Iranian star Googoosh leads her granddaughter, Mya Ghorbani, through a nostalgic retrospective of her most celebrated looks. From blunt bobs to bleached brows, they discuss the re-emergence of an icon.
Suit and corset, Harry Halim; top, vintage Loewe. Photo: David Roemer
“This is probably going to be my new favorite,” Mya Ghorbani murmurs, not long after showing me test shots from the Vogue Arabia photo shoot she just completed. We’re doing this over Zoom and the supermodel-in-training is exuding the luminous confidence of a veteran. The 21-year-old is one of those effortlessly edgy and chic specimens of style: tall, tan, lanky, with long silky black hair and bleached eyebrows – a treasured leftover from the shoot. But in the photos, she is someone else completely: red bowl-cut bob, heavy black eyeliner, plus that powdery pallor, it’s a look I know well from old photos of Iran right around when I was born, in 1978. That was when the biggest pop star in Iranian history debuted that very aesthetic. The country was entering its own fashion golden age, thanks almost entirely to the pop icon and most influential Persian princess of all time: Googoosh. Who happens to be Ghorbani’s grandmother.
Googoosh wins the Sepas award
Arriving and performing in Tunisia
How to explain Googoosh? For Iranians, her presence has been a staple in the same way our most prized national foods are, like our sweet komaj pastry. She elicits an almost parasocial association, a memory so fond it feels like cinema, an attachment so irrational it feels like family. Born Faegheh Atashin, she was first a film actress in the 1950s before she hit her musical stride in the 70s, with her spectacular range covering everything from upbeat pop tracks to emotive ballads on love and loss. As women, we coveted her flamboyant makeup, her bold miniskirts, and that iconic blunt bob haircut, fittingly known as “the Googoosh.” All things Googooshian have become downright cultural lore. And to make matters even more surreal, our star became so well known internationally, that we had to share her with the world. I had white American boyfriends who’d put her campiest hits on their playlists. I encountered her emotional vocals mid-meal in South Asian restaurants. I’ve accidentally run into numerous online fan sites devoted to her personal style made by people a quarter her age in Latin America. Googoosh’s icon-hood has an unshakeable universality you seldom encounter, a tenacious appeal that was apparent from when she was a child. “When I started being Googoosh, I was a very little girl at three years old,” she reminisces. “My father used to do acrobatics and act as a comedian on the stage, so he brought me as a partner. After a few years, he noticed that I could imitate famous singers. Little by little, he put me on the stage to sing and imitate them. People keep telling me that I was a unique person when I was on stage as an actor, as a singer, as a dancer.”
Googoosh wears Jacket, Dawid Tomaszewski; turtleneck, vintage. Mya wears dress, Dawid Tomaszewski. Photo: David Roemer
Seventy years later, that star power hasn’t waned, according to her granddaughter, as she reflects on their day shooting together. “It’s always an experience. A surreal experience, to have her as my grandmother, as well having her join me in all this…” She looks over to her left, her Cheshire grin mirrored on the face of a bespectacled Googoosh. I catch my own reflection on the screen, and notice I am wearing the exact same expression, as if the immaculate covergirl beams of the two icons were simply contagious. With her honey-blonde hair demurely slicked back, in a floral blouse and delicate gold jewelry – a contrast with Ghorbani’s goth-adjacent minimalism – the 74-year-old is laughing about the fact that she didn’t even recognize her granddaughter when she came into the shoot. Meanwhile Ghorbani: “I didn’t know the extent of how big she was until I started doing research!” the model quips, playfully, but it’s also sincere. The two have a wholesome connection and ribbing rapport that transcends grandmother and granddaughter in such a way that feels almost like eavesdropping on sisters. Googoosh has a habit of charmingly delivering facts and imperviously putting on airs, all for Ghorbani’s delight: “When I first saw her pictures, I was surprised. I didn’t know she can handle it!” In response, Ghorbani cracks up, shaking her head at a story she knows well. “She thought I couldn’t handle being in the entertainment business!” And then just like that: Googoosh transforms again, assuming a role not often seen by her fans – grandmother. The room almost radiates in the warm register of her love, ribbons of crackling neon banter suddenly melting into rosy soft-cell sincerity: “Because always she was a baby to me. My little girl.”
