​Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was an Indian-born British actress who began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her success in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935). A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she recovered and remained active in film and television until 1973.

​Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson was born in Bombay, British India, on 19 February 1911. Merle was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911.

For most of her life, Merle protected herself by concealing the truth about her parentage, claiming that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia, and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire.

She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). However, according to her birth certificate, Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, Constance. Charlotte had herself given birth to Constance at the age of 14. To avoid scandal, Charlotte raised Merle as Constance's half-sister. Charlotte Selby died in 1937. (In 1949, Oberon commissioned paintings of Charlotte based on an old photograph (but depicting Charlotte with lighter skin), which hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.)

​In 1914, when Merle was 3, Arthur Thompson joined the British Army and later died of pneumonia on the Western Front during the Battle of the Somme. Merle and Charlotte led an impoverished existence in shabby flats in Bombay for a few years. Then, in 1917, they moved to better circumstances in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). Oberon received a foundation scholarship to attend La Martiniere Calcutta for Girls, one of the best private schools in Calcutta. There, she was constantly taunted for her mixed ethnicity, eventually leading her to quit school and receive lessons at home.

Oberon first performed with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society. She was also completely enamored with films and enjoyed going out to nightclubs. Indian journalist Sunanda K. Datta-Ray claimed that Merle worked as a telephone operator in Calcutta under the name Queenie Thomson and won a contest at Firpo's Restaurant there, before the outset of her film career.

In Firpo's, in 1929, Merle dated Colonel Ben Finney, a former actor who ended the relationship after he realized Oberon was of mixed ancestry. But he introduced her to Rex Ingram of Victorine Studios. Ingram liked Oberon's exotic appearance and quickly hired her to be an extra in a party scene in a film named The Three Passions.

She was selected to star in Korda's 1937 film, I, Claudius, as Messalina, but her injuries in a car accident resulted in the film being abandoned. But she recovered enough later to play Cathy in the highly acclaimed film Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier which was released in 1939, the same year when she married Alexander Korda.

While married, she had a brief affair in 1941 with Richard Hillary, an RAF fighter pilot who had been badly burned in the Battle of Britain. They met while he was on a goodwill tour of the United States. 

Oberon became Lady Korda when her husband was knighted in 1942 by George VI for his contribution to the war effort. 
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​She went on to appear as George Sand in A Song to Remember (1945) and as the Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954).

According to Princess Merle, the biography written by Charles Higham with Roy Moseley, Oberon suffered damage to her complexion in 1940 from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs. Alexander Korda sent her to a skin specialist in New York City, where she underwent several dermabrasion procedures. The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin could be seen.

Oberon divorced Korda in 1945, to marry cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Ballard devised a special camera light for her to eliminate on film her facial scars suffered in a 1937 accident. The light became known as the "Obie". She and Ballard divorced in 1949.

Oberon next married Italian-born industrialist Bruno Pagliai in 1957, adopted two children with him and lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. In 1973, Oberon met then 36-year-old Dutch actor Robert Wolders while they filmed Interval. Oberon divorced Pagliai and married Wolders, who was 25 years her junior, in 1975.

​Oberon retired after Interval and moved with Wolders to Malibu, California, where she died in 1979, aged 68, after suffering a stroke. Her body was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera uses Oberon's hidden South Asian and Maori heritage as the inspiration for the novel White Lies, which was turned into the 2013 movie White Lies.

Michael Korda, nephew of Alexander Korda, wrote a roman à clef about Oberon after her death titled Queenie. This was adapted into a television miniseries starring Mia Sara.

​F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon was made into the television series, with Jennifer Beals playing Margo Taft, a character created for the tv series and based on Oberon.

​Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, CI, GCVO, GBE (Greek: Μαρίνα, later Duchess of Kent; 13 December 1906 – 27 August 1968) was a princess of the Greek royal house, who married Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V and Queen Mary in 1934. They had three children: Prince Edward, Princess Alexandra, and Prince Michael.

The Princess was widowed in 1942, when her husband was killed in a plane crash on active service. In later life, she carried out many royal engagements, including the independence celebrations for Ghana and Botswana.

Princess Marina was born in Athens, Greece, on 13 December 1906. Her father was Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark, the third son of George I of Greece. Her mother was Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia, a granddaughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. She was the youngest of the couple's children. One of her paternal uncles was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the father of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (making her Philip's first cousin).

