The woman dressed in stars

The fact that there are several very young women around the world named Chanel – including a Congolese basketball player – is an obvious, albeit somewhat confusing, tribute to the brand’s fame and to the surname of its founder, who remains very much alive in the global consciousness thanks to skilful and consistent marketing efforts. The fact, however, that there is an accessories designer living in Naples, in her forties, named Hedylamarr – christened with the first name and surname, which are, incidentally, fictitious, of a 1930s film star – is particularly interesting because it opens up entirely new perspectives on both the study of personal records and the codes governing the enduring nature of myth. In the case of Hedy Lamarr, this applies not only to the worlds of cinema and fashion, but also to science. In the wake of the current rediscovery of female mathematical geniuses such as Ada Lovelace – Lord Byron’s daughter, who laid the foundations for computer science – Hedy has also come to the fore. Born in 1914 in Vienna as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, the daughter of the Jewish upper middle class and a graduate in engineering, she is, to put it very briefly, the woman who invented Wi-Fi. A staunch opponent of Nazism, the ‘Ziegfeld Girl’ (1941)—a cult film for three generations of costume designers, couturiers and fashion designers – from Danilo Donati to Valentino and Giuseppe di Morabito – worked for the US intelligence services whilst in the United States, where she had sought refuge to escape Nazism, and, together with the composer George Antheil, patented the so-called ‘frequency hopping’ technique, which decades later would form the basis of the technology developed to create GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – the reason she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Now her formulas feature on a limited-edition handbag curated by her namesake, Hedylamarr Rodrigues, a Brazilian designer based in Italy; they were crafted by a renowned Neapolitan artisan, Salvatore Polieri, and unveiled in recent weeks at the Rome Film Festival. “The idea of creating a collection in her honour came about during the pandemic, when I commissioned a painting from her daughter, Denise Loder-de Luca. Having the portrait of this inimitable woman first in my home and then in my office led me to ask myself what she meant to me and how I could pass on the legacy of such a strong figure to others. The handbag is a way of preserving and celebrating her signature style.” There are no references to her films, nor to the marvellous costumes designed for her by Gilbert Adrian, who was enchanted by that ‘exotic’ beauty – by Hollywood standards – with her raven hair and ivory complexion, which, by contrast, made the platinum-blonde stars of the 1930s appear faded, old-fashioned and vulgar: to dress her in The Lady of the Tropics (1939), Adrian spent over 35,000 dollars – a staggering sum for the time – enveloping her face in a highly sophisticated reworking of the characteristic Al-Amira hijab, with the veil extending from the bonnet. Yet, as the diva’s granddaughter, Wendy Colton—who dedicated a documentary to her grandmother (Bombshell, 2017, available on Prime Video)—recounts, nothing from those glamorous years has survived to the present day, neither preserved nor even mentioned. “My grandmother was always very private, and this naturally extended to her family as well. We lived far apart, so we didn’t get to spend much time together. The last time I met her in person, I was six years old. But we spoke a great deal; she managed many of her relationships over the telephone. She had erected a wall between herself and her career, drawing a line under her past: she never spoke of it, not even to us, her family.” Like many other artists, Hedy Lamarr too had struggled with managing her alter ego – that other self who was the character she herself had brought to life. With the exception of a few television appearances, she chose to lead an ordinary life, albeit one not without its torments and shadows – such as the episodes of kleptomania that sadly brought her back into the headlines on several occasions. She spent her final days in a care home. “She no longer wanted to be part of the world of celebrities; she had absolutely no interest in fame.” One might imagine her wardrobe as a wunderkammer filled with costumes and memorabilia from the films she had starred in, including the famous peacock dress—covered in peacock feathers—which Edith Head had made for her in Samson and Delilah (1949), for which she won an Oscar and which still features in the dreams of queens everywhere. In 1968, she got rid of all her possessions by putting them up for auction, precisely to draw a line under her glorious past. So how did a woman who had embodied the very essence of glamour dress in her everyday life? “She had an extremely confident, daring and yet natural style.” It is no coincidence that all fashion designers idolised her and continue to do so. She possessed the natural nonchalance that designers seek in all their muses. “And in her everyday life,” adds her granddaughter, “she exuded a casual yet chic elegance. Fundamentally, she had remained a European.”