BETTINA By GUY SCHOELLER : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

SIMONE MICHELINE BODIN -  "BETTINA" - THE FIRST SUPERMODEL and MISTRESS OF ALY KHAN - A JET SET ERA MISTRESS  was our June 2015 Mistress of the Month. You can find that month in the archives and it may be fun for you to simply search for the word 'fashion.' Recently I found this small fashion memoir by Guy Schoeller.

This short but sweet book is mostly full of black and white photos of Bettina as a model, some of her in her personal life, some from her heyday - from 1944 to 1990. Her career spanned about twelve years and she twice abandoned it for love. At a time when holding a pose stiffly and haughtily was the way one modeled, Bettina was loved for her movement and her lack of pretense. She came from an ordinary background in Normandy but came to Paris with the ambition to model at eighteen. She dropped everything at 30 to be with Prince Ali Khan but he died five years later. I'm struck by the expressiveness of her hands, the way she used her arms, her bearing.

What I did not know: That in 1952 she helped Hubert de Givenchy launch his couture house.

That she created a first knitwear collection for Jacques Heim in 1954. That in 1969 CoCo Chanel created a collection inspired by her. That in 1972 she became Couture Director for Emanuel Ungaro. In 1974 she was in charge of public relations for Valentino in Paris.

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