ELYSIAN Women Inspiring Women
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E L Y S I Marlene Dietrich A N VOLUME 10 • ISSUE 1 THE WOMEN AND WAR ISSUE / ÉDITION FEMMES ET GUERRE PRINTEMPS 2024
54 BY LAURIE BOGART WILES
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The City in Winter
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The splendor of Ukraine before war. BY KATE MCMULLEN
Cleopatra in Art
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The greatest woman warrior, leader, and beauty who has ever reigned. BY VERITY GALSWORTHY
Inspiring Women Lieutenant Colonel Sheri Biggs page 116 Phan Thi Kim Phuc page 128 INTERVIEWS BY KAREN FLOYD
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The Women of WAR
ELYSIAN Publisher Karen Floyd interviews twelve Ukrainian women behind the lines.
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war&history Mata Hari— The mysterious life of the exotic dancer, and World War I spy. BY CORA WALDEN
architecture&interiors Color me red, white, and blue. BY CAROLINE RYAN
52 shopping
Army green with envy. BY SINDIE FITZGERALD-RANKIN
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philanthropy When life sucks. BY CORA WALDEN
The Kim Foundation International—Nurturing, healing & hope. BY SONIA HENRY
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back story
Team ELYSIAN and the ELYSIAN Circle celebrate an unforgettable Winter magazine launch in Aspen.
on the cover
Philanthropist and Lieutenant Colonel Sheri Biggs photographed by Michael Paniccia.
WAR PAINT—The history of makeup. BY PEARL LUSTRE
beauty&style
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PHOTOGRAPH BY GROMOVATAYA / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
PUBLISHER
Karen Floyd
C R E AT O R - I N - C H I E F
Ryan Stalvey
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Laurie Bogart Wiles
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& I M PA C T
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& DEVELOPMENT
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D I G I TA L
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Ann Bible
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Carolyn Schoepf
EDITORIAL
POST-PRODUCTION
LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER
PHOTOGRAPHER
PHOTOGRAPHER
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ALL IT TAKES FOR EVIL TO PREVAIL, IS FOR PEOPLE OF GOOD CONSCIENCE TO REMAIN SILENT.” hy in the world would you travel to Ukraine and put your life at risk to film a documentary?” I was repeatedly asked. The question surprised me. As the founder and publisher of the ELYSIAN ecosystem for almost a decade, I have adhered strictly to our editorial mantra, “Women Inspiring Women.” Since its conception in 2013, I have been privileged to interview over a thousand professional, philanthropic, trendsetting women who have been featured in our magazine’s award-winning pages and captured on film. The inspiring stories of women who overcome, persevere, and endure are what undergirds “everything” ELYSIAN. Many share their vulnerability and pain while others recount tales of gratitude and blessings. Giving women their voice, with the hope others would find inspiration and connection, is central to ELYSIAN’s ethos. On February 21st, 2022, when Russia invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine, something inside of me was awakened. In our complex world of incredible advancement from sending NFTs to the moon, cranial implants, electric vehicles, clean energy, and more . . . how could this happen?
I believe
every person has a purpose; mine is to give sound to the voiceless. With the invasion weighing heavily on my heart, I decided to capture the Ukrainian women’s voices in film and expose the truth through a documentary. For weeks that were exhilarating, depressing, exhausting, and perilous, our small crew consisting of a cinematographer, translator, and soldiers, traveled covertly throughout Ukraine, to Kiev, and the deadly frontlines. We filmed remarkable Ukrainian women whose courage, fortitude, and love of family and the motherland gave a new dimension to “inspiring women.” Perhaps for the first time in my life, I came to understand the decisive role strong women selflessly assume when everything they love and hold dear is put on the line. Fight for Ukraine: 12 Women’s War reflected the interviews of a Supreme Court Justice, Nurse, Driver, Medic, Combat soldier, Widow expecting a child, Government official, Trainer, Interpreter, Reconnaissance soldier, Student, and Cook. They were brave in what were seemingly unnoticed, yet impactful ways. They maintained both their humanity and dignity in the face of evil. Their stories reminded me of an epiphany my only sister Kathy shared with me in her final stages of cancer. She was a world-class athlete, not to mention an academic with a doctorate and post-doctorate from Cal Tech. She was teaching at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in Seattle when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “We have it all wrong, Karen,” she said. “It is what each of us does every day that matters most - the small acts of bravery that are never seen, that move humanity forward.” Our 82-minute documentary, Fight for Ukraine: 12 Women’s War, is a testimony to that notion. The resilience of women when thrust into the agonies of war, in Ukraine or any part of a world in conflict, is inspiring. Their strength enables human existence. The documentary was awarded/selected for 6 International Film Festivals, yet I felt there was a deeper story to be told. And so, for the second time, we traveled to Ukraine to film the sequel, Fight for Ukraine; For the Children. The storyline is based upon a simple premise, that because women bring life into this world they are also uniquely impacted by the spoils of war. Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. I witnessed this in Ukraine, and central to genocide, was a systemic effort to remove hope and crush the human spirit. While filming there, we identified three horrific ways this was accomplished; the ultimate sacrifices of the soldiers, the isolation and despair of the women, and the marginalization and generational impact of war on children. In Kiev, there is a mural of three overlapping hands, a child, the mother, and the soldier. The mural is symbolic and portrays a visual “cry” to the world. It represents the hope and future of the country. The storyline Fight for Ukraine; For the Children focuses on these three central themes: why men are willing to die for the future of their motherland and their children; why women have a unique and formidable capacity to deal with suffering and still find meaning and hope, and finally why the children drive their united passion despite the horrors of war. For survivors of all war, it is my profound hope that they not just learn how to endure, survive, and exist, but to unlearn hate, animosity, and revenge. This issue is dedicated to all women who serve . . . because, as my sister Kathy explained, “True heroism stems from the quiet and unnoticed acts, oftentimes from women’s hands.” Much love,
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Karen Floyd Publisher
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war&history
mata hari BY CORA WALDEN
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he was an exotic dancer and courtesan from Leeuwarden, Netherlands, who was born in 1876 and died too young, age 41, on October 15, 1917, when she was captured, condemned, falsely convicted, and executed by firing squad in France as a German spy at the height of fighting during World War I. She was, in truth, a scapegoat and she will never be forgotten, because Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod was the femme fatale of all femme fatales, an incredible woman whose powers of seduction are legendary. The world, however, knows her by her stage name: MATA HARI.
