ProfileBorn in the 1920s, Barbara Mullen has been one of the greatest models of the 40s-60s, her image has been captured by almost all of the greatest fashion photographers of the 20th century. And yet, little is known about her, not even a birth date, and a label of "The replacement girl" given by photographer Lilian Bassman who has best captured her mysterious quality, is forever sticked to her. Her name appears only like a footnote in the story of other models of her time from Barbara Goalen to Twiggy. After retiring from model career, Barbara Mullen moved to Switzerland, where she has had her own boutique, written for fashion magazine, and lived a quiet and undisturbed life, what Switzerland is famous for. Further interestArticles Book The Replacement Girl: A Life in 24 Frames
By John-Michael O'Sullivan A biography of Barbara Mullen, one of the twentieth century's great fashion models
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Caroline Lee Radziwiłł (née Bouvier March 3, 1933 – February 15, 2019), usually known as Princess Lee Radziwill, was an American socialite, public-relations executive, and interior decorator. She was the younger sister of First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy. Radziwill was married three times, each marriage ending in divorce, with the marriage to third husband Herbert Ross ending in divorce shortly before his death in 2001. BiographyCaroline Lee Bouvier was born at Doctors Hospital in New York City to stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and his wife, socialite Janet Norton Lee. She attended The Chapin School, in New York City, Potomac School in Washington, D.C., Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and pursued undergraduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College. In her birth announcement, and from her earliest years, she was known by her middle name "Lee" rather than Caroline. In the 1960s, Radziwill attempted to forge a career as an actress. Her acting attempt was unsuccessful, if highly publicized. She starred in the 1967 production of The Philadelphia Story as the spoiled Main Line heiress Tracy Lord. The play was staged at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago, and Radziwill's performance was widely panned. A year later, she appeared in a television adaptation of the 1944 film Laura, which was badly received. A London townhouse and a manor, Turville Grange (which she shared with her second husband) that she owned had both been decorated by Italian stage designer Lorenzo Mongiardino; they were greatly admired and frequently photographed by Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst. She worked briefly as an interior decorator in a style influenced by her association with Mongiardino. Her clientele were the wealthy; she once decorated a house "for people who would not be there more than three days a year". She frequented celebrity company, including travelling with The Rolling Stones during their 1972 tour of North America, which she attended alongside the writer Truman Capote. Radziwill was named to the Vanity Fair International Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1996. Her Paris and Manhattan apartments were featured in the April 2009 issue of Elle Décor magazine. She was interviewed by director Sofia Coppola in February 2013 about her life as part of Radziwill's cover story for T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well as about Coppola's film The Bling Ring and the loss of privacy. She was listed as one of the 50 best-dressed people over 50 by The Guardian in March 2013. In 1972, Radziwill hired documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles to work on a film about the Bouvier family. At the outset, the brothers filmed two eccentric and reclusive members of the extended family, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie"), who were Radziwill's aunt and cousin, respectively. The Beales lived in a rambling, decaying home in East Hampton, New York, and were supported by other members of the family. Radziwill's original film project was not completed, and Radziwill kept the footage that had been shot of the Beales. However, the Maysles brothers were fascinated by the strange life the two women led, and after raising funds for film and equipment on their own they returned and filmed 70 more hours of footage with Big Edie and Little Edie. The resulting film, titled Grey Gardens (1976) after the name of the Beales' home, is widely considered a masterpiece of the documentary genre. It was later adapted as a 2006 musical of the same name, in which the characters Lee and Jackie Bouvier appear as visiting children in retrospect. An HBO television movie based upon the documentary and surrounding story of the Beales' lives, also called Grey Gardens, appeared in 2009. Radziwill was married three times. Her first marriage, in April 1953, was to Michael Temple Canfield, a publishing executive. They divorced in 1958, and the marriage was annulled by the Catholic Church in November 1962.
