Fashion & Entertainment
Models, dancers, photographers and entertainers with roots in Russia or the Soviet Union.
This category documents models, dancers, photographers, and entertainers with roots in Russia or the Soviet Union whose work shapes global fashion and popular culture.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Soviet-trained dancer who redefined American ballet
Alexey Brodovitch
The Russian émigré who reinvented American design
Anna Pavlova
Prima ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet; first ballerina to tour the world
Anna Trebunskaya
Russian ballroom champion who became a Dancing with the Stars fan favourite
Anne V (Vyalitsyna)
Nizhny Novgorod's model who conquered New York
Annie Leibovitz
Portrait photographer born in Waterbury, Connecticut; Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue
Artem Chigvintsev
Vladivostok-born dancer who conquered Hollywood.
Bar Refaeli
Israel's global face with Eastern European roots.
Calvin Klein
American fashion designer, born in the Bronx
Chaim Soutine
Painter of the School of Paris, born in Smilavichy near Minsk
Cheryl Burke
Dancing with the Stars champion with Russian Empire roots who became America's most-watched ballroom dancer
Dasha Zhukova
Moscow-born art patron and Garage Museum founder who brought contemporary art to Russia
David Copperfield
Illusionist; grandson of Jewish emigrants from the Ukrainian SSR
Diane Arbus
Photographer born in New York; granddaughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant on her father's side
Diane von Furstenberg
Fashion designer born in Brussels, creator of the wrap dress (1974); daughter of a father born in Bessarabia
Dmitry Chaplin
Rostov-born dancer who became a So You Think You Can Dance star and Broadway choreographer
Ernst Neizvestny
Yekaterinburg sculptor who argued with Khrushchev and created the Tree of Life
Erté (Romain de Tirtoff)
Art Deco designer born in St Petersburg, son of an admiral; some 240 covers for Harper's Bazar and costumes for the Folies-Bergère
Esti Ginzburg
Israeli model and actress with Russian-Jewish roots who became a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit star
Eugenia Volodina
Kazan supermodel who became one of the world's top runway stars of the 2000s
Fred Astaire
Dancer and actor, star of Top Hat and Swing Time; son of Fritz Austerlitz of Linz, Austria-Hungary
Gala Dalí
Born in Kazan, raised in Moscow: wife of Paul Éluard and then of Salvador Dalí, his muse, model and manager
Gleb Savchenko
Moscow-born professional dancer and Dancing with the Stars fan favourite
Gregori Warchavchik
Odessa-born architect who introduced modernism to Brazil with the first modernist house in Latin America
Harry Seidler
Born in Vienna to Russian-Bessarabian Jewish parents, became Australia's greatest modernist architect
Ilya Kabakov
Born in Dnipro, became the most celebrated conceptual artist of the Soviet underground
Irina Shayk
Model born Irina Shaykhlislamova in Yemanzhelinsk in 1986; first Russian on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (2011)
Jaime Lerner
Son of Polish-Russian Jewish immigrants who transformed Curitiba into the world's most liveable city
Karina Smirnoff
Kharkiv-born ballroom champion and Dancing with the Stars professional dancer
Katya Jones
St. Petersburg-born multiple world champion who became Strictly Come Dancing's Russian star
Kazimir Malevich
Painter and theorist born in Kiev; founder of Suprematism and painter of the Black Square
Komar & Melamid
Moscow conceptual art duo who invented Sots Art, emigrated to New York, and turned democracy into a painting
Kristina Rihanoff
Vladivostok-born ballroom champion and Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer
Lasar Segall
Born in Vilnius, became Brazil's most important modernist painter
Lilia Kopylova
Moscow-born ballroom champion and Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer
Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Odessa-born ballroom champion who became Dancing with the Stars' most beloved bad boy
Man Ray
Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia to Russian-Jewish immigrants; Dada and Surrealist photographer
Marc Chagall
Vitebsk's dreamer who painted heaven on Earth
Mark Rothko
From Dvinsk to the sublime: Rothko's color fields
Maryna Linchuk
Minsk-born Victoria's Secret Angel who became one of the world's top supermodels
Mathilde Kschessinska
Prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Russian Ballet, born near Peterhof; taught in Paris from 1929
Michael Kors
Fashion designer born on Long Island, New York
Mikhail Chemiakin
Moscow-born artist who was expelled from the Soviet Union and befriended Vladimir Vysotsky in Paris
Natalia Vodianova
Model and philanthropist born in Gorky in 1982; Calvin Klein's exclusive face for eight seasons and founder of the Naked Heart Foundation
Natasha Poly
Perm-born supermodel who became one of the world's most recognisable faces on the runway
Naum Gabo
Constructivist sculptor born Naum Pevzner in 1890; co-author of the Realistic Manifesto (Moscow, 1920); later in Berlin, England and the United States
Nigella Lawson
Food writer and broadcaster — How to Eat, How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Bites; great-granddaughter of a merchant from Mitau in Courland
Oleg Cassini
Born in Paris to a Russian diplomat family — became Jackie Kennedy's official couturier
Ossip Zadkine
Sculptor from Vitebsk who made his career in Paris; author of The Destroyed City in Rotterdam (1953)
Pasha Kovalev
Siberian ballroom champion who became Strictly Come Dancing's most passionate professional dancer
Peggy Guggenheim
Art collector and patron born in New York; founder of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
Ralph Lauren
Fashion designer; son of emigrants from Pinsk and Drahichyn
Rotem Sela
Israeli actress and model with Turkish and Polish Jewish roots — voice of a generation on social media
Sasha Farber
Moscow-born Dancing with the Stars professional and fan favourite
Sasha Pivovarova
Moscow-born Prada muse and avant-garde supermodel who redefined the early 2000s runway
Slava Polunin
Novozybkov-born clown who created Snowshow — the most magical theatre production of the 20th century
Sonia Delaunay
Painter and designer born in Ukraine and raised in St Petersburg; co-founder of Simultanism and the first living woman artist given a Louvre retrospective (1964)
Tamara Karsavina
Born in St. Petersburg — Diaghilev's prima ballerina and Nijinsky's partner in The Firebird and Petrushka
Tamara de Lempicka
Born in Warsaw — the Art Deco queen whose portraits of the jet set defined the glamour of the 1920s
Tatiana Patitz
Hamburg-born supermodel of Baltic-Russian origin — one of the original five supermodels of the 1990s
Theodore Kosloff
Born in Moscow — the Imperial Ballet dancer who became Cecil B. DeMille's choreographer and silent film star
Val Chmerkovskiy
Odessa-born ballroom champion and Dancing with the Stars fan favourite — Maksim's brother
Valentina Zelyaeva
Born in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia — the supermodel from Siberia's Buddhist heartland who walked for Chanel and Prada
Vaslav Nijinsky
Born in Kyiv — the greatest male dancer in history, whose Afternoon of a Faun shocked Paris and changed art forever
Vlada Roslyakova
Born in Omsk, Siberia — became one of the world's top supermodels and a Chanel muse
Wassily Kandinsky
Moscow-born father of abstract painting
William Kentridge
Johannesburg-born artist; grandson of the Lithuanian-born lawyer Morris Kentridge
Xenia Deli
Xenia Tchoumitcheva
Zurab Tsereteli
Stefanie Giesinger
Germany's Next Top Model winner turned international supermodel — mother is a Russian-German Aussiedler
Peter Carl Faberge
Jeweller to the Romanovs, died stateless in Lausanne
Angelina Beloff
Painter and printmaker born in St Petersburg in 1879; in Paris from 1909, in Mexico from 1932, where she taught, made puppet theatre and co-founded the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Painter and stage designer born in Novgorod in 1875, a leading member of the World of Art; later designer of the Lithuanian State Theatre and of productions in New York
Olga Costa
Mexican painter born Olga Kostakowsky in Leipzig in 1913 to parents from the Russian Empire; La vendedora de frutas (1951), National Prize for Arts and Sciences (1990)
Stepan Erzya
Mordvin sculptor born in Bayevo in 1876 who spent 1927–1950 in Buenos Aires, carving portraits in the hardwoods quebracho and algarrobo
Vlady (Vladimir Kibalchich)
Painter born in Petrograd in 1920, son of the writer Victor Serge; in Mexico from the 1940s, muralist of the Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada
Xul Solar
Argentine painter and visionary born in 1887 to a father from Riga; inventor of imaginary languages and a friend of Jorge Luis Borges