Career
She was a designer of knitwear and, later, a poet and composer. Born in France, Simone Micheline Bodin was described as "a freckle-faced rail worker"s daughter from Brittany" before becoming a model. She was renamed and recreated by Jacques Fath, who told her, "We already have a Simone.
You look to me like a Bettina." Bodin was invited by Christian Dior to join his fashion house which she refused, choosing instead to work for Fath.
Bodin became one of the century"s first supermodels, rivalled in the 1940s only by Barbara Goalen. She was associated with Lucien Lelong and Jacques Fath, but most importantly with Hubert de Givenchy, for whom she worked as a model and press agent.
Givenchy named his first collection, which debuted in 1952, after her. One of his designs, the Byronesque "Bettina blouse", became a fashion icon in the early 1950s and inspired the bottle for the best-selling Givenchy perfume "Amarige".
Later she was the fiancée of Prince Aly Khan, who briefly was the United Nations ambassador from Pakistan.
She retired from modeling in 1955, after meeting Aly Khan. After Khan"s death, Bettina wrote an autobiography, Bettina par Bettina. She died at 89 in 2015.