#RIP: PIONEERING MODEL, CHINA MACHADO

China Machado moved to Paris and found work modelling for Givenchy. She was asked to model for Balenciaga, but he was out of town so they sent her to Givenchy instead. 

“They thought I was filling-in for a sick girl, so they grabbed me, put me in clothes, and threw me into the room where they were showing the collection. I barely knew anything about walking like a model, so I just copied the girl in front of me. At the end of the show, gorgeous Givenchy comes up to me and says, 

‘Would you like to be in the cabine?’

—that’s what they called the group of models who worked for the house. That’s how it all started.“

China Machado was born in Shanghai, China. Her Portuguese father was from Macau, her maternal grandmother is from Goa. Her father met her mother in Hong Kong. At the age of 19, she met the Spanish bullfighter, Luis Miguel Dominguín. She moved with him to Rome, where she had bit-roles in films. After the relationship ended, she changed her first name to China (pronounced CHEE-na) and later worked for Christian Dior and Balenciaga. She became the highest-paid runway model in Europe, earning $1,000 a day.

In 1957, she married the actor Martin LaSalle. and the couple settled in New York City where Machado met Diana Vreeland. It was through Vreeland she developed a very close friendship with photographer, Richard Avedon. She called him the, 

“great mentor in her life.”

Avedon said that she was,

“probably the most beautiful woman in the world. It was 1958, and the publishers were saying, ‘We can’t put this girl in the magazine [Harper’s Bazaar]. Everyone in the South will quit subscriptions and no one will want to advertise with us!’” 

But they were published in February 1959 because Avedon had threatened to not renew his contract with the magazine if they didn’t use them. Machado’s subsequent modeling success opened the door for generations of models of ethnicity, from Iman to Naomi Campbell.

Machado worked for Avedon exclusively for three years before he got her a job as Harper’s Bazaar‘s Senior Fashion Editor where, eventually, she became the Fashion Director and ventured into other endeavors in publishing, fashion, and television.

In 1989 she was added to the International Best Dressed List.

I was lucky enough to be a Facebook friend of hers, along with nearly 5,000 other fashion editors, photographers and admirers. She posted these photos there in the last several months of along with this this quote in November just after the election of Donald Trump,

“I am an American, I love this country. I immigrated to this country in 1960. It has given me everything! The American people gave me kindness, a career, a warm welcome and most of all my American family. Three generations… Please do not change…..This is the America I know.”

China died Sunday at Stony Brook University Hospital, one week before her 88th birthday.

(A REAL LADY) BUNNY'S $76 MILLION ROTHKO'S + $3 MILLION COFFEE TABLES

Bunny Mellon, who lived to 103, spent her long life collecting whatever she liked and her eye and taste were rewarded (posthumously) at Sotheby’s last night as all 43 master works brought in $158.7 million, topping the high estimate of $121 million. A 1970 canvas by Mark Rothko of brought in nearly $40 million but three paintings –two others by Rothko and one by Richard Diebenkorn– were not part of this auction as they were sold privately earlier this year for an undisclosed sum but they were valued upwards of $250 million!

The Sotheby’s auction was just the first in a series  of works that Mrs. Mellon, and her financier husband, Paul Mellon, had collected over the years . They had also donated many masterworks to institutions such as the National Gallery of Art in DC, which got more than 900 works, including Cézanne’s “Boy in a Red Waistcoat.” The work had decorated their five homes, including Oak Spring Farms, the 2,000-acre estate in Virgina, where Mrs. Mellon spent the last years of her life. Bunny was a BIG fan of Rothko (it shows) and she LOVED blue, like Lucio Fontana’s “Concetto Spaziale (Blu)” from 1968 which hung in her Upper East Side townhouse bedroom and sold for almost a million and a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of a barn that hung in her Virginia dining room sold for $3.1 million.

The auction also included several examples of furniture by Diego Giacometti (Albert’s brother) whom Bunny met through designer Givenchy. She commissioned bronze furniture and sculptures but, not liking bronze, asked Giacometti to paint them off-white for her. The two coffee tables sold for $1.7 million and $1.4 million each! Most of these works were bought 50+ years ago for what seems like nothing now, but I’m sure was a fortune then –nevertheless, the return was phenomenal. Nothing appreciates like art and real estate, kids!

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE (est. 1.5 – 2,500,000 ) Sold $3,189,000

LUCIO FONTANA ($300– 400,000) Sold $965,000

RENÉ MAGRITTE (est. $300 –500,000) Sold $2,285,000

MARK ROTHKO (est $15 – 20,000,000) Sold $39,925,000

MARK ROTHKO (est. $20 –30,000,000) Sold $36,565,000

RICHARD DIEBENKORN (est. 8 –12,000,000) Sold $9,685,000

VIRGINIA: The 10 foot wide Rothko in the library was sold privately for an undisclosed sum, surely in excess of $100 million

MASSACHSSETS: Living room with $1.4 million Giacometti coffee table

VIRGINIA: The Georgia O’Keeffe barn painting in the dining room

MASSACHUSETTS: Bunny’s bedroom and love of blue in evidence

VIRGINIA: The doors of the Fernand Renard mural concealed Mellon’s gardening tools

LOUIS VUITTON'S $135 MILLION GIFT TO PARIS

Bernard Arnault is the richest man in France, with a net worth of over $29 billion. He oversees LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the corporate colossus that owns the mother-lode of luxury brands; Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Fendi, Bulgari + 55 more. Its Fondation Louis Vuitton is opening the 126,000-square-foot glass and steel structure designed by Frank Gehry this month in the Bois de Boulogne of Paris. He has spent the last decade making it at a cost of more than $135 million –perhaps much more. He says in an article today, in The New York Times;

“We don’t speak of numbers when we speak of a dream. Let’s just say it is a very expensive sculpture.”

But, of course, it is more than that. Built to house the contemporary art collection of LVMH (including works by Jeff Koons and Gilbert & George) as well as pieces from Mr. Arnault’s personal collection, the FLV may be the most ambitious, and potentially controversial, new structure in Paris since I. M. Pei’s pyramid landed in the Louvre in 1989. And because the new museum sits on land that belongs to a public park, in 55 years it reverts to the city.

It really is a marvel. After the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Disney concert Hall in LA, we tend to take his designs as a given but he continues to astound with buildings like this, and as a pubic place, it will continue to give back to Paris for many, many years. To read the full story on it and Arnault in the Times, go here.

One of Gehry's original sketches for the building

(Photos, FLV; via NY Times)