The
firstborn and only daughter of four children of an affluent shop owner and investor, “M’greet,” as her family called her, had a privileged life until the age of 15, when her father went bankrupt and shortly after, her parents divorced and very soon after that, her mother died. Her father remarried a woman who cared nothing for M’greet and she was sent to live with her godfather in The Hague. She was 18 years old when she saw an ad in the newspaper placed by Dutch colonial army Captain Rudolf MacLeod, a descendant of the MacLeods of Skye and the Baroness Sweerts de Landas then living in the Dutch East Indies, who was in search of a wife. Her beauty was captured even in the rudimentary black and white photographs of the day, and the Captain proposed by mail, was accepted,
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KEYSTONE PRESS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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The firstborn and only daughter of four children of an affluent shop owner and investor, “M’greet,” as her family called her, had a privileged life until the age of 15, when her father went bankrupt. PWB IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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C
elebrating the body beautiful, “modesty” was not in Mata Hari’s vocabulary. Flaunting her curves, energized by her unbridled promiscuity, naughty and taunting, she was all the rage, and her audiences simply could not get enough of the woman. She posed as a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu birth and danced the sacred dances she had learned at the beginning of her marriage. Her only attire was a gold jeweled bra and nothing more. One French newspaper gushed, Mata Hari was “so feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body tremble in a thousand rhythms.” A Viennese journalist described her as “slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair” that gives her face “a strange foreign expression.”
In
the summer of 1916, while engaged in a dogfight against the Germans, Maslov was shot down and badly wounded, including the loss of his left eye, and taken to a French hospital on the Front. Despite being a citizen of a neutral country, Mata Hari was not permitted to be near the Front, but when word reached France’s Deuxième Bureau— France’s equivalent at that time of the KGB or M6—of her desperate desire to be reunited with her lover, France’s military intelligence agency offered her escort—providing she agreed to spy for France and to save Maslov’s life, she did. Prior to the outbreak of war, Mata Hari performed a number of times for Crown Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was technically serving as a senior German general on the Western Front. This association was known to French Intelligence, and they instructed Mata Hari to seduce Prince Wilhelm with the mission of obtaining valuable military information. The truth was, Prince Wilhelm’s knowledge of military secrets was nil. He was appointed a general by his father as a front for German government propaganda to portray the successor of the Hohenzollern monarchs and the throne of Prussia as a great and powerful military leader and worthy successor to his brilliant father, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In point of fact, Prince Wilhelm was a party-going lush and womanizer who socialized way too much and way too closely with a group of far right-wing German politicians who wished to depose the Kaiser.
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She met and fell in love with millionaire industrialist Émile Étienne Guimet, founder of the Musée Guimet, and became his longtime mistress. As the storm clouds of the Great War gathered, Mata Hari’s career declined and on March 13, 1915, at the age of 39, she performed her final show. Despite her ongoing affair with Guimet, she became a much-sought-after courtesan, engaging in relationships with high-ranking military officers, government officials, and powerful and influential men, often traveling in their company to many countries, frequenting Spain and Britain especially. When the war broke, she continued to travel freely for as a Dutch subject, Holland had proclaimed neutrality. Even so, as an international celebrity, she attracted attention wherever she went. It was during this time that she engaged in a passionate affair with Captain Vadim Maslov, a 23-yearold Russian pilot serving with the French. Despite the 15-year age difference, she would call him “the love of my life,” and proved that—because in the end, it was her devotion to him that would cost her her life.
