Once a supermodel, always a supermodel.
At least, that’s the case for 71-year-old Veruschka von Lehndorff, who made a splash on the runway on Monday during London Fashion Week when she showed off her ageless style and beauty in a headdress and gown at the Giles Spring/Summer 2011 show.
The 1960s phenomenon was dubbed the world’s first supermodel. Vogue billed the 6’1 beauty as “one of the wonders of the world.”
Born Vera Gottliebe Anna Countess von Lehndorf, the young beauty moved to New York at the age of 25 to escape a childhood lost to the horrors of Nazi Germany.
In an interview with the Telegraph from 2005, the muse to artists from Salvador Dali and Diana Vreeland had fallen on hard times.
She said that although she’d made as much as $10,000 a day at the height of her modelling career, she had no savings and was living in Brooklyn, in a house she shared with two close friends and eight cats..
In 2008, she wrote a book with David Wills, called “Veruschka”, which features photos by Richard Avedon, Scavullo and Irving Penn, and interviews with celebs like Diana Vreeland, who was the legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor.
She may be back in the limelight but its unlikely she’ll let the moment go to her head.
“Fame, I mean, it’s like a bubble, in a way,” she told the Telegraph in 2005. “It’s like something glittery and it goes and it can be forgotten fast.
