#amanda lear

Singer & performer Amanda Lear & surrealist icon Salvador Dali.

They met in Paris during the mid-1960s, in the orbit of fashion, art and avant-garde culture. According to several accounts, Amanda was introduced to Dali through the circle of Paco Rabanne and Catherine Harlé's modeling agency - worlds that naturally intersected with Dali's theatrical universe. From that moment, a genuine and deeply unconventional collaboration began.

Amanda was already a successful model, socialite & disco queen by the early 70s. She soon became part of Dali's everyday life: summers in Port Lligat, dinners, travels, performances, painting sessions and endless conversations. She totally entered his surreal universe: as a companion, participator and creative inspiration. They truly created some iconic imagery together during the 1970s.

Far from the myths and romantic speculation that surrounded them for decades, Amanda Lear often described their relationship as a pure friendship. Contrary to what many imagined, Dalí never had romantic or sexual interest toward her. Their bond was built on admiration, complicity, irony and artistic freedom.

Together, they transformed life itself into a surreal performance.

An encounter between two eccentric spirits that still fascinates today as one of the most iconic friendships in the history of art and culture.

Okay, before I go on: Amanda Lear has never fully come out as trans. She's hinted at it, gone back and forth with saying it, and other people and news organizations have outed her, but she herself has always come back to saying that she isn't. She's still considered a trans icon, nonetheless.

Anyway, the details of her early life are fuzzy, but she says she was born in Saigon in 1950, but other biographers say she was born in 1939. April Ashley would state that in the early 60s, they were working as drag queens at the same club, and that Amanda was publicly identifying as male.

What is undisputed, however, is that by the mid 1960s, she was working as a female model for Paco Rabanne, Ossie Clark, and Mary Quant, and other top designers.

This is when she met the artist Salvador Dalí and became his full-time muse. He called her, "It’s always been the Grecian ideal: the hermaphrodite, the divine being." When tabloids began speculating on rumors about her birth gender, "everyone will be intrigued by you,” he told her. “You’re neither a girl, nor a boy. You’re angelic, an archetype."

When Amanda got bored with modelling, "People give you money because you’re beautiful: it’s immoral, and stupid … I’ve done nothing, I am a coat hanger." In 1974, she posed for the cover of her ex-fiance's band, Roxy Music's album For Your Pleasure.

This caught the eye of David Bowie, who engaged in an affair with her, and bought vocal lessons for her. In 1977, she released her first album, and with that, became a Eurodisco legend

An HBO documentary comparing the lives and careers of April Ashley and Amanda Lear is supposed to come out in 2025, but I have no idea when exactly.

Sly Stone and Kathy Silva at their wedding reception with John Phillips, Amanda Lear, Andy Warhol, Jed Johnson, Francesco Scavullo, Diane von Furstenberg, Lorna Luft, Sidney Luft, and Donyale Luna at the Starlight Roof atop the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on June 5, 1974.