Filippa: Bio and ancestry

in: Filippa Palmstierna Hamilton

Filippa Palmstierna Hamilton
Born: January 1st, 1985, Paris
Raised: Biarritz, France
Nationality: France & Sweeden
Residence: Andorra
Measurements: 174 (5'9"), 83-60-90 (33"-24"35")
Agencies: NEXT, New York & Paris; Fashion Models, Milan; View Management, Spain
Campaigns: RALPH LAUREN (Polo Jeans, Blue, Romance), Balenciaga
Covers: Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Amica, Telva
Shows: prêt-à-porter FW/2002, SS-FW/2003, SS/2004 (Ralph Lauren)
Info: @ NEXT | @ supermodels.nl

Filippa is on the mark to take the fashion industry by storm. After being discovered at the age of 15 on the streets of Paris by French photographer Marc Hispard, Filippa has already captured the attention of industry insiders with her striking beauty. It was not long after being introduced to modeling that 16-year-old NEXT newcomer secured her first major advertising campaign with Ralph Lauren; she is the new face of Romance, Ralph Lauren’s fragrance, photographed by Bruce Weber. Filippa has worked with some of the industry’s leading lensmen including Paolo Roversi, Mario Testino, Arthur Elgort, Inez Van Lamsweerde, Terry Richardson and Gilles Bensimon.

There is a long story behind Filippa's last name, first of all she is hereditary British-Swedish countess or grevinna, she is credited as "Palmstierna Hamilton", "Hamilton-Palmstierna", "Palmstierna" and "Hamilton". Here is the article about Filippa's father, Michaël Palmstierna Hamilton, the award winning seller of Herbalife, ancestry:

A battle of silver spoons: six years after the beginning of one of the most bitterly bizarre inheritance lawsuits in Danish and Swedish history, daily newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported that a banished heir has won his rightful settlement.

The story of Michael Palmstierna Hamilton, a dapper Swede with the ruddy complexion of a born aristocrat, begins, in Copenhagen, with an eccentric heiress whose life story is parlayed in repeat broadcasts of the popular 1996 DR documentary 'The Countess on the Third Floor.'

Erna Hamilton was a flame-haired socialite and relic of Copenhagen's bygone upper crust. The daughter of a capital city industrial scion, a surprisingly robust 96-year-old Erna Hamilton shared with interviewers the story of her charmed early life in an extravagant Copenhagen palais. Though she died the same year the documentary originally aired, television audiences couldn't get enough of the eccentric Erna, with French affectations, recalling her laissez-faire attitude to the Great Depression, her long life on the purse-strings of well-to-do parents, and her three marriages, all on a steady diet of morning martinis and canned caviar served by a working-class butler. Despite her obvious eccentricities, totally out of step with the benevolent socialism many of us have grown up with, Countess Hamilton's place in 20th century Danish cultural history is undeniable. Erna was once the wealthiest woman in Denmark, heiress to the Simonsen industrial fortune, onetime lover of the nation's most famous stage actor Johannes Poulsen, and mistress of the extravagant manse known as Little Amalienborg, which still stands on Dag Hammerskjold's Allé (the estate was seized from the Simonsens by Nazi occupiers during World War II).

Erna was mother to a son from her first, doomed marriage to British-Swedish Count J. Douglas Hamilton. Her mysterious son, Ulph, born in 1920, later immigrated to Sweden, and did little to credit the family reputation. He joined the Waffen SS during World War II, and after revelations of his Nazi past emerged with charges of embezzlement, he committed suicide in 1967. But Ulph Hamilton had another skeleton in his closet. Though married to a well-to-do Swedish woman in 1959, Ulph died apparently childless. Shortly after his death, however, reports emerged of a poor Swedish commoner named Margaretha Palmstierna, who bore a son, Michael, after a one-night stand with Ulph Hamilton at a Stockholm masquerade ball on New Year's Eve 1955. Despite the passing resemblance to the ginger-haired Simonsen clan, Sweden's Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that there was not sufficient proof for Palmstierna's paternity claim.

Meanwhile, Erna Hamilton - who later married Denmark's General Consul to the Dominican Republic - declared that she had no living heirs, and willed a sizable portion of her father's estate to a charitable foundation, the Erna Hamilton Scholarship for Science and the Arts. Despite limited liquid assets, the financial anchor of the foundation has remained its lucrative real estate holdings, worth an estimated DKK 150 million.

Shortly after the 1996 documentary, DR produced an independent documentary on Palmstierna. 'A True Hamilton?' followed Michael's demand to legitimize his identity. In 1999, Sweden's Supreme Court made the shocking decision to re-open the Hamilton paternity case, after DNA evidence provided by Ulph Hamilton's half-brother revealed a more than 99 percent certainty that he and Palmstierna were related. Palmstierna won the right to bear the Hamilton name, and was recognized as one of Sweden's 601 nobles. Even Ulph's surviving widow, Ulla Birgitta Hamilton, spoke publicly of her support for Michael's claim.

But Erna Hamilton refused to acknowledge Michael's existence even to her death. Today, Michael Palmstierna - who lives and works in Biarritz, France - admits he could have handled the case better.

'I just showed up one day. Today I realize that older people need time to accept things,' Palmstierna Hamilton told DR.

Palmstierna's shameless appeals to the press were also promptly exploited. After vowing that no price was too high to pay for the Gerda Wegener portrait of Ulph Hamilton as a bonny two-year-old, under auction from the Hamilton estate, auction-goers queued up to outbid him, inflating the price from it's appraised DKK 15,000 value to a whopping DKK 146,000.

After this week, however, that's small change to the new Count Palmstierna Hamilton. Under Danish law, children cannot be denied the inheritance of their parents. Regardless of the terms of a will and testament, half of any estate must devolve to surviving children. Ekstra Bladet reported this week that the born-again count was granted DKK 7 million of the Hamilton foundation's assets.

story from Copenhagen Post

Filippa talks about herself in 2003 Polo.com interview - she likes painting and hanging out with friends, her model inspiration is Christy Turlington, being the face of Ralph Lauren is a dream come true, and she always travels to fashion shows and photoshoots with her mother!