Marina spent her early years in Greece, and lived with her parents and paternal grandparents at Tatoi Palace. Along with her sisters, she was raised to be devout and religious, which was encouraged by her grandmother, Queen Olga of Greece.

In 1932, Princess Marina and Prince George (later the Duke of Kent), a second cousin through Christian IX of Denmark, met in London. Their betrothal was announced in August 1934. Prince George was created Duke of Kent on 9 October 1934. Marina's engagement ring was made out of a "square-cut Kashmir sapphire set in platinum with a baton diamond on either side".

On 29 November 1934, they married at Westminster Abbey, London. The wedding was a grand affair, as it had been more than ten years since the last royal wedding with Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

The wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina was the first royal wedding ceremony to be broadcast by wireless, and with the use of other technology, such as microphones. The service was broadcast locally and abroad to other nations, and loudspeakers allowed spectators from outside the Abbey to hear the proceedings.

The wedding was followed by a Greek ceremony in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, which was converted into an Orthodox chapel for the ceremony. This was the first time this had been done since the wedding of Princess Marina's great-aunt, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The wedding was the most recent occasion on which a foreign-born princess married into the British Royal Family.

The bride's gown was in white and silver silk brocade, designed by Edward Molyneux, and worked on by a team of seamstresses including, at Marina's request, Russian émigrées. The dress featured "sheath silhouette, a draped cowl neckline, trumpet sleeves, and a wide train." A tiara, given to her as a wedding gift, secured her tulle veil.

The Royal School of Needlework made a quilt as a wedding gift for Princess Marina and the Duke of Kent.

The couple had three children:

-Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (9 October 1935); 
-Princess Alexandra, The Hon. Lady Ogilvy (25 December 1936);
-Prince Michael of Kent (4 July 1942).

​After her husband's death, the Duchess of Kent continued to be an active member of the British Royal Family, carrying out a wide range of royal and official engagements. She was the president of the Wimbledon All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for 26 years. 

In March 1957, when the Gold Coast achieved independence from Britain as Ghana, the Duchess of Kent was appointed to represent the Queen at the celebrations. Fifty years later, at the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence, it would be her son, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who would be appointed by the Queen to represent her.

Marina earned a place in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1960 together with the Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly, Patricia Lopez-Willshaw and Merle Oberon. 

​Main Rousseau Bocher (October 24, 1890 – December 27, 1976), also known as Mainbocher, was an American couturier best known for the eponymous fashion label he founded in 1929. Although often pronounced "Man-bo-shay," his name is pronounced "Maine-Bocker."

​Bocher was a native of Chicago, where he studied at the Lewis Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He served in intelligence during World War I and stayed in Paris after the war, working as a fashion illustrator for Harper's Bazaar, as Paris fashion editor for Vogue from 1922 to 1929, becoming the editor-in-chief of the French edition of Vogue in early 1927. Main Bocher's decision to become a couturier grew out of his years as editor at Vogue; he realized that his critical eye and his feeling for fashion might also serve him as a designer.

His most famous patron was Wallis Simpson, after whom he even named a color, "Wallis Blue". 

​In 1937, he designed her wedding dress and trousseau in that particular Wallis Blue for her marriage to the Duke of Windsor, after he abdicated the British throne.

Cameron Silver named Mainbocher "the designer of the 30ies,” in his book Decades: A Century of Fashion, and he further noted that "Mainbocher's designs oozed exclusivity, good breeding, and rarefied taste.”

​The onset of Second World War forced Mainbocher to leave France. In 1940, he relocated his business to New York on 57th Street next to Tiffany's and established "Mainbocher Inc." He recreated his Paris salons exactly as they were and stayed true to haute couture traditions.

The corset controversy proved to be a timely marketing opportunity; the house of Mainbocher teamed up with the Warner Brothers Corset Company and streamlined the design for mass production.

He showed his first New York collection on October 30, 1940, and soon established himself as one of the leading American fashion designers. He solved fabric rationing issues by designing short evening gowns and "cocktail aprons" that could transform any dress into a formal evening dress.

During the war, Mainbocher designed a series of uniforms for both military and civilian organizations, applying his principles of functionality and utility while retaining the sophisticated elegance of his namesake label. These uniforms also allowed him to reclaim his American identity in a patriotic context.

