Ahead of the launch of her new book, Belle Michele, author Alexandra Levin sat down with the Northcliff Melville Times to reflect on the remarkable life of Michele Bruno – the dazzling, wounded and utterly unforgettable subject of her biography.

The book will be launched on February 25 at Die Pienk Kerk, where Levin will share the story that has lived in her heart for more than a decade. She remembers first seeing Bruno outside the Carlton Hair Salon in the early 2000s, describing them as a slim figure who wore bell-bottoms, bobbed hair and sharp eyeliner. “Perhaps the first time in my life I was seeing a non-binary person,” she said.

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This brief glimpse would be what sparked a profound friendship, and between gins, cigarettes and mascara-smudged tears, they slowly unravelled to Levin a life shaped by rejection, resilience and reinvention.

According to Levin, Bruno rose from a painful childhood to eventually train at the famed Alexandre de Paris Beauty Salon, styling royalty and Hollywood icons – from Audrey Hepburn to Princess Grace. Later, Bruno danced under the glittering lights of Studio 54, befriended Truman Capote, and left New York at a time when AIDS tightened its grip on the city.

The book also looks at Bruno’s grace-filled latter years, when, during apartheid, they illegally adopted two daughters of a different race, chose celibacy to model stability, and formed an enduring friendship with Justice Edwin Cameron.

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In their final meeting, Bruno told Levin: ‘Now it is time to make my peace with the one great love who has never deserted me.’ Bemused, Levin asked who this was, to which they responded ‘God,’ adding they leave this life with no regrets.

Through Levin’s pen, Michele Bruno’s story becomes not just remembered – but redeemed.

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