary, as never before, felt at ease. When the cry “Motor” rang out, she was already standing in the center of the room, measuring the people flickering in front of her with the signature look of a high-born person, which she copied from her mother. She was impatient to start the love game, scripted and rehearsed so many times in her mind.

However, she had to wait. For technical reasons, the shooting was delayed. And by the time the director gave the signal, Vera, looking like a hunted deer, was sitting on the floor and was almost crying. David, pressing the camera to his cheek, looked at her with his extraterrestrial gaze, and she only had to guess what he meant.

"Guys, get together!" shouted Antonioni and turned on the camera. David and Vera rushed to each other, completely forgetting about the script. "Stop!" - the director barked, and everything had to be played out again - slowly, carefully rocking the boat of mutual desire, directed by the director's next team. “Lie down on the floor and you sit on top of her, like this!” - resounded from somewhere far away. But Vera was already entirely in the power of David. It was he who was her only helmsman and the only thing she regretted was that they remained in their clothes. However, her happiness did not last long. Having had his fill of her, David would rise and cynically step over her prostrate body.

"Cut!" - the director pulled tiredly. And Vera for some time continued to lie on the floor, arms outstretched and thinking that her love had come to an end. The day after tomorrow she will return home to Rubartelli, and everything will remain the same. Of course, she will still have a tiny episode with David, where on his “Baby, I thought you were in Paris!” she will say just one phrase: “I am in Paris” and disappear - disappear from his life forever.

When Vera returned to Rome, Rubartelli gave her a monstrous scene. Of course, he did not know anything about David, but his jealousy extended to all the men with whom Vera worked.

Perhaps the only one who was not included in the list of suspects is Salvador Dali.

But in vain. This half-mad genius turned out to be a real charmer. Wrapping Vera in shaving foam, he openly admired her body trembling with chills, almost counting every goosebump that covered her. And since it took place in the cold, we had to wait a little with enthusiasm and move the performance indoors. Vera recalled what happened behind closed doors with laughter and sadness at the same time. Inflamed with passion and shattered, Dali almost fell asleep next to his creation - covered from head to toe with shaving foam, swaying like a jelly, model Verushka.

Although working with Dali added to her popularity, Vera didn’t know where to get away from the impudent and nosy paparazzi anyway. Every step she took was accompanied by gossip, her every work was complemented by hearing. German newspapers dubbed her "wunderfrau" and "naked countess", Italian - "heron", French - androgynous. By the way, in Paris, because of her tall stature, they addressed her like this: "monsieur." But all this seemed trifling compared to what was really going on in her personal life. One day, holding a magazine with her photo on the cover and reading the news that she and Rubartelli live like two doves in Rome in their own penthouse, Vera burst into tears. Her dream of owning her own home and family never came true. And although they were still together with Rubartelli, they looked more like two migratory birds, which it was high time to scatter in different directions.

Tortured by Franco's jealousy, Vera began to openly cheat on him. What she really wanted was freedom.

Neither wild popularity, nor earnings of $ 10,000 a day, not only did not give this freedom, but, on the contrary, enslaved.

And then Vera switched to men. They gave her the illusion of a choice: conquer or submit, die or stay alive. If only she met someone in whom she could dissolve without a trace ....

Once in Rome, a young man approached her on the street and introduced himself as Peter. “Just call me Pete,” he said, trustingly bringing his beautiful face closer to her, and his lips that did not know no refusal stretched into a smile. “Another Casanova,” Vera thought, and quickened her pace. “Wait, where are you? - the young man walked beside her - you misunderstood. My name is Peter Fonda. I'm the son of director Henry Fonda - have you heard of this? I would like to invite you to a restaurant. Please don't give up!" - in the blue eyes of the young man, sadness and even pain were read. “Yes, you are also an artist!” Vera remarked, not without sarcasm. Writing down her phone number right on his impatient palm, she deliberately reversed the last two digits. It just suddenly seemed to her that with this young man - the spoiled son of a famous father, she could not have anything in common.

Imagine her surprise when the next day in the lobby of the hotel where she rented a room, she found Peter. He dozed in a deep leather armchair, with one hand clutching a luxurious pink bouquet. Verushka wanted to quietly pass by, but suddenly she heard a voice that had already become familiar: “This is for you!”. Peter held out the bouquet to her, screwing up his bright, lashed eyes, and everything in him breathed that innocent, still unawakened passion that captured Vera and would not let her go. That evening they were in a restaurant. Peter spewed tales about his famous father.

It turns out that the idol of millions, Henry Fonda, was a complete tyrant in everyday life.

