Amanda Lear

Amanda Lear is a French model, singer, lyricist, television host, actress, and painter. The basic facts of her biography remain disputed: her birth date has been cited variously as 1939, 1941, 1946, 1948, and 1950, and her place of birth is given alternately as Hong Kong, Saigon, or Hanoi. Her parents are described as a French-English father and an Asian-Russian mother, though names and nationalities remain contested. She was raised in the South of France and moved to Paris to pursue a career in painting before establishing herself as a top model. She became a prominent figure in mid-1960s Swinging London and a muse of Salvador Dalí, who is credited with coining her stage name and public persona — she was known as "L'Amant de Dalí," or Dalí's lover, and regarded him as a spiritual father. She dated Brian Jones in 1966 and was briefly engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, for whom she posed as "the lady with the panther" on the cover of the band's second album, For Your Pleasure, in 1973. Following a brief affair with David Bowie, she took his advice to pursue a singing career.

From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Lear was a commercially successful disco and pop artist, selling over a million albums primarily in Continental Europe and Scandinavia. She released records on Ariola and worked with producers including Anthony Monn. Key releases from this period include Never Trust a Pretty Face, Sweet Revenge, and Diamonds for Breakfast. Lear actively engaged with rumours about her gender assigned at birth — a subject she was aware Dalí found compelling — simultaneously denying and referencing the speculation in song titles including Fabulous (Lover, Love Me), If I Was A Boy, and I'm A Mistery, the last deliberately misspelled to incorporate the word "mister." Since the early 1980s she has worked primarily as a television presenter in Italy, France, and Germany, and as a stage actress.

Collectors seek out Lear's records for their place in the European disco canon and for the sustained mythology surrounding her persona. Her 12-inch singles and continental pressings, particularly from Germany, France, and Scandinavia, attract interest for their sleeve art and variant editions. Her connection to figures including Dalí, Bowie, Ferry, and Jones gives her catalogue additional cross-collector appeal across art, glam rock, and disco categories.