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and returned to Amsterdam and wed his 19-year-old bride on July 11, 1895. Married into the Dutch upper class to a financially sound officer and living a life of luxury in Malang on the island of Java should have been her happily ever after but the union proved short-lived. Rejecting her two children much as her father rejected her, M’greet fled into the arms of another man when she could no longer bear her husband’s alcoholic tirades and physical abuse, and the repulsion of having to live openly with his concubine. During their separation, the disillusioned young woman immersed herself in Indonesian culture and joined a local Malaysian dance company. It was then that she adopted the performing name of Mata Hari which, in Malay, means “eye of the day.” This period of her life, too, was brief. At her husband’s urging she returned home to their son and daughter but shortly after, their infant son and daughter fell ill from syphilis contracted from both their parents and the little boy died. The couple, with their daughter, Jeanne, returned to Amsterdam, where they separated and divorced. M’greet was awarded custody of her daughter and Rudolf was legally required to pay child support but he never did; and after one court-allotted visit, he failed to return little Jeanne to her mother. Without the means to retain a lawyer and bring her ex-husband in front of the courts, she accepted the circumstances, convincing herself that as much as Rudolf had been an abusive husband, he had been a loving father. She never again saw her only child, who would die at the age of 21 from complications of syphilis. With no alimony or support from the wealthy MacLeod family, “Zelle,” as she now called herself, moved to Paris. The year was 1903 and she was twenty-seven. With no source of income, she performed as a circus horse rider under the name “Lady MacLeod,” despite her former married family’s protestations. She posed as an artist’s model and began performing in cabarets as an exotic dancer. There she caught the eye of booking agent Gabriel Astruc and on March 13, 1905, she opened her solo act as an exotic dancer in a special performance held at the Musée Guimet, the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts, in the 16th arrondissement in Paris. The woman the world would know as Mata Hari became an overnight success and in time joined Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis as one of the trailblazers of modern dance.
Mata Hari (stage name of Margaretha Geertruida “Grietje” Zelle, 1876-1917), Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan. She was accused of being a spy for Germany, and was executed by firing squad in France. Seen here in her garden at Neuilly, Paris, circa 1913. CHRONICLE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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CHRONICLE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ONE FRENCH NEWSPAPER GUSHED, MATA HARI WAS “SO FELINE, EXTREMELY FEMININE, MAJESTICALLY TRAGIC, THE THOUSAND CURVES AND MOVEMENTS OF HER BODY TREMBLE IN A THOUSAND RHYTHMS.” Mata Hari, as Agent H-21, transmitted her coded messages to French Intelligence for some months until late 1916, while traveling to Madrid, she was intercepted by a German military attaché named Major Arnold Kalle. Here history becomes clouded by intercepted messages, revelations of counter espionage, scandalous sex secrets divulged and circulated implicating French politicians and generals that all pointed to Mata Hari. Whatever the truth, six French double-agents embedded in Germany whose names were known to Mata Hari were captured and executed by the Germans. On February 13, 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Elysée Palace, accused of spying for Germany, and not only divulging the names of the six French spies but, by extension, causing the deaths of at least 50,000 French and Belgian soldiers. She testified, “My international connections are due of my work as a dancer, nothing else . . . Because I really did not spy, it is terrible that I cannot defend myself.” Most heartbreaking of all, however, was when she learned her embittered lover, Maslov, refused to testify in her defense, telling authorities he did not care if she was convicted or not. When she learned “the love of her life” had abandoned her, she fainted.
Her final words at the trial were, “A harlot? Yes, but a traitoress, never!” Mata Hari was executed by a French firing squad of twelve soldiers as dawn was breaking on the morning of October 14, 1917, two days before her 42nd birthday. She refused to be bound or blindfolded and moments before the order “Fire” was given, she blew a kiss to the firing squad. Her body was unclaimed and appropriated for use for medical study. Her remains were stored in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. Records from 1918 confirm this, however in 2000, it was discovered that her embalmed head was missing. In 2017, a century after her execution, the 1,275 pages of Mata Hari’s trial were unsealed and declassified by the French Army. In 2022, a spokesperson from the Mata Hari Foundation argued that at most, she was a low-level spy who provided no secrets to either side, stating: “We believe that there are sufficient doubts concerning the dossier of information that was used to convict her to warrant reopening the case. Maybe she wasn’t entirely innocent, but it seems clear she wasn’t the master spy whose information sent thousands of soldiers to their deaths, as has been claimed,” thus confirming what both Dutch Intelligence and MI5 concluded at the time, that Mata Hari was not guilty of the charges for which she was convicted. A petition to the French government issued by the Mata Hari Foundation to exonerate her conviction has yet to be addressed. ■
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In the early-morning hours of October 15, Mata Hari was awakened and taken by car from her Paris prison cell to an army barracks on the city’s outskirts where she was to meet her fate. Mata Hari was executed by a French firing squad of twelve soldiers two days before her 42nd birthday. She refused to be bound or blindfolded and moments before the order “Fire” was given, she blew a kiss to the firing squad. CHRONICLE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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