I imagined her tiny handwriting penciling our rendez-vous place and time in a miniature Hermès datebook. She was to me, like to most people, a mystery and a legend. I had a meeting with Mdvanii, the elusive and sophisticated doll.

You know the first act of the Rosenkavalier? While the Marschallin in the opera, immaculately attired, is drinking her morning chocolate in what you can be sure is a cup a specialist of rare Saxony porcelain would covet, and is getting dressed for the day, she receives her lawyer, her major-domo, a milliner, a perruquier, some orphans, an animal vendor and an Italian tenor. Well, the Marschallin had a quiet, dull morning compared to a morning of Mdvanii. I sat down to a planned lunch with this fully-articulated, and moreso, fully articulate, porcelain doll at the Deux Magots. She wore a pale yellow and white tailored suit by Josephus Thimister, a straw hat with a Kelly green ribbon and discreet jewels. Her lemon mousse-coloured kid pumps looked as if she had had the soles polished, not unlike a certain Diane Vreeland, a late, great friend to Mdvanii. She wore gloves and an inside-joke smile which M.G.M. would have invented technicolour and Panavision for. It was generous and genuine and contagious.

While words may embellish and lend fantasy to any mortal, I can't begin to match Mdvanii in earthly description. If I tried to it, would sound like an empty liturgy of compliments, which would bore us both. Where shall I start though, to tell you about Mdvanii? The dragonfly lightness, swiftness of her wit perhaps, or the cultured and fascinating mind which becomes evident when you're around her. Brilliant dolls (women dolls, that is) are "God's gift to mankind" or more specifically, to men. Mdvanii converses naturally, that is to say, according to her nature. Sometimes it is in poetry, sometimes in startlingly original slang, sometimes in pithy comments that sound like the Sphinx she somewhat resembles, with her blue-black hair lacquered smooth on top by the extraordinary Alexandre de Paris and confined in a fan-shaped net, or a polished comb, or maybe a stunning pair of Harry Winston emerald and diamond clips (her favourite), an English cream-coloured 19th-century ribbon and a fresh gardenia behind her dainty ears. In ordinary conversation, Mdvanii can be more contemporary than today, but when she delves into the remarkable depths of her (undoubtably Jungian) unconscious, you can almost picture her sitting over the tripod of a pythoness.

Her allure is legendary. Garbo, the Marquise de Pompadour, Diane de Poitiers, are amongst her sorority sisters. It's veritably rocambolesque, the way in which admirers fall over themselves for just a glance, a gesture, her attention, and her nonchalance and désinvolture sometimes appear on the cusp of cruelty.

"When I'm given too much attention by those infatuated by physical beauty, it is pure misericorde. This to me is an unbalance of spirit which is humiliating and besides, this type of adoration is fatiguing."

It would seem, from such a remark, she would be impervious to religious passion and blind devotion. Nothing could be further from the truth. She believes in balance, even between opposed extremes, and in particular, an ironic contrast bordering on surrealism. She is nothing short of a paragon of fidelity to her friends. She has the reputation of living extreme, sensual affairs with incredibly exotic dolls of both sexes and of cultivating erotic rapports which can only be called "uncommon". It is well known that she has an almost obsessional fascination with art, music, and especially philosophy. She has studied a number of religions, on which she has formulated her own private ideas, to which she is utterly devoted.

"Unlike most dolls, I don't have an exclusive interest in obtaining a Dream House or Dream Car. I try to discern beauty in everything, not just material things, and through my own intellect, decide what appeals to me personally. I ask myself how these material things fit into my perception of life itself. I seek to comprehend and know myself, my existence, so I may eventually, in daily life, contribute to a more synergetic world. Sometimes it may appear as désinvolture but in essence, I am sorting, thinking, reflecting. Material and spiritual pursuits must be harmonious and work together."

For a doll, this is an exceptionally enlightened attitude. I asked her where she lives.

"Where do you think dear? In a box, I'm a doll after all! I think it's terribly Jungian, don't you?"

Well, she had me there. I found out only later that her "box" includes a Renaissance château in the Balkan mountains, a twenty-one bedroom mansion with its own private cinema in Neuilly complete with cubistic concrete tree sculptures designed by Mallet-Stevens, a Medician villa in Rome, an Avenue Foch pied-a-terre apartment previously owned by Pola Negri, in Paris, a chalet in Gstaad and a detcha just outside of St. Petersburg, as well a penthouse in the Olympic Tower in New York.