This week’s Style Icon is American Actress and model Marisa Berenson. Born Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson in 1947, she was the granddaughter of couturier Elsa Schiaparelli. She has appeared on the covers of Vogue and Time, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film Cabaret. Berenson was one of the highest paid models in the world in the sixties.
Berenson once told Vogue: “Diana Vreeland (legendary editor-in-chief of Vogue US) launched my career. She was a close family friend and when I was 16 she decided: ‘We have to photograph Marisa.’ My first photo shoot was with Bert Stern, followed by pictures for Glamour and by then I was working with magazines all over the world, but none more than Vogue. Diana Vreeland took me under her wing in a way, she protected me a lot. She was impressive, intelligent and had an eagle eye which made her a fearsome leader to the other editors. But she was always lovely to me, and thanks to her I never saw the darker side of modeling; I saw only the best, starting with Vogue, which for me is like a family album.”
“Beauty is like elegance; very personal and relating more to an intangible aura than physical traits. But it’s also a lifestyle. I eat mostly fruits, vegetables and fish, not much meat and I avoid refined sugar and gluten which suits me well but takes a certain amount of discipline.” ―Vogue