In 1942, he conceived the uniforms for the women-only division of the American Navy, called WAVES. He then updated the uniforms of the American Red Cross,

​Originaire de Chicago, Main Rousseau Bocher part pour l'Europe en 1911. Dès lors, menant une vie de bohème, il alterne entre ses études et divers emplois, à New York, Munich, Paris et Londres. Il étudie ainsi l'art à Munich, puis le dessin à Paris en 1912, et rentre aux États-Unis en 1913. Quelques jours après son retour sur le sol américain, il apprend que l'un de ses dessins a été sélectionné pour le Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. C'est ainsi qu'il revient brièvement à Paris, avant de se rendre à Londres où il dessine des affiches publicitaires et illustre Aucassin et Nicolette pour Harrods.

Le déclenchement de la Première Guerre mondiale le force à rentrer à New York en 1914. Il subsiste en vendant des illustrations de mode au fabricant E. L. Mayer, lui aussi originaire de Chicago. En parallèle, il prend des cours de musique avec Frank La Forge et commence à se faire connaître dans le milieu musical new-yorkais. Lors de l'entrée en guerre des États-Unis en 1917, il s'engage volontairement et devient sergent major l'année suivante. Démobilisé en 1919, il décide de rester à Paris et songe à une grande carrière à l'Opéra-Comique, sa passion. Cependant, son rêve prend brutalement fin quand, en 1921, il échoue à une audition importante.

Il est alors engagé comme dessinateur pour Harper's Bazaar. Deux ans plus tard, il intègre le groupe Condé Nast en tant que rédacteur mode de l'édition francaise du magazine Vogue (« Paris fashion editor »). Il lance la rubrique « l'œil de Vogue », dans laquelle il popularise de nouvelles expressions comme « blanc cassé ». Il y fait preuve de flair en décelant dans les collections de couture ce qui plaira aux Françaises et aux Américaines. Grâce à ses talents littéraires et à son sens du style, il devient rédacteur en chef de l'édition française du magazine Vogue en 1927. En 1929, il considère sa connaissance du monde de la mode suffisante pour passer à une activité plus créatrice, et décide d'ouvrir sa propre maison de couture. Il s'agit d'un pari risqué pour Mainbocher, qui, alors âgé de 40 ans, n'avait pas de formation technique.

À New York, Mainbocher reste sans conteste le plus grand couturier de l'élite américaine; il habille de nouvelles générations de femmes du monde et, notamment, Brenda Frazier, Doris Duke, Adele Astaire, Elizabeth Parke Firestone, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lila Wallace, Bunny Mellon, Babe Paley, la princesse Maria Cristina de Bourbon, Kathryn Miller, ou encore C. Z. Guest.

En 1947, huit des dix femmes élues les mieux habillées par le New York Dress Institute étaient clientes de Mainbocher.

Mainbocher crée de nombreux costumes pour Broadway, y compris les costumes de Leonora Corbett dans L'Esprit s'amuse (1941), de Mary Martin dans One Touch of Venus (1943) et The Sound of Music (1959), de Tallulah Bankhead dans Private Lives (1948), de Ethel Merman dans Call Me Madam (1950), de Rosalind Russell dans Wonderful Town (1953), de Lynn Fontanne dans The Great Sebastians (1956), d'Irene Worth dans Tiny Alice (1964) ou de Lauren Bacall dans Applause (1970).

Mainbocher ferme sa maison de couture en 1971, à l'âge de 81 ans. Il passe ses dernières années entre Paris et Munich jusqu'à son décès en 1976.

​Mainbocher a inspiré certains des plus grands couturiers du XXe siècle, dont Christian Lacroix, qui vantait le glamour des vêtements griffés Mainbocher.

En 2002, Mainbocher se voit décerner à titre posthume une plaque sur le « Fashion Walk of Fame » dans le Garment District à New York. Cette plaque symbolique rend hommage à sa contribution dans l'histoire de la mode.

Les créations de Mainbocher ont été présentées dans de nombreuses expositions au fil des ans, mais c'est seulement en 2010 qu'elles ont fait l'objet d'une exposition virtuelle créée par le Musée de la ville de New York. Elles y sont présentées aux côtés des créations de la maison Worth.

La première rétrospective consacrée à Mainbocher, intitulée « Making Mainbocher », a eu lieu au Musée d'histoire de Chicago d'octobre 2016 à août 2017. Cette exposition était en partie sponsorisée par Luvanis, aujourd'hui propriétaire de la marque.