Gertrude Bell
WRITER, TRAVELLER, & ARCHAEOLOGIST
(1868 - 1926)
Challenging the norm of being a Victorian
woman, Bell chose to travel and explore the
world. Lucky enough to attend university Bell
graduated and was the first female to be
awarded a first-degree honours in modern
history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
University. Bell was a mountaineer, tackling
both known and unknown peaks with
an uncharted peak named Gertrudspitze in
honour of her. In 1892 Bell travelled to Persia,
and found inspiration to publish her first book
Safar Nameh: Persia Pictures in 1894. During
WWI Bell was the only female working for the
British government in the middle east. Once
the war was over Bell's priority was to help the
Arabs, writing about their social and political
issues in her work and presenting at the 1921
Conference in Cairo with Winston Churchill.
Odile Gilbert
HAIRSTYLIST (1959 - present)
Working in major fashion cities such as Milan,
New York, and London, Gilbert is well known
in the beauty industry. Starting her career as
an apprentice hairdresser in Paris 1975 with
the late Bruno Pittini, Gilbert had been skilfully
trained up to style hair and then assist Pittini
at fashion shows. Odile then went onto work
with famous photographers such as Patrick
Demarchelier, and Annie Leibovitz once
moving to New York. Styling hair for major
advertising campaigns like Chanel, Jean Paul
Gaultier, and Dior appearing in magazines
including Vogue. Most of these luxury brands
then went onto hiring Gilbert again to style
their runway models hair. In 2006 Odile was
presented with the Chevallier des Arts et
Lettres Award by the French Minister of
Culture, due to the impact she created for
French Culture around the world.
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