Christine Yufon

Christine Yufon was born in Beijing in 1923.^[1][2][3] As a child, she studied at an American school in China.^[3]

In 1947, she married the French engineer Georges Constant Collet.^[3][4] The couple lived in Shanghai until the city was taken over by the Communists in 1949, when they had to leave for Paris.^[3][5] Their property, including farmland and a cigarette factory, was seized by the new Chinese government, and she left behind her family's art collection.^[2][4]

From France, Yufon migrated to Brazil in 1951, settling in the São Paulo neighborhood of Higienópolis.^[1][5][6] It was there that her modeling career began, when the social columnist and future nightclub magnate Ricardo Amaral [pt] convinced her participate in a grand ball in São Paulo.^[3] Yufon worked as a model for the old Casa Vogue and became a muse for the French designer Jacques Heim.^[1][3][7] She was one of Brazil's first Asian models.^[1][8] Then, in the 1960s, she founded her pioneering etiquette school, which taught posture, philosophy, and values to the general public as well as politicians, artists, and members of high society.^[1][2][3][7]

In the 1970s, she worked with Angioleta Miroglio-Cattani to promote artists and jewelers through their gallery, Miroglio & Yufon.^[4] Over the years, she began to produce sculpture herself, which was exhibited in various venues including the São Paulo Museum of Art in the 1980s.^[1][3][6] Her work, in bronze, wood, and stone, was inspired by her youth in China.^[2][6] At the invitation of the Chinese government, in the late 1980s, she presented her work in her homeland.^[1] Her sculptural practice evolved into producing pieces of jewelry and "wearable art."^[5]

Yufon continued modeling in her later years, serving as a muse for the designer Dudu Bertholini.^[1][3][6] She died in São Paulo, at age 100, in 2024.^[1][6][8]