In her own words: the late China Machado, West's first non-white cover girl
The Shanghai-born model of Macanese descent and first Asian to appear in an American glossy fashion magazine, died on December 18, 2016. She may have long quit the catwalk, but in this 2013 interview, she could still strike a mean pose
''I've never dieted, never exercised, I eat like a pig and I drink - mainly vodka," declares China Machado, putting a Parliament to her lips before adding, somewhat superfluously: "I still smoke, too." If ever evidence were needed that it really is all in the genes, I'd present Machado - spry, sparky and unfeasibly youthful-looking at 82 - as exhibit A.
She was once dubbed "probably the most beautiful woman in the world" by photographer Richard Avedon, for whom she was chosen model and muse. Machado's exquisite, exotic face made her the first non-white cover girl in the West. But beyond the couture houses and catwalks where she was fêted 50 years ago, she also eloped with Luis Miguel Dominguin, the famous Spanish bullfighter; enjoyed an affair with Hollywood actor William Holden; partied in Paris with Pablo Picasso and in New York with Andy Warhol; travelled the world with Avedon, first as a model, then as a fashion editor; launched clothing lines; produced television; and raised two daughters, largely as a single mother.
"I never dreamt that I would do all the things that I have done," Machado says, more with wonder than braggadocio. "But things just happened to me all the time."
And they continue to happen. Three years ago, a lavish 20-page feature, shot by Bruce Weber for W magazine, thrust her back into the spotlight. "I didn't want to model again - I quit serious modelling in 1962," she insists. "Once you have worked with Avedon, you don't really want to work with anyone else." And yet, five decades on, she is once again signed to the modelling agency IMG.
Age has not diminished the imperious impact of her high cheekbones, full mouth and feline eyes, and she's still slender and taut, with not a hint of a bingo wing or sagging chin. Watching her patiently strike well-practised poses for our photographer, in an emerald-green Saint Laurent gown, I suspect she is not quite as reluctant to have returned to her former profession as she says. The only downside seems to be that so in demand is she, her autobiography remains as yet unwritten.