Remembering Marina Schiano: Model, Muse, and Magnate

Marina Schiano, the fiery model, photographer, muse, and jewelry designer, has died. She was 71. Schiano was one of those rangy, long-haired beauties who traipsed through the pages of Vogue in its jet-setting Diana Vreeland days. In 1968 she appeared in an extravagant 28-page feature photographed in Mexico by Henry Clarke. In a blog entry, lensman Clive Arrowsmith remembers being introduced to Schiano by stylist Grace Coddington, who told him, “I have the most incredible Italian model for you to work with. You will adore her with your fetish for Renaissance faces.” In more than one sitting for Vogue, she flashed a Gioconda smile.

“A lot of people come to New York to become stars, don’t they?” muses photographer and author Eric Boman, who knew Schiano for 50 years. Theirs was a coup de friendship; the pair hit it off the first time they met. Schiano came to New York in 1967, arriving, says Boman, with an Italian friend, Elsa Peretti, who would become a muse to Halston before taking up jewelry. Both were favorites of Vreeland, wrote Diane von Furstenberg in her memoir, “because, in some ways, she thought they both looked like her.” Soon the friends were caught up in the social whirl that centered around Andy Warhol and Halston. (Schiano was briefly married to Fred Hughes, Warhol’s right-hand man.) If her nights were wild, Schiano’s days were ordered—as was her closet. (“I’m a neatness maniac,” she once told Vogue. “Even if I come home at 3 a.m., I put everything back in its place.”)

In 1971 Schiano started working at Yves Saint Laurent’s men’s boutique. A less celebrated muse to the designer than Betty Catroux or Loulou de la Falaise, Schiano was one of the designer’s inner circle. “Direct, passionate, she is capable of great authority and efficiency as the director of Yves Saint Laurent’s New York boutiques,” wrote Maxime McKendry (Louolou’s mother) in a 1973 Vogue article titled, “Yves Saint Laurent and His Private Five.” “Marina talks at top speed in long gossip sessions—often on the telephone—for she is deeply interested in other people’s lives.” In 1978, Schiano would mastermind the launch of Saint Laurent’s best-selling fragrance, Opium, in New York. So luxe was the fête that it’s still spoken of today. “Marina will forever be linked with Yves Saint Laurent as she was the personification of his modern woman; fiercely independent, a bold businesswoman within a man’s world, and profoundly chic,” says Madison Cox, president of Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent Paris, in a statement. “She moved with élan within the highest levels of the corporate fashion world, only to one day leave it all behind and live simply in Brazil. That in itself takes a courage and intelligence that typified Marina.”

Schiano segued from her role as an executive vice president of Yves Saint Laurent and its representative in the U.S. to lead national and international public relations for Calvin Klein in 1982, following which she became the creative style director at Vanity Fair under Tina Brown. After joining her husband in Brazil, she designed jewelry and worked on a book of her photographs.

“She was highly original and very proud of not adjusting to anything,” Boman tells Vogue. “I can tell you something that is interesting about her,” he continues. “Marina became a model because she wanted to be beautiful. Her mother had always told her that she was ugly; that drove her to do the modeling and become Yves Saint Laurent’s muse and everything.” The duckling became a swan; and, having taken her final flight, she will always be remembered as one.

Originally Appeared on Vogue