Absolutely new woman’s role in the world became one of the main achievements of 20th century. From a passive sufferer, subordinated to morals and society rules, a woman of new time turned to a heroine ruling her destiny. Women-legends who changed fashion, music, policy and cinema become an inexhaustible material for works of biographers, riddles, only few people can come close to.
Koko Chanel
“Chanel is not a fashion, Chanel is a style”, - the most well-known couturier of all times and peoples confirmed, and she was right: fashion becomes outdated, Chanel - never. Accurate hats, white blouses, narrow skirts, low heels. Very freely - and at the same time it is very strict. This is Chanel: it is considered that she released women, deprived them of their corsets and frills, resolved trousers, short hairstyles and almost man’s shirts. Actually, instead of old rules, Chanel thought up new ones: her heroine was constrained by rules of her own style so much, that she could not make a step withiut it. So, her models had no right to put on a dress of other fashionable house: Chanel who never left with scissors, could approach and unstitch it simply. Every Chanel’s biography only confirms a rule - you cannot tell bad things about this woman, she always remains so strict and closed, as her well-known little black dress. But illustrations - are invariably magnificent.
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich and Koko Chanel have much in common: Dietrich also began her career in cabaret (the truth it was not a real cabaret, but a cinema one, in a film of Shternberg “Blue Angel”), also wore trousers, also was famous for phenomenal and most unexpected affairs. Just unlike Chanel, Dietrich could not keep her own reputation, her scandals and affairs became a subject of general discussion. As a result, they sday, she was sent to the grave by her own biography - the book of her daughter Maria Riva “My mother Marlene Dietrich”, published only in 1999.
Maria Callas
“After Callas opera will never be the same as earlier”, - a Parisian opera critic Pierre-Jean Remi told after her death in 1977. Any other opera singer could not brag of such range: Callas executed both drama, and lyrical, and coloratura parties with identical ease. She never protected her fantastic voice - and as a result she lost it, during last twenty years of her life she had been noted only by one career success: a leading role in Pierre Paolo Pazolini’s film “Medea” (1969). She also did not care about herself - in 1953, having fallen in love at Odri Hepbern image, she lost 30 kg, having lodged a worm in her organism voluntary. The first and unique opera star with appearance of photomodel, Callas was and remains a legend, a unique singer, capable to perform the most different parts, including Verdi’s most complicated late operas and Wagner’s musical problems. But in private life she never was happy - all her enthusiastic, but not numerous biographers confirm this fact.
Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis
The Cinderella with terrible destiny. Jacqueline met her first husband, John Kennedy, in 1952, when she worked as a journalist in “Washington Times” newspaper - she was sent to interview a perspective congressman. Their marriage lasted ten years, last two years a former journalist was the first lady of the United States. She remained in this role also after her husband’s death, and after unsuccessful marriage with multimillionaire Alexander Onassis, and after death of her two from four children - it was impossible to break Jackie О. Even lady Dee did not receive such disorder of opinions and responses: journalists threw mud at her, biographers - treacle, and simple Americans transformed Jacqueline into a walking analogue of a statue of Freedom. Because she really embodies the American inflexibility. Three words became key in her biography: “despite of everything”.
Princess Diana
Another woman-myth any biographer would like to come closer to, in spite of the fact that they wrote about Lady Di more than they did about any other of ever living women in the world. Princess Diana was not a Cinderella - she came to Prince of Wales’s matrimonial bedroom from an aristocratic English family. Above all, she loved children and dances: before becoming a member of royal family, she earned money as a teacher in a kindergarten, and danced with John Travolta on secular receptions in Buckingham Palace- it is not known, who was proud of it more. But for prudish Englishmen with their eternal worship for own monarchy and same eternal inferiority complex concerning this monarchy, Diana became a conscience none of royal people could brag of. A number of books were written about her life in a palace and behind it, best of them - memoirs of Lady Di’s butler, Paul Burrell, in which a princess appears first of all as a fine mother and unfortunate wife.
