“Back then, models had to carry physical portfolios. This was mine,” Gunilla Zachariasen said. “Most models had black ones at that time, but I chose brown leather.”
Writer: Hailey Evans
Photographer: Joelle Blanchard
Imagine a Swedish model and a French photographer galavanting around the world during the swinging ’60s, booking glossy magazine deals, running boutiques and hanging out at runway shows with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld.
If a single picture is worth a thousand words, the Zachariasens — Gunilla and Jean-Pierre — have accumulated a few encyclopedias’ worth of stories over the years that eventually led them here to Des Moines. The former “haute hippie” model and photographer recently shared a peek into their scrapbooks, which document the trails they blazed through style and culture.
1959
Jean-Pierre Zachariasen is a Parisian at heart, but like all the cool kids of the ’50s, he loved American rock ‘n’ roll. When its patron saint, Elvis Presley, took a few days off from his Army stint in Germany to visit Paris, Jean-Pierre visited the star’s hotel and knocked right on his door. “I told the man who answered that I was the president of the ‘Elvis Presley Fan Club’ here in Paris,” he said. “I wasn’t, of course, but he let me in, and I got to hang out with Elvis and his friends for three or four days.” Jean-Pierre took a few photos of the gang as personal mementos.
1968
Gunilla Lindblad wanted to be a model. At 19, she was still living in Sweden when she met a fashion consultant with contacts in Paris. Soon enough, Gunilla packed up and moved to Paris to begin her modeling career. At 20, she landed her first cover on a French women’s magazine fittingly titled “20 Ans.”
Gunilla first met Jean-Pierre at a photo shoot, a plum assignment in Nice, Saint-Tropez and Marseille. Jean-Pierre had a friendship with the photographer and, more important, a French driver’s license. He tagged along to drive the team around the south of France as a favor but eventually subbed in as a model.
“The photographer told me to flirt with the model [Gunilla] for the pictures,” Jean-Pierre said. The photographer got his shot — and Gunilla took hers, too. She gave Jean-Pierre her number. He called her up after they both returned to Paris, and they’ve been together ever since.
1970
The couple moved to New York City to take on more work with American magazines. “You couldn’t just fly back and forth in those days,” Gunilla said. She landed an appointment with Vogue’s legendary editor-in-chief, Diana Vreeland, who, as Gunilla tells it, grabbed her face in her hands and exclaimed, “I could eat you!”
Jean-Pierre, who’d written about car racing in France and picked up photography on the side, had always dreamed of shooting for Glamour. Since both Glamour and Vogue were part of Condé Nast, he accompanied Gunilla to the offices with his own portfolio. “I pushed him to show Diana his portfolio, even though he was saving it for the Glamour editor,” Gunilla said. The Vogue team hired him before he even made it to the Glamour floor.
One of the couple’s first jobs was an assignment in Fiji with the fashion editor Babs Simpson. “We had no hair or makeup teams then,” Gunilla recalled. “So Diana told me, ‘I want you to match your eyeshadow to the clothes,’ and I did my own hair and makeup for the shoot each day.” Gunilla said Simpson spent a lot of time bird-watching, leaving the couple to their own devices.
1973
Gunilla and Jean-Pierre moved back to Paris and opened a fashion boutique with Jean-Pierre’s brother and a friend, Catherine Barade, in the newly opened shopping center at Les Halles. The former food market attracted bohemians from across the city, who brought their “baba cool” (read: hippie) style to the area’s storefronts. Gunilla and Jean-Pierre’s team named their store Upla, borrowing the French initials of the former food market’s tenants, the Union of Dairy and Poultry Products.
For about seven years, Upla sold utilitarian-style American work clothes, Dutch bikes, British perfume, tea, furniture and various accessories. They were the first Parisian boutique to carry Kiehl’s products. They also designed their own line of brightly colored canvas and leather messenger bags, which became a big hit.
1976
The couple continued to work together, but Jean-Pierre eventually tired of photography when he wasn’t working with Gunilla. “There was no point in photographing these beautiful models when I couldn’t take them to bed,” he joked. “And I wanted to be faithful to Gunilla.”
Gunilla continued to model for several international magazines and Condé Nast, whose editors featured her four times on the Vogue cover. She also became a friend and muse of the prolific fashion photographer Helmut Newton. During one unusually long shoot, when the crew was hungry, Gunilla literally jumped for joy at the mention of a meal — and startled the famous photographer.
1990
Gunilla opened a second store in Paris and called it Lindblad, her maiden name.
Since it was a smaller space, she focused on her own line of French-made handbags, plus jewelry, scarves and other accessories she sourced from London. “I felt quite proud when American Vogue did a small feature on the store,” she said. “A woman came in with the clipping from the magazine saying she read about it and wanted to visit.”
Around the same time, she also became a buyer for the Elle Boutique, a storefront spinoff of the French publication.
1998
Gunilla had been working as a scout for NEXT Management, a global modeling agency. She worked in the Paris office in the ’90s, scouting models from all over Europe, just as a scout had found her in Sweden. She transferred in 1998 to the NEXT headquarters in New York, where Jean-Pierre traded film for brushstrokes and took up painting.
2010
Gunilla and Jean-Pierre worked as freelance tour guides in New York. As a former “It” girl, Gunilla loved showing groups some of the city’s hot spots and best-kept secrets. “It was the best job,” she said. “There were some places that groups would specifically ask to see, but we weren’t restrained. We could take people to lunch, dinner, Broadway shows — it was a lot of fun.”
When the city shut down during the pandemic, “going from very busy to nothing was tough,” Gunilla said. The couple decided to move in January 2021 to Des Moines, where their son was living with his wife, Blair. (Sound familiar? Blair Zachariasen is one of Hy-Vee’s certified sommeliers and an assistant manager at Wall to Wall Wine & Spirits.)
2024
Gunilla confessed to feeling a bit of culture shock when they moved to Iowa. She misses the packed-in nature of New York and Paris, where she liked to stroll from one neighborhood to the next. But the Zachariasens have found another closeness to appreciate: “Everyone in Des Moines is so friendly and polite. We feel comfortable here,” she said. They don’t plan to move anytime soon.
In something of a surprise twist, Gunilla still dabbles in fashion. She works three days a week at the Jordan Creek J.Crew. She also keeps herself busy with friends and neighbors at their West Des Moines apartment complex. “A few of the women in our building play Rummikub on Wednesday afternoons,” she said. “I had never played it before they asked me to join, but now I think it’s so much fun!”
