Monica Vitti: Italy’s answer to Bridget Bardot with the name of a posh after-dinner biscuit. Vitti was one of that breed of 60s actresses that, due in no small part to her nationality, was held on the peripheries, never quite breaking through into cinema’s elite, or as the case is, Hollywood.

Her most cultish piece of work, however, was Modesty Blaise, the 1966 ludicrous, camp caper which genuinely birthed an entirely new genre: spy-fi. It remains to be seen if spy-fi will welcome any other motion pictures to its bosom, but it matters not – Modesty Blaise was the vehicle in which Monica Vitti became an almost-household name the world over.

Even today, some 50 years later, many otherwise-usefully-spent minutes can quite easily be expended on one of many tumblrs made in her honour, my favourite of which being ‘F*** Yeah Monica Vitti’. She has that potent blend of being both made up of incomparable sexuality and charm but without turning off women. Like Marianne Faithfull.

"No facial feature was left unturned. Everything had been painted, shimmered and enhanced."

Chameleon that she is, Vitti is too, like a softer-looking Barbra Streisand. Or a more exquisite-looking Kathy Beale off Eastenders. For her role in Modesty Blaise, each finger-width section of her hair appeared to have been curled and placed atop her head. She was part of the first wave of balls to the wall glamour – the sort of glamour that revelled in looking to silver lame-coated visions of the future – where no facial feature was left unturned. Everything had been painted, shimmered and enhanced.

Her brows, sand-fawn in colour, were behest with an ointment-like definition (brow pencils were genuinely awful back then). Her drawn-in eyes were magnetic enough; her lips almost radically plump (but still on the right side of natural). And her skin, freckled like a speckled egg, was as youthful as it was wanton. And only as I look now at 60s pictures of Monica Vitti, do I detect the pretty strong resemblance to Jennifer Lawrence: those snug eyes, those pronounced, elliptical cheeks, the feint veil of freckles and the bewildered, pillowy lips.

In reality, her face really didn’t need make-up. But it was the 60s and so the capabilities of make-up were being voraciously explored on film sets, in photographic studios and in young women’s bedrooms. On me, it’s the sort of make-up that makes me want to go on an adventure to a party in New York in the 60s. It’s not however, becoming of my Friday night trip to the local pub offerings of Maida Vale. I’d look absurd and worse; as though I were vying for attention. Sad really, that as a 30 year old woman who quite likes the fun involved in beauty dress up, there’s nowhere left for me to go. Save for the odd fancy dress party, which I’d refuse to go to anyway because fancy dress brings out the brat in people.

Surely, the one appropriate legacy of the filmic genre of spy-fi should be anything, it should be this: that flouncy make-up, aqua powdery eyes, false lashes and a splash of chalky coral against the lips being something that doesn’t look utterly ridiculous in 2013. Now, that’s an ask.  

1. Topshop Eyeshadow in Done and Dusted, £6
2. Bobbi Brown Ink Liner in Blackest Black, £20
3. MAC False Lashes in 36, £10
4. Chanel Rouge Coco Lipstick in 57 Mystique, £24 at Selfridges

Photography: Hugo Yanguela