A French fashion model and muse of Hubert de Givenchy, Simone Bodin was renamed Bettina Graziani by the designer Jacques Fath who told her: “We already have a Simone; you look to me like a Bettina”. Graziani was one of the first and highest paid supermodels of the twentieth century and after a brief marriage to a photographer became the fiancée of the playboy prince Prince Aly Khan in 1955. He was killed in a car crash near Paris in 1960 but left her $280,000 (the equivalent of £1.5 million today). She claimed that she owed her “success more to an expressive face than to my good looks” and in later years became a poet and Commander of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.
Two stories to keep beside you

Dame Mary Quant DBE FSCD (also known as Barbara Mary Plunket Greene)
Mary Quant is credited as the creator of the miniskirt, hot pants and most intriguingly duvet covers. This diminutive fashion designer also designed the interior of the Mini Quant back in 1988 but is now most likely to be spotted in La Brasserie in Brompton Cross. She married her business partner, Alexander Plunket-Greene, in 1953 and […]

Carolina Herrera (born María Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño)
Undoubtedly the “First Lady of Fashion”





Readers have their say
3 comments
A classic beauty and a style icon. A pity that Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell can’t display the same level of class.
Who?!
$280k fifty years ago woul be worth more than £1.5 m today I would venture