FIP of the week (Fashion Icon of the Past) is Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) who was a Swiss writer, journalist and photographer. From an early age, she began to dress and act like a boy, a behaviour not discouraged especially by her mother who actively encouraged her. Annemarie moved to Berlin in 1930 with her friend Klaus Mann (son of Thomas Mann), who was queer as well and settled in with the Mann family. It was then that she began taking drugs, an addiction that would plague her from then on. Along with addiction, she had mental illnesses, such as depression, that would play an intense role in her life
. Her life in Berlin was a wild one, her friend Ruth Landshoff describing her during that time as: “She lived dangerously. She drank too much. She never went to sleep
before dawn”. Berlin was a hub for queer expression and art during this particular period of history.
But like many others, her lifestyle ended in 1933 when the Nazis took over, and the Berlin she had fallen in love with disappeared. At the same time, the conflict within her family heightened. She continued consorting with anti-fascists and claimed to be one herself.
In contrast, her family continued their support of the far-right in Switzerland and, by extension, the Nazi party in Germany. She married In 1935, a French diplomat in Persia named Achille-Claude Clarac, who was a gay man. It allowed both to have their relationships outside of their marriage without conflict, gave them a cover for inquiries into their sexuality, and allowed Annemarie to get a diplomatic passport, allowing her to travel to America, and later Afghanistan.
On a trip back to Switzerland 1942 she got into a bicycle accident and hit her head, and died over a month later. She’s a FIP to me for amazing androgynous style. A complete individual! Her friend Marianne Breslauer said “She was neither a man nor a woman,” she wrote, “but an angel, an archangel!”