Words: Tina Edward Gunawardhana
Illustrations: Naeem Riad based on original photos from the Internet
Bewitching beauty and top British model Nina Dyer was born in Ceylon in 1930. a member of the original European jetset, Nina married two of the richest men in the world: Baron Thyssen and Prince Aga Khan.
Nina Sheila Dyer was born in the former British colony of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka in 1930. Her father was a British tea planter while her mother was Indian although some claim her to be Burgher. Little is documented of her childhood in Ceylon but at the age of twenty she took wing to England. Her dream was to become an actress. Moving to Liverpool, Nina enrolled in a drama school where she took classes in acting after which she moved to London. As fate would have it, instead of film or theatre producers it was the eminent fashion designers of that era that noticed her.
Nina was blessed with a splendid figure which had been sculpted by her love for swimming and thus embarked on a career as a swimwear model. Attesting to her enviable figure a British newspaper columnist of the time noted “ Nina Dyer didn’t make her way through the modelling ranks in the usual way. Instead, she exploded onto the Côte d’Azur in the summer of 1950, with a body newspapers dubbed ’the best friend a bikini ever had.” However despite such plaudits Nina’s face proved to be an obstacle. At that time English Fashion houses considered her high cheekbones and full lips as “excessively exotic for conservative British tastes.”
Undeterred Nina made it her mission to contact several French fashion houses where she believed they would appreciate her beauty. Her mission proved successful as when Nina moved to Paris, the capital of haute couture she met Pierre Balmain. Considered a renowned couturier, Blamain had dressed movie stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh and aristocrats such as Queen Sirikit of Thailand and Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.
