Phyllis/ Anjali Mendes - Revision history

Pdewan: /* Biographical details */

2023-06-15T20:36:35Z

‎Biographical details

Pdewan: /* Biographical details */

2023-06-15T20:35:04Z

‎Biographical details

Pdewan: /* Dileep Padgaonkar: Parisian saga of a babe from Byculla */

2023-06-15T20:31:10Z

‎Dileep Padgaonkar: Parisian saga of a babe from Byculla

Pdewan: /* Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan" */

2023-06-15T20:30:42Z

‎Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"

Pdewan: /* Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan" */

2023-06-15T20:29:26Z

‎Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"

Pdewan at 20:28, 15 June 2023

2023-06-15T20:28:58Z

Pdewan at 20:19, 15 June 2023

2023-06-15T20:19:54Z

Pdewan at 20:17, 15 June 2023

2023-06-15T20:17:04Z

Pdewan at 20:11, 15 June 2023

2023-06-15T20:11:55Z

Pdewan: /* Biographical details */

2015-02-04T19:05:15Z

‎Biographical details

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 =Biographical details=
-[[File: Anjali Mendes yy.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
+[[File: Anjali Mendes yyy.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 '''She quit while on top: ''' Paris was her home, but she returned to India to celebrate Xmas with her family. In 1979, her mother passed away due to a stroke. Her father followed in the early 1980s. Back in Paris, having inherited her grandmother's hands for Indian cooking, she had become a popular hostess. At the height of her modelling career, she quit. Pierre asked her to look after the India side of his work and she became his businesswoman for 18 years. When the design house completed 50 years in 2000, it shut down overseas offices. She left gracefully. Subsequently, cooking and putting together a recipe book (an Indian cookbook that she published as ''Cuisine Indienne De Mere En Fille'') kept her busy.
 [[Category:Fashion|MPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 =Biographical details=
-[[File: Anjali Mendes y.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
+[[File: Anjali Mendes yy.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 '''She quit while on top: ''' Paris was her home, but she returned to India to celebrate Xmas with her family. In 1979, her mother passed away due to a stroke. Her father followed in the early 1980s. Back in Paris, having inherited her grandmother's hands for Indian cooking, she had become a popular hostess. At the height of her modelling career, she quit. Pierre asked her to look after the India side of his work and she became his businesswoman for 18 years. When the design house completed 50 years in 2000, it shut down overseas offices. She left gracefully. Subsequently, cooking and putting together a recipe book (an Indian cookbook that she published as ''Cuisine Indienne De Mere En Fille'') kept her busy.
 =Dileep Padgaonkar: Parisian saga of a babe from Byculla=

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 My wife and I asked her over for dinner that very evening. Since she towered over both of us, the first thing I asked her was: ‘How’s the weather up there?’ Without a moment’s hesitation she answered: ‘Very, very cool. And down there?’ The repartee was the beginning of a friendship that remained intact, despite frequent interruptions lasting several years, for over four decades.
 Throughout the evening, Phyllis spoke about the turns and twists in her young life: a strict, religious upbringing in a lower middle class Goan Roman Catholic family; a difficult childhood and adolescence in the back lanes of Byculla; indifferent studies in school and college; the initial forays in modelling; the first crushes and so forth. But what caught our attention was her fierce ambition to wow the rich and famous who frequented the salons of Parisian fashion designers. It reflected her deep-seated desire to get even with those who had heaped insults and indignities on her back home because of her class origins, dark skin, ordinary looks, poor eye-sight and, not least, her tall and lanky frame.
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 Phyllis died alone and abandoned in her home in the south of France last week. She had just moved in there from Paris. She was 64 years old. One should hope that the weather up there continues to keep her cool.
 =Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"=
 [[File:  Anjali Mendes z.jpg| Anjali Mendes <br/> YSL <br/> Abraham|frame|500px]]

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 She was the cynosure of everyone's eye, always surrounded by fans and critics she was the darling of the town. But when she died, she died a lonely death in her apartment far away from Paris at the ripe age of 64. She always yearned for love and had many suitors too! But this diva did not have anyone whom she could turn to for love and care. What an irony! The woman who was the toast of Paris died two weeks back in a hospital in Aix-en-Provence battling an unidentified stomach infection all alone.
 Friends remember Mendes for her humility and gregariousness. "She may have been the toast of tout Paris and presiding deity at the House of Pierre Cardin for decades, but her heart remained in India", says De. Ad man Gerson da Cunha adds that though she spoke fluent French, she never attempted to hide her strong Indian accent. "I think she betrayed her most noteworthy quality by getting into modelling", says da Cunha. "She was so smart and focused that she would have made a great manager". Cardin believed so too.
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 But lurking beneath it all was another Phyllis: vulnerable to the feeblest slight, real or imagined, insecure to the extreme, aware at all times that life had denied her the one thing that she truly yearned for beyond fame and money: love that resembled a Barbara Cartland romance.
 [[Category:Fashion|MPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDESPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES

