Valentine Schlee

Valentina flirting with the camera in New York and showing an interviewer how her dress could transform from day to night, Valentina Schlee seems the ultimate female fashion designer: making clothes in her own image and displaying them on her body.

The mysterious Russian émigré, who was at the pinnacle of New York society in the 1940s, can be seen in the early television interview proving that women who create fashion have always been their own role models.

At the Museum of the City of New York, an exhibition opened last week devoted to the half-forgotten Valentina, whose silver screen clients (including Greta Garbo, with whom she supposedly had a romantic attachment) made her the first designer to exploit the cachet of celebrity and to be an early convert to modernism.