Lady in a Bubble

Paris, 1963:
The culmination of a fantasy era in Parisian fashion, photographs by Melvin Sokolsky.




"Haunted by a particular image from Hieronymous Bosch's 'The Garden of Delights,' Sokolsky experienced a re-occurring dream in which he saw himself floating inside a bubble across exotic landscapes. Inspired, he quickly used the idea for the series. The Bubble was crafted to emulate a Faberge Egg, for which Sokolsky had great admiration for its design and workmanship. Complicated and unrealistic at first, he was able to realize his dream.
Sokolsky commented, 'With the awareness that I was prone to live in my own head much of the time, and inclined to severe self-criticism, I began to have doubts whether I could create images on film that reflected the images in my mind's eye.'
The Bubble was produced in ten days of Plexiglass and aircraft aluminum for the hinged rings. After a successful test run, Sokolsky was off to Paris to shoot the Spring Collections for Harper's Bazaar. The challenge was to position a telescopic crane at each location from which the 'Bubble' would be suspended. Using his favorite model at the time, Simone d'Aillencourt, she would get into the Bubble that was suspended a few feet off the ground, (hinged at the top like a Faberge Egg) so that it could easily swing open for entry. After being locked in safely, and able to breathe due to the space between the hemispheres; the Bubble was raised into the final position. Sokolsky describes one particular event, 'There were times when this choreographed dance turned into a Laurel and Hardy comedy. The morning we shot on the Seine, the Bubble was lowered overzealously into the water, flooding it up to Simone's ankles, and in turn ruining an important pair of designer shoes.' "
(Fahey/Klein Gallery)

Gray Day

Feeling some strange vibes today

although I can't quite pin down the what,
where, or why of them.

Winter blues sure are humming.

Supermodel

One of the top models of the 1960s, Verushka, was born Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort in East Prussia, 1939. Her father, a count and army reserve officer, became a member of the German Resistance after witnessing the beating and killing of Jewish children, and was executed when she was a child for the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler in what came to be known as the 20 July Plot.

After his death, her mother was arrested, and Vera and her sisters spent the remainder of the war in Gestapo labor camps. The family was reunited after the war, but were left destitute and ostracized by fellow Germans for the treachery of their father. Eventually, the six-foot-tall Vera left to Hamburg and then to Florence to study art, focusing on textiles, and was discovered on the street at age 20 by photographer Ugo Mulas. Although models as tall as she was weren't desireable in Paris at the time, Vera made attempts in New York before coming back to Munich, where she changed her name to begin cultivating a new and mysterious persona, and thus Verushka was born! Dressing in all black, she made her way to different photographers, telling them "I am Veruschka who comes from the border between Russia, Germany and Poland. I'd like to see what you can do with my face."

She gained even more attention when she appeared as a model in Antonioni's classic 1966 film Blow Up, and although her only scene was at the very beginning of the film and lasted just five minutes, it is still regarded as one of the most provacative in film history.

Around this time, she teamed with Salvador Dalí and photographer Peter Beard, who took her to Kenya. There, in an attempt to "go native", she painted herself with black shoe polish to resemble surreal plants and animals; it took weeks to remove.
In 1966 (the same year as Blow Up), she began doing photoshoots in nothing but body paint, which was often fantastically colorful, or applied in order to resemble animals, in a similar vein as what she'd done with Dalí - a concept which would become a lifelong pursuit for her even after she'd left the fashion world and employed it as performance art during the mid-1980s in New York.

Veruschka made the cover of Vogue 11 times. Editor Diana Vreeland's only complaint was that she sometimes looked past the camera and looked a little sad. "Don't have that future look, be now and be happy," she'd say.
"And I couldn't agree with her on that," Veruschka says. "That was a little bit of a conflict. My success has been because I was my own boss."