A legend of fashion, an extraordinary fascinating lady and a genuine, outspoken woman at the same time. This is Benedetta Barzini, top model in the Sixties and today lecturer in various Italian universities, since always an absolute icon of style.
In 1963, almost by chance, the doors of fashion flew open in front of her ravishing beauty able to charm everyone she came across. Muse of the most famous photographers of that time, she worked with Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, and Ugo Mulas. In 1965 the first cover of Vogue Italia featured her face: just an example to tell of her popularity and success since the very beginning of her carrier.
Benedetta Barzini has anyway been a particular and maverick celeb: since her debut in the fashion system she has always emerged for her will not to comply with a dominant lifestyle too much far from her values and her way of being. She preferred surrounding herself of people of quality and substance instead of attending parties and being engulfed in an age of affectation that she didn’t feel her own and that she considered, and still rightly or wrongly considers, as false and hypocritical.
Catwalks and resounding success, but Benedetta Barzini’s life has been made also of perseverance and will to learn and test herself in different contexts: at the peak of her carrier she started studying acting and later on she managed to carve out different roles for herself in the world of writing and education.
She is a strong lady with an innate determination to embrace change. Changes also imposed by the signs of time that goes by, that Benedetta never tried to cancel. She, instead, treasures and proudly shows them. Indeed, grey hair and wrinkles show a person’s naturalness, they simply say that the relentless march of time is not our sworn enemy, but something to appreciate and share with our head held high.
Benedetta’s legacy for young girls who want to become fashion models or for those women who already work in the fashion system, and also for all the other women is this: don’t be afraid of bearing the signs of time, of your time. They are the witness of your life and the guardian of your life’s memories. Do not betray your inner being; let your “time” show itself to the others without barriers, don’t be afraid!
