Fashion

Short stories – for a quick break

Aenigma is all about images from the the worlds of fashion and the movies and the stories behind them.

Short stories is a good place to come if you don’t have time for one of the longer pieces. Below you’ll find a selection of shots that illustrate the range of subjects covered by aenigma. It’s a deliberately eclectic mix with, hopefully, something for everybody.

Use the filter buttons to home in on topics that might interest you, and then the Read more button to go to the whole story.

The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris

The Fashion Flight was a venture that produced the first all-American fashion show to be held in Europe. It took place in 1947, the year that Christian Dior launched the New Look.

It brought together designers, manufacturers, models and a Hollywood actress. Their mission was to negotiate a deal between San Francisco and Paris, “two queens who will share the sceptre over the fashion world” – or at least that’s how San Francisco World Trade Center president Leland Cutler saw it as he toasted the flight in champagne and poetry.

This is the story of how The Fashion Flight came about, how it went and what it achieved.

The Fashion Flight – one man’s vision

The Fashion Flight is the brainchild of Adolph P Schuman, the son of a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in America in the 1880s. In 1933 Adolph gets a loan of $800, which enables him to start a wholesale women’s clothing company in two rented rooms. He names it the Lilli Ann Company, after his wife, Lillian. Adolph has a great deal of get-up-and-go, and becomes president of the Manufacturers’ and Wholesalers’ Association of San Francisco.

His idea for The Fashion Flight is to combine French design with US manufacturing techniques, thereby creating a win-win for both sides. From the get-go, he’s eager to set the minds of the Parisian couturiers at rest. He makes it clear that:

California manufacturers showing spring styles in Paris do not intend to copy the styles of Parisian couturiers or offer competition as a world style center. We manufacture sports and play clothes and day-long livable types and hope to buy from Paris accessories, ornaments and perhaps ideas for trends to add to our lines.

The plan is welcomed by Henri Beaujard, French commercial attaché. Totally underestimating the insecurity and suspicion of the Paris couture industry, he assures participants in the venture that France will welcome The Fashion Flight as:

…a breath of fresh air, which will be given the full support of the French Ministry of National Economy. The expedition will be a tremendous benefit in stimulating exports of French silks, brocades and accessories to be used by the apparel industry. It will also encourage a free flow of ideas.

The expedition will cost some $65,000. Adolph sweet-talks the city into contributing $5,000 and other members of the Manufacturers’ and Wholesalers’ Association to join him in financing the rest.

1945. Pandora Hollister, Fashion Flight coordinator. Read more.

The Fashion Flight – Americans in Paris

On the evening of 10 October 1947, two Matson Skymasters take off from San Francisco bound for Paris. The 63 passengers include designers and manufacturers, movie star Joan Leslie to add a bit of Hollywood glitz (Esther Williams was down for the role but has to withdraw owing to an ear infection, doubtless picked up in a swimming pool), models and journalists. The clothes (spring 1948 collections) are sent over on special racks so there’s no need to press them when they arrive. After a brief stopover in New York, the flight touches down in Paris on 14 October.

The models are taken aback by the wolf-whistles, ogling and propositioning they immediately encounter.

First thing when I came out of the hotel this morning I heard this whistle – and there was the nicest young Frenchman with one eyebrow reaching for the Eiffel Tower. “You let me show you Paris, yes, no? he asked. “Yes, I mean no,” I said. “Oh, mademoiselle, how can one so beautiful be so cruel in Paris on such a day as this?” he said. I thought those California boys were pretty fast, but these Frenchmen are positively dripping.

The nice young Frenchman sounds like nothing so much as Warner Bros’ cartoon character, Pepé Le Pew!

The Californian girls in their long skirts inspired by the New Look turn heads as they explore the city. 19-year-old Pat Emery notices that “Parisians are looking at us queerly on the streets. It is not a question of the ‘old eye,’ either. They look at our clothes and spot us as Americans right away.” Hardly surprising, given the privations of 1947 Paris. The San Francisco Chronicle reports a conversation with a professor at the Sorbonne:

My wife has not had a new dress for seven years. It is a long time for a woman to go without a new dress – even a woman who is not vain and who spends most of her time in the kitchen. I could afford to buy her a dress for $14 if there were such a dress in the whole of France. But dresses today in France are only for the tourists and those who have made new money on the black market.

This is typical of the contrasting fortunes of the haves and have-nots in Paris after World War II.

The Fashion Flight – the show and its reception

The visitors are here to impress. The fashion show is staged in the Grand Ballroom of the prestigious Georges V Hotel. The runway is decked out with 1,600 lbs of Californian chrysanthemums, and illuminated by a blinding battery of klieg lights used for movie production.

Cyrille Mills pillbox hat for Suprema Millinery Company

Cyrille Mills picture hat for Suprema Millinery Company

Meadowbrook pillbox turban hat

Meadowbrook “crusher” hat

Meadowbrook afternoon profile hat

500 guests are expected, including fashion writers from the US and Europe, representatives of the US and French governments, Parisian couturiers and textile manufacturers.