Deciding that Peter was too thin, he forced him to drink a whole mug of beer at lunch. And what happened to him after the suicide of his wife - yes, he generally began to behave disgustingly! He and his sister Jane sometimes wanted to run away from home, away from this gloomy, oppressive atmosphere that surrounded their father ... Vera listened and was surprised. Once she herself sighed over a portrait of a black-haired handsome man with a sonorous name - Henry Fonda. And now his son was sitting in front of her - the flesh of the flesh father, perhaps thinner, more refined. Every gesture is a melody, every look is a song. Not otherwise, as he bewitched her. Indeed, by the end of the evening, Vera could no longer imagine her life without Peter.

Later, after watching a film with his participation called "Trip", she realized that she had become addicted. The more she looked at Peter, the more she recognized herself in him. When they lay on two narrow beds pushed together in his room, Vera could not help smiling - even their high growth (Peter was only a few centimeters taller) made them huddle in the same way and bend their arms and legs, numb from discomfort. Running her fingers through his hair, she looked into the same sky-blue eyes like hers and found in them a reciprocal feeling. And that was all she ever dreamed of. So they spent several more happy days and nights, but one morning Peter seemed to her sadder than usual. “I need to get back to Los Angeles,” he said, and after a little hesitation, he confessed what made Vera ache in her heart. In fact, he is married and has a child. And now he needs to return to his family. All this seemed to Vera a bad joke. Peter is still young, very young. And the wife and child did not fit in with the image of the playboy, under which Vera saw the fate destined for her alone. However, very soon Peter departed for distant, hostile Los Angeles. From there, he constantly called and wrote, promising to get a divorce, making dates and breaking them again.

They met three months later in Paris. It seemed to Vera that she saw another Peter in front of her - tanned, matured, self-confident. Here, under the fertile spring sky, their feelings flared up again, only this fire was merciless and short-lived in autumn. Peter again hurried - this time to the shooting. Becoming a movie star, an idol for young girls, he moved away from Vera even more.

However, she still waited for him to break through the chanting crowd of girls, arrive on his scooter, take off his sunglasses and finally offer her his hand and heart.

For this she would have sacrificed anything, even her career... But Peter's own career worried him more and more. The film "Easy Rider" in 1969 could not be overestimated - it elevated him to the pinnacle of success. If only Peter knew how much she hated this movie! He took from them the most valuable thing - the time during which they could enjoy each other so that it was enough for the rest of their lives. Of those few meetings, counted on the fingers of one hand, that fate had prepared for them, she most often recalled the last one.

…. July 1971 New York She and Peter had just met at the airport and exchanged warm hugs as they hurried to the heart of Manhattan. They were impatient to celebrate this small, invisible to the world victory, which they won for a while over the villainous fate. The luxurious spacious loft was already waiting for two chicks in love and was preparing to receive them into its bosom ... Sudden voices, laughter, pops of champagne disturbed the peace that reigned behind the secret doors. And all because Peter's friends, led by his sister Jane, suddenly burst into their room. This devil persuaded everyone to arrange a surprise for her brother, and for the rest of the evening Vera watched their vulgar, cheap tricks with longing in her heart. And Peter... He knew that any of his touch could make amends for any, even grave guilt.

"It wasn't my fault," he would tell her 27 years later.

While working on his autobiography, Peter decides to see his old passion and at the same time dot the “i”, the main of which will be his categorical unwillingness to marry her. “You have always been a beautiful picture to me, a woman with a luxurious cover. For me, you would never leave your career. And if she suddenly left, it would be a crime, the most important disappointment for both of us. Looking at the aged Peter, who survived two divorces and remained an actor in one role, Vera thought that he was right.

Work was her only meaning, thanks to her she could separate herself from everyone, become eccentric, exotic, dangerous - "a woman with a thousand moods and a hundred faces", as all fashion magazines dubbed her. “The woman they want to be like and with whom they want to be,” her fans echoed them. She herself had long gone beyond the usual profession of a model and spent all her free time in body art, the love for which she explained to Playboy magazine as follows:

“The normal human body doesn’t excite me. It is much more interesting if I suddenly change the color of my skin and turn myself into an animal or a plant - because they are much more beautiful, brighter and more diverse than we are.

She got away with such statements, and most importantly, they were absolutely sincere. Maybe that's why by the beginning of the 70s Verushka became the most photographed model in history?

Then, in 1971, Rubartelli reappeared on her horizon. He offered her to make a whole film. Vera called this idea crazy - the shooting required a lot of money, besides, Franco did not have a directing education. But Rubartelli promised to take over everything. He got into debt, even borrowed money from his own mother and started writing the script.

The resulting plot reflected the glitz and poverty of their nine-year romance. Perhaps he contained a whole life - filled with hopes and the expectation of happiness, but in the end shattered to smithereens.

Having hired a team of professionals, Rubartelli boldly set to work - he wanted to shoot his model Verushka in such a way as to leave her beauty for centuries, so that all subsequent generations would envy him. Looking through the footage, Vera thought he had succeeded.

