Cléopâtre-Diane de Merode, dite Cléo de Mérode, est une danseuse, modèle et icône de beauté française née le 27 septembre 1875 dans le 5e arrondissement de Paris et morte le 17 octobre 1966 dans le 8e arrondissement de la même ville.

Although a successful dance of her epoque, Cléo de Mérode was known by her extraordinary beauty. She was courted by countless men, many of them famous, including King Léopold II of the Belgians. 

Various artists of her time were also inspired by her beauty, and she had posed for the sculptor Alexandre Falguière, the painters Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, Giovanni Boldini, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, etc. ​

But hard as she tried defending herself, Cléo de Mérode's fame was tinted, worsened by the rumor that she was the lover of King Léopold II of the Belgians. And she would have to fight for her reputation for the rest of her life.

In 1949, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir mentioned Cléo de Mérode as a "Cocotte"(a woman of certain reputation) in her book Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex). Cléo de Mérode filed a lawsuit against the philosopher reclaiming millions of francs. She won the lawsuit the second year with a symbolic one franc.

But her reputation was not completed saved. Even as late as 2015, long after her death, Cléo de Mérode was included in an exposition of the prostitution of Belle Époque at musée d'Orsay.

In 1955, she published her autobiography, titled Le Ballet de ma vie(The Ballet of My Life), in which she revealed her real relations with King Léopold II of the Belgians.

Cléo de Mérode died on 17 October 1966 at her home in Paris, at the age of 91.

Malgré une rentrée réussie en 1924, elle décide de se retirer du monde de la danse à Paris. Sur la demande d'Henri Varna et Émile Audiffred, elle reparaît ponctuellement sur scène en juin 1934 dans La revue 1900 aux côtés du danseur George Skibine. « Je portais une robe de satin rose, baleinée à la taille, très longue, avec un ruché dans le bas. Nous dansions cinq valses à la file ; nous finissions par un grand tourbillon, et Skibine m'emportait dans ses bras au fond de la scène ».

Sa beauté délicate, hors des canons de beauté 1900, est restée légendaire, ainsi que les hommages qu'elle reçoit de quelques célèbres soupirants, plus particulièrement le roi Léopold II de Belgique, aventures qu'elle relate dans ses mémoires, Le Ballet de ma vie, publiées en 1955 par les Éditions Horay, à Paris. La rumeur infondée de leur liaison et, par conséquent de son influence sur la politique belge et congolaise, a cependant nui à sa réputation.

​Elle pose pour le sculpteur Alexandre Falguière, pour les peintres Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, Giovanni Boldini, elle est représentée par Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, par le verrier capitaine d’industries et artiste Georges Despret, et a son effigie en cire au musée Grévin dès 1895, façonnée par le chef d'atelier du musée, le sculpteur Léopold Bernstamm.

Elle est une des premières femmes dont l’image photographique, due notamment aux photographes Paul Nadar (1856-1939), fils et successeur de Félix Nadar, et surtout Léopold-Émile Reutlinger (1863-1937), est diffusée à l'échelle mondiale. Elle pose également pour l'atelier photographique Benque (photographies prises à l'Opéra de Paris, à partir de 1890), le photographe Charles-Pierre Ogerau (1868-1908), auteur d'une série de portraits en 1895, et plus tard, Henri Manuel (1874-1947).

Élue « reine de Beauté » sur photographies par les lecteurs de L'Illustration en 1896, parmi 131 célébrités, dont Sarah Bernhardt ; elle accroît sa notoriété la même année avec un parfum de scandale, du fait de l'exposition de la sculpture La Danseuse d’Alexandre Falguière au Salon des artistes français. 

​En 1950, Cléo de Mérode gagne un procès contre Simone de Beauvoir, qui en 1949 dans Le Deuxième Sexe l'assimilait à une « cocotte », ignorant par ailleurs qu'elle était encore en vie. Le juge considère que l'ancienne danseuse aurait dû publiquement démentir cette rumeur à l'époque mais indique que les propos de la philosophe sont inconvenants et la condamne à faire retirer cette mention de son livre et à un franc symbolique d'amende, alors que Cléo de Mérode réclamait millions. Dans Les femmes, actrices de l'Histoire, l'historienne Yannick Ripa écrit : « Réputée pour sa grande beauté, plus encore que pour ses talents de danseuse, Cléo de Mérode luttera toute sa vie contre sa réputation de demi-mondaine ». La même réputation lui est donnée lors d'une exposition sur la prostitution de la Belle Époque en 2015 au musée d'Orsay.

Pendant l’Occupation, elle se retire à Saint-Gaultier, dans l’Indre. Elle retourne ensuite vivre à Paris. Elle séjourne plusieurs étés de sa vie à Biarritz ou au château de Rastignac à La Bachellerie en Dordogne, chez la famille Lauwick.