Dress, Lever Couture. Photo: David Roemer
Googosh is 73, the age of my mother, and Ghorbani is 21, the age of a daughter I never had. I am nearly 47, exactly in the middle and we discover in the course of the call that I am even exactly in between their height: Ghorbani at a statuesque five-foot eleven, Googoosh at an impish five-foot two, and me at an unremarkable five-foot six We all agree we would have never known it as Googoosh and I are often in wedges and pumps. (“I wish I had two or three inches from her!” Googoosh laughs and I agree.) Throughout our call, we speak mostly English, Googoosh only at points breaking into Persian with me. Ghorbani also understands, but she wishes she could do more. “I listen to Persian music all the time, but it was really hard for me to put together a sentence in Farsi. I only know the basics. But now I’m getting a little better, I just want to be more in tune with it.” When Googoosh asks me to say my name — not a typical name, but a Persian name nonetheless— Ghorbani doesn’t miss a beat to quip “I didn’t get a Persian name,” half-sincere, half-comic in its dolor.
Suit, vintage Saint Laurent; shirt, Balenciaga; glasses, Moscot; belt, vintage; rings, Armen Ra Jewels. Photo: David Roemer
Despite her language-crossing fame, one of the most surprising aspects of Googoosh is how normal she is, though her humility is nothing new, a trademark of her widespread appeal. She breaks down a typical day: she wakes up every day around 9:30 or 10am, takes care of her three dogs (two Pomeranians, one golden retriever), cooks (“sometimes, not always”), engages in vocal practice (“if I have to practice”), goes shopping (“sometimes, not so often”), watches movies and reads books. “And that’s it. I spend most of the time at home and sometimes I invite Mya and her father to come and have lunch together.” When she goes out, she dreads being recognized so she wears a hat and sunglasses and a mask when she’s off to her favorite lifestyle stores: HomeGoods, or other times Target, idiosyncratic affinities Ghorbani finds so funny. For Googoosh it’s as though normalcy and a quiet life is what she’s acquired in America, whereas the industry and fame consumed her life in Iran.
At the Midem festival in Cannes in 1971
A performance in Kuwait
Still, there’s nothing that feels more like home to her than talking about performing, where she’s truly in her element. Silenced for more than two decades by the Islamic Republic and its ban on women singing to an audience beyond their family, Googoosh didn’t return to the stage until the age of 50 in 2001. Having fled to Canada, she had disappeared from the public eye for the most part, only to suddenly appear on a stage in Toronto to the shock of her fans, who until then were reliant on her archive of hits. The 10-minute standing ovation she received was just a taste of the admiring fervor that her fans — packing houses in the tens of thousands — would be showing her from then on. Surprisingly, she admits to initially being nervous about the comeback. “I didn’t know if I could carry myself after all these years. I was somebody else for 21 years, I didn’t know what’s going to happen. And I was shaking — I showed them. I said, Look, I’m shaking, but the energy, it came! 18,000 people! What could I do from the bottom of my heart? And that was it. I did it.” I tell her it’s such a gift for us Iranians, and she says with almost alarming intimacy: “It’s a gift to me too. Thank you.”
Dress, Nensi Dojaka; headscarf, vintage; flower, M&s Schmalberg; bracelets, vintage Burberry & Sonia Rykiel. Photo: David Roemer
When the three of us talk about Iran today, suddenly there is a tension in the air, the erosion of laughter and a negative space of loss. The twin auras of grandmother and granddaughter shift: serious, grounded, devastated even. Googoosh recalls her life in Iran, including a one-month stint in jail, and they both express their wish to visit again one day, which lands us on the #womenlifefreedom movement. Ghorbani explains how grateful and blessed they are to live in a very different reality, her gracefulness suddenly a bit jagged as if she’s testing herself with her candor. “Being from Gen Z, obviously I view things a little differently. I see all these women rebelling and I’m all for it. Which — I don’t know if I should be saying that, because I don’t want to encourage… but at the same time nothing’s going to get better if you don’t rebel. If you’re going to keep following the rules, it’s going to stay that way. It’s definitely controversial, because I feel a lot of the women in Iran who have the traditional beliefs aren’t super against it sometimes. And I feel nowadays the newer generation is so against it, and it’s causing such havoc.” She pauses and in comes that smile, as iconoclastic as it is classically supermodel as it is a reflection of her grandmother’s greatest expression of triumph: “As messed up as it sounds, I hope that there’s havoc until there’s freedom.”
