“Her name was Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha and she lived
in Rio. She would soon be known as Carmen Miranda. First she opened a
milliner’s shop and performed in cabarets to make a little extra money, but she
soon left the hat shop to dedicate herself to being a singer and a showgirl.
She was only about 5 feet tall, but she was all curves. She had a beautiful
expressive face and ironclad confidence. She wore decorative turbans topped
with exotic fruits, flowers and other objects in the style of the dresses of
women from Bahia.
This was topped with heaps of costume jewelry, handfuls of
bangles, colorful necklaces and ‘tutti frutti’ pendants. This overabundance of
ornamentation became a hallmark of her samba, a style that was in vogue in
North and South America…
The spirit of the Brazilian singer lives on mostly in the
jewels, which ripen like exotic fruits in the workshops of the big maisons.
Today, however, they are precious. The times in which divas had to decorate
themselves in brass alloys and colored Bakelite are in the past.” (Danieli,
Vogue Gioiello, May 2011 (n. 114), p. 100)
Click here to see more images taken in honor of
Carmen Miranda's legacy.
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