In 1928, De Lempicka was commissioned to make a self-portrait for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame.

The painting she produced showed her at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, wearing a leather helmet and gloves and wrapped in a gray scarf.

[2] In fact she did not own a Bugatti automobile; her own car was a small yellow Renault, which was stolen one night when she and her friends were celebrating at Café de la Rotonde in Montparnasse.

[5] A possible influence for this particular picture might have been by André Kertész, who was living in Paris in the 1920s and whose 1927 photo has a very similar composition.

[6] The female editor of Die Dame, a popular German fashion magazine, encountered De Lempicka in Monte Carlo while the almost-divorced baroness was on vacation and commissioned her to paint a self-portrait for an upcoming cover.