Siberian Dream - Softcover

Pantaeva, Irina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553812408 ISBN 13: 9780553812404

Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group), 1999

Synopsis

The tale of a courageous young woman. Irina Pantaeva was born in communist Siberia, where individuality was stifled. Her parents refused to join the Communist Party, and Irina, picked by a talent scout to star in a Soviet film, went on to conquer the fashion world and become an international model.

About this title

About the Author:

Irina Pantaeva has been featured in magazines around the world from Vogue, Elle and Bazaar to The New York Times Magazine, The Times and The New Yorker. She has also appeared in television and films, including most recently Mortal Kombat, Third Rock From the Sun and Woody Allen's forthcoming Celebrity. She lives in New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

Veronica Webb, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss?all the supermodels have caught the writing bug, usually to unimpressive effect. Not so, however, with Waris Dirie (see review below) or Pantaeva?born a Buryat Eskimo in the Siberian city of Ulan Ude (pop. 300,000)?whose delightful, moving and at times harrowing saga of her struggle to make it as a fashion model in the West rarely descends into falseness or cliche. "My people were nomads for a millenni[um]," Pantaeva writes, "and in time their blood compelled me across the world." As a child in the U.S.S.R., Pantaeva repeatedly rebelled against the Stalinist educational system, while struggling to maintain a strong bond with her parents, who worked in the theater and subsisted through the long Siberian winters on a diet of cabbage and carrots. Early on, it becomes clear to Pantaeva that she wants more, and she soon embarks on an arduous journey?narrated here as a comedy of errors?from a local fashion house to Moscow's Gorky studios, a kind of Soviet Disney Co. (at one point, she even meets up with the Dalai Lama). Pantaeva finally arrives, penniless, in Paris with dreams of modeling for a famous couturier and manages to catch the eye of Karl Lagerfeld, but not before hearing most of the fashion cognoscenti deride her "exotic" beauty. That was the early '90s, however, when waifs and grunge were the order of the day. By the final chapter, tastes have changed, and an ethnic chic has swept Pantaeva onto the runways, as she marries her soulmate in New York in the wake of the collapse of the oppressive government that drove her away. (Sept.) FYI: In 1995, Pantaeva was the subject of a New Yorker profile by novelist Jay McInerney.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group)
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0553812408
• ISBN 13: 9780553812404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320