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Pat Cleveland, Billie Blair, Amina Warsuma and the other models take center stage at Le 1973 Grand Divertissement à Versailles.
Versailles Models of 1973 Amina Warsuma, Charlene Dash, Norma Jean Darden, Bethann Hardison, Pat Cleveland and China Machado were among 11 models to participate in a fashion face-off between five American designers and and five French designers at the Palace of Versailles. They were honored last fall as “Game Changers” by the The Huffington Post.
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Alice Prin (Kiki), c. 1920, painted by Gustaw Gwozdecki (1880–1935)
Alice Ernestine Prin (2 October 1901 – 29 April 1953), nicknamed Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist model, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist, and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the early 1920s. Adopting a single name, “Kiki”, she became a fixture in the Montparnasse social scene and a popular artist model, posing for dozens of artists, includingChaim Soutine, “Julian Mandel” (a pseudonym), Tsuguharu Foujita, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Arno Breker, Alexander Calder, Per Krohg, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo, Mayo, and Tono Salazar. Moise Kisling painted a portrait of Kiki titled Nu assis, one of his best known.
Her companion for most of the 1920s was Man Ray, who made hundreds of portraits of her. She is the subject of some of his best-known images, including the notable surrealist image Le violon d’Ingres and Noire et blanche.
She appeared in nine short and often experimental films, including Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique without any credit.
Brassaï, Kiki Singing at the Cabaret des Fleurs, Boulevard Montparnasse, Paris, c. 1932-1950