Googoosh wears Suit, vintage Saint Laurent; Ggoves, Dolce & Gabbana. Mya Wears top, pants, Dolce & Gabbana. Photo: David Roemer
Googoosh beams, and I realize that forever-rebellious daughter of Iran is Googoosh also, of course. Ghorbani is as proud a granddaughter as Googoosh is the doting matriarch. “She and I are very similar in some senses, we’re both in the entertainment field, but in different ways. I take her advice and her knowledge, and I put it into my career. She always told me not to do anything you’re not comfortable doing,” she remembers. But like her grandmother, young Ghorbani emanated that same star power, something everyone in her family noticed as she wanted to be a model since she was eight. We talk of her favorite supermodel Gisele Bündchen and I reference her famous “horse walk” runway stomp, which reminds me to ask Ghorbani how she came to her own sashay. “My first show was a Marc Jacobs runway show, and I didn’t know how to walk! I was just walking the how I usually do, and the way I walk is very, just like dude,” she laughs. Not only was the 2021 show her debut, but for the then 18-year-old, it was the catalyst for a ream of new experiences. “That was my first time going to New York, or even being on the plane, and I went by myself,” she remembers. Shortly after, Ghorbani had another first, one that few models can dream of: shooting with Steven Meisel in Marc Jacobs for British Vogue, kitted out in bold orange and oversized fits. As a model, her Iranian-ness means she’s become accustomed to standing out. “I feel like my definition of beauty is uniqueness. I used to be not as content with myself. I always compared myself to the other models. As time went on I realized that it’s what makes me different and it’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s very rare to see another Persian model.” I wondered if her parents weren’t worried for her in an industry like this. “I mean, they know they know I’m a little tougher. I’m tough. They know that they know nothing will really affect me.” On the one hand, it helps that Ghorbani is almost as introverted as people have always said Googoosh is. “I don’t like going out. I don’t really talk to people I don’t know. I get shy. But if I’m comfortable…” She pauses, reconsidering, and glances over at her grandma, as if receiving a psychic transmission. “We’re like the same in the sense where we won’t talk in front of like a bunch of random people. But if it’s just us, we’ll be ourselves.” Nods, knowing smiles. “I have a very big personality. My brother was always the quiet one, and I was always the very loud one.” “Loud!” Googosh exclaims, making chatty-mouth hand gestures, as if to call her mini-me a blabbermouth. This cracks Ghorbani up so hard but she knows it’s true: “I was always screaming, talking, running…I was just a menace.” I bring up Ghorbani’s dancing on TikToks, and so the question goes naturally to singing. “She can sing!” Googoosh insists. Ghorbani laughs and shakes her head. “I tried to hear her singing but she’s shy,” clarifies Googoosh. “I never felt pressured to sing or pressured to do anything like that,” adds Ghorbani. “If anything growing up, I was always told to go to school and do something with an education. So obviously, before that I used to like sing for fun.” She pauses, smiling at her grandmother. “And when she would come over, I would do a concert in the living room.”
Jacket, Dawid Tomaszewski; turtleneck, vintage. Photo: David Roemer
Rare is the industry ingenue who would break away from talking about herself to spotlight her grandmother, but Ghorbani is most animated when she shares the impact of her role model. She thinks back to watching Googoosh as an audience member, attending her concerts since she was five. “I just start getting emotional. And then when she comes on stage, it’s like I forget that she’s my grandma sometimes.” This awe is a relatable feeling for generations of Iranians, as we’ve all grown up under Googoosh’s ever-expansive light. The songstress is no stranger to these insights, and I realize central to her identity is an almost spiritual allegiance to her public. “I was very open with people in my interviews, in my performance on the stage,” she muses. “I don’t have any secrets. People know everything about me,” she continues, not even as a complaint, but an expression of pure appreciation. “I always do whatever I think is good. I don’t imitate anyone. I’m not copying anyone. That’s me — that’s why they say that many singers today, they tried to be like me.” She points out her longevity with pride. “Seventy years. You can’t find any other singers in the world on the stage for this long. And who still have fans, have people who are interested to come and watch. I mean, my concerts are always full. I am blessed.” I ask Googoosh if she would have changed anything and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more confident “no.” She thinks about it. “As a person, as an artist… no, I want to be the same person.” And when she says same person, the two – grandmother and granddaughter – look at each other intently, as if same person also means them.
Bracelets, vintage. Photo: David Roemer
Top, skirts, bracelets, earrings, Saint Laurent. Photo: David Roemer
An edited version of this article appeared in the September 2024 issue of Vogue Arabia.
Makeup: Niki M’nray
Style: Yana Kamps
Hair: Dennis Gots
Nails: Ginger Lopez
Production: Michael Power at Cowboys An Indians
Beauty editor: Michaela Somerville
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