Her second marriage, on March 19, 1959, was to the Polish aristocrat Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł, who divorced his second wife, the former Grace Maria Kolin, and received a Roman Catholic annulment of his first marriage to re-marry. (His second marriage had never been acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, so no annulment was necessary.) Upon her marriage, she became Her Serene Highness Princess Caroline Radziwiłł. They had two children, Anthony (1959–1999) and Christina (b. 1960). Their marriage ended in divorce in 1974. On September 23, 1988, Radziwill married for a third time, becoming the second wife of American film director and choreographer Herbert Ross. Their divorce was finalized shortly before his death, and she returned to using Radziwill, the transliteration of her children's name, Radziwiłł. Radziwill died on February 15, 2019, aged 85, in her apartment on the Upper East Side in New York City. Adrian Adolph Greenburg (March 3, 1903 – September 13, 1959), widely known as Adrian, was an American costume designer whose most famous costumes were for The Wizard of Oz and hundreds of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films between 1928 and 1941. He was usually credited onscreen with the phrase "Gowns by Adrian". Early in his career he chose the professional name Gilbert Adrian, a combination of his father's forename and his own. BiographyAdrian was born on March 3, 1903, in Naugatuck, Connecticut, to Gilbert and Helena Greenburg. Both sides of the family were Jewish. In 1920 Adrian entered the New York School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design). In 1922 he transferred to the NYSFAA Paris campus, and while there, he was contracted by Irving Berlin to design settings and costumes for Berlin's Music Box Revue of 1922–23 in New York. Adrian was brought to Hollywood in November 1924 by Rudolph Valentino's wife Natacha Rambova to design costumes for The Hooded Falcon. The Valentino company dissolved, and Adrian's first screen credit was for the Constance Talmadge comedy Her Sister from Paris. In 1925 Adrian was hired as a costume designer by Cecil B. DeMille's independent film studio. In 1928 DeMille moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Adrian was provisionally hired as a costume designer for M-G-M. After a few months, he signed a contract as head designer, ultimately remaining for thirteen years and 200 films. Adrian worked with the biggest female stars of the day: Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford. He designed twenty-eight Crawford films, eighteen Shearer films, and nine Harlow films. He worked with Garbo from 1928, when he arrived at M-G-M, until 1941, when both departed the company. The Eugénie hat he created for her film Romance became a sensation and influenced millinery styles. When Adrian emphasized Crawford's shoulders by designing outfits with shoulder pads, these created a trend. Adrian was famous for evening gown designs, a talent displayed in The Women. Though filmed in black and white, The Women includes a Technicolor fashion show of Adrian designs. Adrian was acclaimed for the period costumes of Romeo and Juliet; the extravagant costumes of The Great Ziegfeld; and the opulent gowns of Camille and Marie Antoinette. Adrian insisted on the finest materials and workmanship for the execution of his designs, cultivating fabric manufacturers in Europe and New York. For years Adrian had been courted by retailers to design for public sale but he rebuffed those offers. In 1932 Macy's Cinema Shop had copied his work with the studio's tacit approval, much in the same way that department stores produced so-called "Paris fashions," which were unapproved copies of French couturiers' works. Adrian's best known film is The Wizard of Oz, for which he designed the red-sequined ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland. Adrian married Janet Gaynor on August 14, 1939. This relationship has been called a lavender marriage, since Adrian was openly gay within the film community while Gaynor was rumored to be gay or bisexual. Both Adrian and Gaynor went on record to say they were happily married, and they remained so until his death in 1959. Gaynor and Adrian had one son, Robin (born July 6, 1940). Adrian left MGM on September 5, 1941, to open his own fashion firm. Adrian had contemplated leaving MGM for a year or two, upset with budgetary retrenchments caused by the Great Depression and changes in public taste. He had a serious disagreement with director George Cukor, producer Bernard Hyman, and MGM head Louis B. Mayer over the style of costumes Greta Garbo should wear in the upcoming Two-Faced Woman, which began preproduction about April 1941. Adrian apparently resolved to leave the studio after this disagreement. Adrian notified MGM of his decision on July 16, 1941. Adrian's departure from the studio came as a shock to Louis B. Mayer. Adrian's last day was to have been August 15, but he offered to stay on to wrap up various projects. Mayer kept him on the payroll until September 5. Robert Kalloch, Columbia Pictures' chief costume and fashion designer, was named Adrian's replacement largely because his designs strongly resembled Adrian's. In 1942 Adrian established Adrian, Ltd., at 233 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, in the building formerly occupied by the Victor Hugo restaurant. Adrian's fashion line filled the gap left by Paris, which could not export during the German occupation. American women responded to Adrian's clean-lined designs, and he exerted a strong influence on American fashion until the late 1940s. Meanwhile, Adrian continued to design fashions for the occasional film project through the 1940s, most notably for Humoresque in 1946. Adrian returned to M-G-M in 1952 for one film, Lovely to Look At. He was never nominated for an Academy Award as the costume category was not introduced during the time of his major work for the studios. Adrian was stricken with a heart attack in 1952. Because he never assigned work to assistants, preferring to do all drafts and designs himself, the business could not be continued under his name. Consequently, he was forced to close Adrian, Ltd.
Adrian and his wife Janet bought a fazenda (ranch) in Anápolis, in the state of Goiás, in the interior of Brazil. They spent a few years developing it, frequently in the company of their friends Richard Halliday and Mary Martin. In 1958 Adrian came out of retirement to design costumes for At the Grand, a musical version of the 1932 film Grand Hotel that starred Paul Muni and Viveca Lindfors and played only in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1959 Adrian was hired to design costumes for the upcoming Broadway musical Camelot. While at work on this project in his studio, Adrian suffered a fatal heart attack. He was posthumously awarded the Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Musical. He is buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. |
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