Free Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell Page B

body’s curves. She also wore the designs of the newly launched Marcel Rochas, who loaned or gifted her several outfits. She had many lovers, both male and female, and as her estrangement from Tadeusz moved towards the formal severance of divorce, she developed an increasingly close relationship with one of her patrons.
    Baron Raoul Kuffner had begun collecting Tamara’s work sometime in the late 1920s, and in 1928 he commissioned her to paint a portrait of his mistress, the Spanish dancer Nana de Herrera. It’s not clear at what point Tamara began to consider Kuffner as a potential husband. At this point he was still married to his first wife, and with his thick-set body and thinning hair he wasn’t particularly attractive to her, but he was very rich, cultured and kind, and she seems to have wanted to manoeuvre herself into a possible future with him. The portrait she painted of de Herrera was strategically unflattering – her thin shoulders hunched and her smile so tense as to resemble a snarl – and certainly, when Kuffner’s wife died in 1934 Tamara moved swiftly to secure him and his fortune.
    Even though she claimed to have made over a million dollars by the end of the decade, Tamara never felt she was rich enough or enviable enough. She was still consumed by the need to shore up her life. In the late 1920s she was approached by the wealthy scientist Pierre Boucard, who had made his fortune patenting the indigestion remedy Lactéol. Boucard wanted her to paint portraits of himself, his wife and his daughter and, in addition, he wanted first rights of purchase over all her work. The terms that Tamara negotiated were such that she was finally able to create the home of which she had dreamed since coming to Paris – a public showcase for her achievements and a monument to herself.
    In 1929 she bought a three-floor apartment on rue Méchain, big enough to double as both living space and studio, and hired the celebrated architect Roger Mallet-Stevens and her own sister Adrienne to remodel its interior. She wanted its style to reflect her own vision of contemporary luxe, with the airy chrome and glass structures of the staircases and mezzanine landings, the streamlined windows and radiator grilles, all complemented by a more theatrical glamour. She had a pair of vases made to her own design, with electric lights in their base that showed her favourite calla lilies to stagey effect; her large sofa was upholstered in a plush grey fabric that had her initials woven into the pattern.
    The centrepiece, of course, was Tamara herself, and photographs of her painting at her easel, in jewels and an elaborately draped evening gown, appeared in the press. It was the apotheosis of the image to which she had always aspired: rich, famous and beautiful, in charge of her own created kingdom. And the following commission she received felt like the inevitable next step in her career, allowing her to extend her reach across the Atlantic.
    A young American millionaire, Rufus Bush, had invited her to paint his wife’s portrait in New York, for which he was offering a fee of forty thousand francs, plus lavish expenses. In early October, Tamara made her first voyage to the United States in high style, ensconced in a first-class cabin and dining at the captain’s table every night. She was met by Bush and his wife with not one, but two Rolls-Royces standing by to transport her and her luggage, and she was booked into the recently opened Savoy Hotel on 5th Avenue, an art deco temple to beauty and excess.
    From her first day in Manhattan she felt as if she had come home. The city was living the American dream to the hilt, with the ever-rising stock market promising a season of even more extravagant parties and consumption. Tamara was enchanted by this vision of a city at play, of ‘women who … flirted and laughed as their men heaped fortune upon fortune and gave away mink coats and diamond bracelets and thousand-dollar bills as party