Summer Babe: Veruschka

This was probably my first real tearsheet dating back to the early 2000s; I want to say 2003, but I forget.

It was dutifully snipped from the back of an old Time magazine—the only magazine I used to read before I finally convinced my mother to buy me my first fashion magazine (ELLE, if you were curious)—and slipped into a clear protector. Page one of a binder of hundreds of clear protector sheets to come.

It was a style piece on how some designer was trying to make a hobo bag dubbed “The Veruschka” as a tribute to the renowned Yves Saint Laurent editorial. Sixties makeup on a seventies beauty, a transitioning stage. An iconic lace-up that would leave an impression on fashion for years to come (Guess? jeans, anyone?).

I don’t know what it was about this photo that resonated so deeply with my preteen self; I hardly knew anything about fashion beyond my favorite floral print Abercrombie and Fitch skirt. Perhaps because it was so striking in black and white, so risque, so free. Veruschka was the Indiana Jones equivalent of the James Bond girl, standing her ground ever so fiercely from somewhere in the safari.

It stuck with me then; it’s still with me now.

This was the beginning of it all.

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