‘She was a true beauty’: Australia’s first haute couture supermodel Maggi Eckardt dies aged 82

Legendary Australian supermodel Maggi Eckardt has died, aged 82.

The fashion icon died last week in Sydney. An exact cause is unknown, but the Sydney Morning Herald reports that her health had been declining in recent months.

Eckardt was the first Australian model to conquer the world of haute couture, working with fashion titans like Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and Dior.

She was discovered by British fashion designer Norman Hartnell while working as a teenage model in the 1950s.

Hartnell, who was the Queen’s couturier at the time, was in Sydney looking for models, and Eckardt was the only one who could fit into the clothes properly.

From there she went to London to work, where she became one of the highest paid models in the city.

She worked with the biggest names in haute couture fashion during her career and ]covered the French edition of Vogue magazine.

In 1965, she married French diplomat Hervé Hutter, and the couple relocated to Melbourne. 

They split in 1971, and Eckardt went on to marry Australian entrepreneur John Singleton. 

The couple split after a decade, but Eckardt called the marriage ‘the most fabulous time of my life’ in a 2002 interview.

Outside of modelling, Eckardt worked as a TV presenter with her own variety show, The Maggi Eckardt Show.

She also worked as an advisor to David Jones, a beauty director for Revlon, and ran her own interior design business for two decades. 

Celebrity tributes have poured in since the news of her death, with Derryn Hinch tweeting: ‘What sad news. Very sad. She was a great friend “in the old days”.’

Ita Buttrose told Sydney Morning Herald that Eckardt was ‘breath-taking’.

‘She really was the most extraordinarily beautiful creature,’ Ita told the publication.

‘And such an incredible career too, I can’t think of another girl from Australia who has achieved the level she did.’ 

Bendigo Art Gallery director Jessica Bridgfoot, who worked with Eckardt on a Balenciaga exhibition last year, recalled Eckardt’s strength and poise.

‘Maggi was a true beauty – always poised, always immaculate,’ she told the Bendigo Advertiser.

‘Maggi had that unflappable elegance and poise of women of that era coupled with an underlying steel of a woman who had gone it alone – backed herself – in a time when society was still very patriarchal.’