Frida Kahlo, her real look, on display in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) – The women on the cocktail circuit of the late 1930s were all curve-hugging dresses and gelled curls.

Not Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo.

She graced dinner parties and theatres from Paris to New York in ribbons, full skirts and loose peasant blouses embroidered with vividly coloured flowers, and her uni-brow was a bold contrast to the pencil-line eyebrows of the time.

Over the years, Kahlo’s look has become as influential as her art, capturing the fancy of trendsetters from Madonna to singer Gwen Stefani and French designer Jean Paul Gaultier.