Alas, harsh film critic judges smashed their picture to smithereens. Demanding viewers from the story of two unfortunate lovers were also not delighted. As a result, the bankrupt Rubartelli was left with two options: to run or climb into the noose. He chose the first. So he ended up in Venezuela, where he gradually started everything from scratch, got married, had a child. Unlike Verushka… Soon she, too, had to make a choice.

In 1971, Grace Mirabella replaced Diana Vreeland as editor-in-chief of Vogue. In her very name, Verushka already seemed to have something predatory, hostile ... And so it happened. Grace immediately took a dislike to Vera and gave her an ultimatum - to sing to her tune and change her image or roll on all four sides. Vera chose the lesser of two evils and left the Vogue forever.

Returning home to Germany, she became depressed. The mother consoled her daughter as best she could, but her condition only worsened. Childhood fears, an inexplicable sense of guilt for the death of her father devastated her fragile body. Faith was fading away. And then Frau Lendorf decided to resort to the last resort - psychotherapy. Once in the doctor's office, Vera did not believe that this was happening in reality, that now she would sit in a soft leather chair and the person opposite, rolling up the snow-white sleeves of her dressing gown, would put his hands into her past. She already wanted to get out. But the thought of her mother, whom she gave her word to recover, made her stay. The man opposite did not just delve into Vera's past, he forced her to bring her father's letter, written the day before the execution, and read it aloud. Again and again, Vera sank into these pain-breathing lines, tears streaming down her cheeks like waterfalls.

Perhaps it was the most cruel session of psychotherapy, but it paid off.

Soon Vera was able to return to her favorite activities: journaling and painting.

Photographer Holger Trulsch, an acquaintance, suggested that she team up for an exciting project. “Details I have not yet disclosed. You will soon see everything for yourself,” he said. Vera, who trusted her friend in everything, immediately agreed. He took her to his studio and she couldn't hold back her tears of joy. Everywhere, where possible, there were her favorite jars of paints! Trulsh explained that with the help of Verina he wants to do something extraordinary - it will be a new word in body art and photography. Vera was delighted. Wasting no time, they started mixing paints. Before them stood a new task, unprecedented from an ordinary point of view - to disguise Verushka's body under a shabby wall, to merge two physical objects together.

The work lasted for 16 hours. During this time, Verushka and Holger did not say a word to each other - any careless remark could affect the clarity of the smear, and therefore nullify all their efforts. Finally, Holger put the finishing touches on her body, and Veruschka, already covered from head to toe with paint, stood against the wall. Docking with a rough surface occurred instantly. Trulsh only had to press the button on the camera. But for some reason he hesitated.

"What do you feel?" -he asked. “I dissolved, I just don’t exist!” She said without opening her eyes. And it was true. After all, she did what she dreamed of all her life - she transformed and changed her body, and with it her spirit was transformed and changed. Disappeared problems and fears. And they were replaced by peace .... With Trullsh's help, Veruschka now turned into wild animals every day, became stones and trees. Their work was a wild success. For the first time, Verushka was talked about not only as a model - an ordinary clothes hanger, but as a great artist.

... Vera reached out to the bookshelf and took out a black folio, on which it was written in large letters: "Veruschka". Opening it at random, Vera was always worried. She never knew who was hiding behind her name this time: a black man in a formal suit, a blond woman with a big scarlet mouth, or Buddha?

Arriving in America, Vera continued to practice body art, trying on the images of other people, looking for herself in an alien urban space.

New York in the 90s received her cordially. Not at all like in that distant year, when the young starlet Vera Lendorf hung around the thresholds of modeling agencies in search of work. This time, Vera decided to repay her indifference with love. She attended charity parties, did socially significant projects, even fed the poor. She was still recognized, boutiques were named after her.

She even allowed herself to give a damn about her age and act topless in the next photo shoot for the next fashion magazine or go on the podium. The thought of London Fashion Week and her own photograph lying in a bucket now seemed amusing to her. Perhaps she was even glad that it all happened. It would be much worse if the cult model Verushka lived out her life in oblivion ...

The clock struck 5 pm. "Why am I sitting?" - Verushka caught on. I have an interview scheduled in half an hour!” With a wide ballet step, she flew up to the mirror and began to direct the marafet. After all, her interviewer will be a man! Dressed in a snow-white tracksuit, Vera pulled Vivienne Westwood boots from under the bed and tied a bandanna over her head. Such hippie chic suited her very well.

... Vera was sitting at a table with a handsome young man and, answering his questions, recalled the play "Dorian Gray", in which she once played Dorian himself. How she would like to immortalize her youth! So that everyone still loves and idolizes her. She would have given everything in the world for this, even... Catching the admiring glance of the young man opposite, Verushka thought with relief that, perhaps, she had succeeded.