En 1955, elle publie son autobiographie, intitulée Le Ballet de ma vie.

Elle meurt à l'âge de 91 ans le 17 octobre 1966, à son domicile parisien situé au 15, rue de Téhéran (8e arrondissement de Paris).

Augusta Bernard, also Augustabernard, (1886–1946) was a French fashion designer who gained recognition for creating long, neoclassical evening dresses during the early 1930s. She ran a salon in Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, in Paris, until 1934 when she retired.

​Born in Provence on 12 September 1886, Augusta Bernard began her career as a dress-maker by copying the designs of other couturiers of her era. She opened her first studio in Biarritz, but then moved to Paris in 1922, establishing a studio there the following year.

Augusta Bernard specialized in creating long, pale-coloured evening dresses, often cut on the bias. In order to achieve asymmetry, the simple, unadorned designs were often put together piecemeal.

Bernard became increasingly prominent over the years, especially in the 1930s after the fashionable Marquise de Paris had won the St Moritz fashion competition in the silver lamé evening gown she had designed. Her salon on the luxurious Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré became popular not only with French women interested in haute couture but also with Americans.

​Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia on September 4, 1900, George Hoyningen-Huene was the only son of Baron Barthold Theodor Hermann (Theodorevitch) von Hoyningen-Huene (1859-1942), a Baltic nobleman, military officer and lord of Navesti manor (near Võhma), and his wife, Emily Anne "Nan" Lothrop (1860-1927), a daughter of George Van Ness Lothrop, an American minister to Russia.  He had two sisters. Helen (died 1976) became a fashion designer in France and the United States, using the name Helen de Huene. Elizabeth (1891-1973), also known as Betty, also became a fashion designer (using the name Mme. Yteb in the 1920s and 1930s).

During the Russian Revolution, George Hoyningen-Huene's family estates were confiscated by the government and the family fled first to London, and later to Paris.

Since his early childhood, George Hoyningen-Huene showed his interest in art like painting and ballet, and Paris nourished his love of art. He studied painting with French cubist painter André Lhote(1885-1962) whose student included the polish painter ​Tamara de Lempicka. 

But the young George Hoyningen-Huene was thirsty for more, and was increasingly fascinated by the new art form - cinema, which was born in Paris. He liked it so much that he even offered himself as extras in some films. It was from films that he learned the dramatic lighting which he would later used on his photography.

Eventually his love of visual art and French haute couture landed him jobs in French Vogue. He first worked as photographer's assistant, but a few years later, by 1925 George had worked his way up to chief of photography of the French Vogue where he was mentor to up-and-coming photographers including François Tuefferd.

In 1930 he met Horst P. Horst, the future photographer, who became his lover and frequent model. Influenced by George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst later also became photographer, and he began his association with Vogue, publishing his first photograph in the French edition in November 1931

In winter of 1931, they traveled to England together. While there, they visited photographer Cecil Beaton, who was working for the British edition of Vogue. ​

A few years later, Hoyningen-Huene relocated to Hollywood, where he worked much less in fashion photography, but rather earned his living by shooting glamorous portraits for Hollywood stars and other celebrities. Some of the subjects photographer by him included hollywood film stars like Ingrid Bergman,  Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant,  Gary Cooper, Charile Chaplin, James Cagney,  artists such as painter Salvador Dali, ballet dancer Felia Doubrovska, writer Janet Flanner, and composers Kurt Weill and Igor Stravinsky, and celebrities including Duke of Windsor, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lady Mendl, etc.

Besides portrait photograph, Hoyningen-Huene also worked in various capacities in the film industry. He had worked closely with George Cukor, notably as special visual and color consultant for the latter's first Technicolor film, the 1954 Judy Garland movie A Star Is Born. He served a similar role for the 1957 film Les Girls, which starred Kay Kendall and Mitzi Gaynor, the Sophia Loren film Heller in Pink Tights, and The Chapman Report.

He was also a teacher. He started teaching at University of California since 1947 until the time of his death. 

George Hoyningen-Huene died of heart attach at 68,  in Los Angeles.

Profoundly influenced by art, both classic and surreal art, and French cinema, ​George Hoyningen-Huene developed his own unique style of photography which is  elegant, yet dramatic and mysterious. Some of the most distinguished Vogue photographers such as Irving Penn, Horst P. Horst, Richard Avedon were all influenced by his style. 

Although died at young age, George Hoyningen-Huene has left a great legacy behind him, in the form of a large archive of fashion and portrait photographes which still mesmerize us today, as well as several books he wrote about visual art and beauty of various cultures.