Obituary: Bettina Graziani's journey from rags to ramp supermodel

1925-2015: Bettina Graziani, who has died aged 89, was a poverty-stricken girl from provincial Normandy in France who became one of the world's first supermodels.

During the late '40s and '50s she was the muse a la mode; she modelled for Chanel, Valentino and Grès and was a longtime fixture in the couture houses of Jacques Fath and his protégé Hubert de Givenchy - but she turned down a job with Christian Dior.

Her geometric cheek bones, fountain pen figure and feline eyes became ubiquitous on the fashion pages and covers of Vogue, Elle and Mode du Jour.

Her private life was equally striking: she was, variously, the wife of the French photographer Gilbert Graziani; lover of the American screenwriter Peter Viertel; and the fiancée of Prince Aly Khan, the socialite son of the Aga Khan.

Graziani was said to embody a particularly American spirit, yet Fath and Givenchy wrapped her up in black Gallic ensembles offset by her pale skin and the white lines of poised cigarettes. She became a sensation.

"I owe that success more to an expressive face than to my good looks," she wrote in her memoirs, Bettina by Bettina.

She worked both as a photographic model and as a mannequin in the viewing rooms of the fashion houses where visiting clients would criticise her as if she were a garment ("No single flaw escapes them," she said).

Photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn and Georges Dambier engaged her for magazine commissions, photographing her walking spaniels, barrelling down the boulevards in convertibles and sauntering along the banks of the Seine.

She was born Simone Micheline Bodin in Normandy on May 8 1925. Her father, who worked on the French railways, deserted the family, and she was brought up by her mother, a teacher, and, during the war, by her grandmother in Angers. "I cycled across frozen cabbage fields to get to school every morning," she recalled.

With the aim of pursuing a career as a fashion designer, Graziani moved to Paris after the liberation in 1944. She approached the costume designer Jacques Costet with some of her sketches, and he took her on as a house mannequin.

She worked briefly with the couturier Lucien Lelong, a period she later dismissed as "colourless in my memory". It was in the corridors of Lelong's atelier that she met Dior, who promptly tried to poach her. She declined and instead went to model for Fath, who renamed her for the catwalk. "We already have a Simone," he said. "You look to me like a Bettina."

In the late '40s she married Gilbert "Beno" Graziani, a Paris Match photographer later famous for his pictures of Jackie Kennedy on the Amalfi coast. They spent a season managing a cafe on the Cote d'Azur, but the marriage was short-lived; they divorced in 1950, although she kept his name.

She was introduced to high society. "Fath would throw costume balls in the countryside, at the Château de Corbeville," she recalled. "All the best buyers, stars, writers, even other designers like Balenciaga and Balmain would come."

Modelling during the period was, she explained, a rarefied affair. "There was no ready-to-wear, only couture. Collections were shown to select clients in salons. You could reach out and touch the clothes."

She became a household name. Such was her brand value that she designed her own range of "Bettina" knitwear.

In 1950, she went to New York, with mixed results. She noted: "A New York cover girl's life is utterly different from that of her Paris counterpart. Improvisation is out of the question, and so is the free-and-easy attitude to work."

In the US, she took up with the novelist and screenwriter Viertel (author of White Hunter, Black Heart). The couple socialised with Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but Graziani turned down a film contract with 20th Century Fox.

Viertel, who had left his pregnant wife for Graziani, was in turn swiftly dropped for Prince Aly, a two-time divorcé (his second wife was Rita Hayworth), renowned playboy and Pakistan's ambassador to the UN.

In the mid-'50s she was persuaded by Prince Aly to retire from modelling and settle down to a quiet, albeit luxurious, domestic life.

Then, in 1960, with Graziani expecting their child, the couple were involved in a horrific car accident at Suresnes in Paris, as they were driving to a party. Prince Aly died as a result of his injuries, and Graziani miscarried.

Most of his fortune passed to his children from his two previous marriages, but Graziani inherited Green Lodge, his chateau at Chantilly. After the tragedy, she did not return to the modelling circuit but instead withdrew to write her memoirs.

In 1967, she returned to model for Coco Chanel's summer collection. It was not a happy assignment. "She needs to lose a little weight," said Chanel of Graziani. "I have told her to follow my example and don't eat at weekends."

Graziani also wrote poetry, composed music and appeared in two French films (Bete Balanço, 1984, and La folie douce, 1994). But fashion remained her great passion. In 2010, she was appointed a commander of France's Order of Arts and Letters.

In later life she attended the Paris fashion shows each season, promoting the work of the designers Azzedine Alaia and Yohji Yamomoto. She noted how the models had changed. "They are so young, and they all look the same." - ©The Daily Telegraph, London