@@ Line 77: / Line 77: @@
 Phyllis died alone and abandoned in her home in the south of France last week. She had just moved in there from Paris. She was 64 years old. One should hope that the weather up there continues to keep her cool.
 =Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"=
-[[File:  Anjali Mendes.jpg| Anjali Mendes <br/> YSL <br/> Abraham|frame|500px]]
+[[File:  Anjali Mendes z.jpg| Anjali Mendes <br/> YSL <br/> Abraham|frame|500px]]
 She was the cynosure of everyone's eye, always surrounded by fans and critics she was the darling of the town. But when she died, she died a lonely death in her apartment far away from Paris at the ripe age of 64. She always yearned for love and had many suitors too! But this diva did not have anyone whom she could turn to for love and care. What an irony! The woman who was the toast of Paris died two weeks back in a hospital in Aix-en-Provence battling an unidentified stomach infection all alone.
@@ Line 122: / Line 122: @@
 Two months ago, on a visit to Delhi, she gave Dileep Padgaonkar, the manuscript of her autobiography and asked me to edit it and help her find a publisher. It ran into 382 pages, each one more whacky than the other. It was, on the one hand, a fusillade of rants against all and sundry and, on the other, self-serving accounts of the highs and lows in her life.
 But lurking beneath it all was another Phyllis: vulnerable to the feeblest slight, real or imagined, insecure to the extreme, aware at all times that life had denied her the one thing that she truly yearned for beyond fame and money: love that resembled a Barbara Cartland romance.
 =Colleagues’ reminiscences=

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[File:  Anjali Mendes.jpg| Anjali Mendes |frame|500px]]
+[[File:  Anjali Mendes.jpg| Anjali Mendes <br/> YSL <br/> Abraham|frame|500px]]
 =Sources=
@@ Line 77: / Line 77: @@
 Phyllis died alone and abandoned in her home in the south of France last week. She had just moved in there from Paris. She was 64 years old. One should hope that the weather up there continues to keep her cool.
 =Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"=
 She was the cynosure of everyone's eye, always surrounded by fans and critics she was the darling of the town. But when she died, she died a lonely death in her apartment far away from Paris at the ripe age of 64. She always yearned for love and had many suitors too! But this diva did not have anyone whom she could turn to for love and care. What an irony! The woman who was the toast of Paris died two weeks back in a hospital in Aix-en-Provence battling an unidentified stomach infection all alone.
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 PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES]]
 [[Category:Pages with broken file links|PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES
 PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES]]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 [[File:  Anjali Mendes.jpg| Anjali Mendes |frame|500px]]
-[[File: Anjali Mendes y.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
-[[File: a1.png|frame|700px|]]
-[[File: mendes3.jpg| Anjali Mendes. From [http://www.orble.com/farewell-pierre-cardins-muse-anjali-mendes/ Orble.com]|frame|500px]]
 =Sources=
 i)	Dileep Padgaonkar, Parisian saga of a babe from Byculla
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 =Biographical details=
 (Adapted from Anubha Sawhney's seminal article on Mendes, which is the source of most of the tributes to Mendes that have been published.)
@@ Line 45: / Line 46: @@
 '''She was Pierre's muse for 12 years: '''She became the first dark-skinned model to walk the ramp. For the next 12 years, she was Pierre's muse and he designed all his collections around her. Pierre let her work for designers such as Ungaro, Givenchy and Scaperelli, to name a few. The only designer she didn't model for was Yves St Laurent — she had too big a bosom for his liking.
 '''Her love was not meant to last: '''While in Paris, she met an Englishman. A gourmet, he taught her all about food, wine, theatre, opera and made her a svengali. She fell in love and they decided to get married. When he succumbed to cancer before their wedding, her life lost all meaning. She have not lived like a nun after him but she could never have married any of the men she have met since then.
@@ Line 74: / Line 78: @@
 =Dipayan: "An ugly duckling who transformed into a beautiful swan"=
 She was the cynosure of everyone's eye, always surrounded by fans and critics she was the darling of the town. But when she died, she died a lonely death in her apartment far away from Paris at the ripe age of 64. She always yearned for love and had many suitors too! But this diva did not have anyone whom she could turn to for love and care. What an irony! The woman who was the toast of Paris died two weeks back in a hospital in Aix-en-Provence battling an unidentified stomach infection all alone.
 Friends remember Mendes for her humility and gregariousness. "She may have been the toast of tout Paris and presiding deity at the House of Pierre Cardin for decades, but her heart remained in India", says De. Ad man Gerson da Cunha adds that though she spoke fluent French, she never attempted to hide her strong Indian accent. "I think she betrayed her most noteworthy quality by getting into modelling", says da Cunha. "She was so smart and focused that she would have made a great manager". Cardin believed so too.
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 [[Category:India|MPHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES
 PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES]]
 [[Category:Pages with broken file links|PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES]]

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 [[File: Mendes.jpg|frame|450px|Mendes at Pierre Cardin’s 1976 spring-summer show in Paris]]
 [[File: a1.png|frame|700px|]]
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 Shobhaa De recalls becoming fast friends with Mendes from the day they met around 40 years ago at an audition. “Those were the early, heady years when modelling was just about coming of age in India. She was ridiculed here and going to Paris was one of her best decisions,” says De, adding that Mendes rose rapidly to become something of a cultural icon, feted and adored by the press in Europe, courted by visiting royalty, movie stars and the international jet set.
-[[Category:India|M]]
+[[Category:Fashion|M
-[[Category:Fashion|M]]
+PHYLLIS/ ANJALI MENDES]]

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 (Adapted from Anubha Sawhney's seminal article on Mendes, which is the source of most of the tributes to Mendes that have been published.)
--2010
+'''1946-2010'''
 The first dark-skinned model to grace the Parisian ramp... Pierre Cardin's muse for 12 years... India's first and only supermodel on the international stage. But if life is beautiful for Anjali Mendes, it is because she has been able to take the rejection, preceding the recognition, in her stride and overcome the ordeal of love's labour lost. meets a free spirit who doesn't live life after a fashion, but fashions her own life