Vera Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort (born in East Prussia 1939) was a popular model, artist, and actress known as Veruschka. The height to the Veruschka obsession occurred in the 1960s. You haven’t seen models as art until you’ve seen Veruschka. She slyly blends in with colorful backgrounds, disguises herself as animals, and so on. Often she wears nothing but body paint; a trend that’s been going more mainstream in the modeling world since the ’70s – she was the first person to do that. She even worked with Salvador Dali once.
“I was always being different types of women. I copied Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot, Greta Garbo. Then I got bored so I painted myself as an animal,” she once said.
If you’ve ever watched the iconic Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-up, you’ve also seen the iconic model in the opening scenes, playing the role she lived out in real life as a model in 1960s Swinging London.
My favorite looks of Veruschka are the ones where she was camouflaged as or posed with an animal. Take a look through some of the most iconic ones here:
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