Veruschka-This long-limbed exotic pantheresque beauty was famous as one of the decade’s top models, appearing on eleven Vogue covers and in one classic film. She was born in '39, making her a perfect 20-30 for the '60s. She was born what was then called East Prussia, now Poland. Her moniker at birth: Countess Vera Gottlieb von Lehndorff, often billed as Veruschka, Veroushka, or Verushka. Veruschka has led a life that is as much legend as it is fact. During the ‘60s she intentionally let her life be clouded in mystery, so that queries into her past often raised more questions than they answered. Even today some biographical sources give conflicting information about her age and her nationality. The mystery has only intensified her impact and made her a more intriguing figure.Her career zoomed when she appeared in Blowup, Michelangelo Antonioni's innovative movie about an arrogant, handsome fashion photographer (David Hemmings playing David Bailey, most viewers assumed) on the prowl in swingin' London. Veruschka's five-minute part was that of a top fashion model. But nobody had ever seen modeling like this before. Four minutes into the strange world of the movie, Veruschka appeared with the loaded announcement, "Here I am." Barefoot and wearing a short 'n' slit black dress, she began posing, her long arms and legs taut with slender ropes of muscle, her back an arc of white elastic. Then, as Hemmings kneeled over her with his camera, she undulated on the floor, tossing her hair, stretching herself like a lean jungle cat, throbbing herself into the sexual frenzy that he was trying to capture on film. The sardonic punchline came when he prematurely evacuated at the height of her floor-play and nonchalantly retreated to another part of the studio just as she was about to foam at the mouth with lust. The startling scene quickly made her a fashion fave. Life put her on front of a '67 issue, and Vogue ultimately gave her eleven covers as a radical alternative to the cute schoolgirl look expressed by Twiggy.