The show starts with bathing suits followed by “rough-and-tumble play clothes” (goodness knows what the Parisians make of these), dressmaker suits and afternoon dresses and finally Joan Leslie in a long-trained white wedding gown. “Eyes pop when, with a blare of trumpets, two of the models prance through the crowd in cowboy fashions – Levis, gold shirts and 10-gallon hats by Levi Strauss.”

Virginia Swain modelling a zebra print dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Virginia Swain modelling a double-breasted coat and fur stole

Virginia Swain modelling a batwing ensemble

Virginia Swain modelling a great coat by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Gabardine suit by Burkshire Coats

Pat Knudson modelling a Fuzzylam Originals leather evening gown

Pat Knudsen modelling a restaurant suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Lynn Birion modelling a double-breasted coat

Priscilla Emery modelling a long-torso dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Pat Knudson modelling a George Sand suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Pat Knudsen modelling a dinner gown by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Pat Knudsen modelling a black faille redingote by Fanya

White net evening gown by Emma Domb

Emilie Scofield modelling a double-breasted coat and hat

Emilie Scofield modelling a suit by Margo of California

The San Francisco News, with typical American understatement, reports:

3000 GASP AT DAZZLING DISPLAY OF LOCAL STYLES
California, which can make a production out of the opening of a supermarket, put on a fashion show here last night with all the trappings of Hollywood, and the French couturieres [sic] – those who were able to get in – went away bedazzled. It was the most terrific fashion show that Paris has seen. The French mobbed the George V Hotel in such numbers that many of the invited notables, including some of the leading couturieres were unable to get through the crowd.
After it was over, French designers came up with some talk that might be called heresy in their league.
“We were amazed by the show, by the clothes and by the music,” said Philippe d’Asten of the Jacques Faith [sic] Dress House. “Well, you know – everything was so different. Perhaps this will influence French styles.”

Well, it sounds like Philippe might have been almost lost for words and doing his best to be diplomatic.

October 1957. Actress Joan Leslie poses by the Seine. There’s no mistaking her for a French girl. Read more.

But a culture of secrecy pervades the Paris salons and the couturiers are paranoid about the Americans ripping off their designs. They feel threatened by such a bold publicity stunt. They refuse to show up at the visitors’ fashion show because they are “afraid of being influenced by American fashions.”

The following day, when they learn about the California price tags (from $15.00 to $79.95 retail compared to an average of around $600.00 per garment for their own pieces), they do a volte-face. Schiaparelli and Jacques Fath throw cocktail parties. A round of dining and lunching follows. Jean Gaumont-Lanvin, president of the Paris Couturier Syndicate, admits:

It is true that we were doubtful about you at first, but we wish to welcome you now and in the future. You have been here a week and we have had no indication that you are here to copy our clothes or compete with us in our market. Perhaps you and the world will always need Paris to set world trends in women’s fashions. We are superb. Yes, we really are. Your styles are practical. And the prices! We couldn’t begin to match them. Yes, we are not competitors. Perhaps we can even help each other – in a small way. You produce clothes so differently. You make clothes for the masses at prices they can afford. We admire you for that – and you do not attempt to set world trends – for which we are happy with you.

The truth is that, judging by the photos here, there’s a world of difference between the Parisian originals and the American garments that follow in their wake. And the couturiers are, by and large, astute businessmen well able to spot an opportunity.

The deal

By the time the visitors embark on their return trip, the marriage of Paris and California fashions is sealed by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and the San Francisco Manufacturers’ & Wholesalers’ Association:

Any San Francisco designer may go to Paris and view any couturier’s upcoming collection for a fee of $250, giving them a six-month lead on the silhouettes and lines of fashion Paris will be introducing next season.
Any San Francisco manufacturer wishing to reproduce new Parisian designs for the mass market can buy a model garment for $1,800. The style will be sent to San Francisco under bond and without duty, to be returned to Paris after reproduction.
The Paris couturiers will make a reciprocal visit to San Francisco, financed by the city, the following October for three public showings of their autumn collections.

For his part, Adolph Schuman starts adding “Paris” to his firm’s label. He buys many textiles from French companies, thereby helping to save many from closing. He also shows European weavers how to modernize their systems.

Around 1950. Karl Romaine, who took most of the photos featured here. Read more.

Want to know more about The Fashion Flight?

This article is based almost entirely on a small archive of photos and news cuttings, which, I believe, once belonged to Pandora Hollister. There are no other relevant sources I’m aware of apart from a biography of Karl Romaine and a brief history of Lilli Ann.

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy

7 July 1956. Audrey Hepburn in Paris. Photo by Bert Hardy. Read more.

When Paris was liberated in 1944, the city was on its knees. Within little more than a decade, it had regained its status as a world capital of unmatchable style, romance and allure.

The mood on the streets and the streets themselves had certainly improved a bit. But the really startling difference was to the city’s reputation. How did Paris manage such a stunning transformation in what we would these days call its brand image?

Paris after World War II – fact

Post World War II, France is broke, its economy on its knees, and over a sixth of all the buildings in Paris are in a seriously dilapidated state. In Paris: Biography of a City, Colin Jones reports that the wear and tear of decades of neglect are painfully obvious in smoke-blackened stone facades, cracked and untended stucco, and peeling paintwork. In Another Me, Ann Montgomery, who worked as a model in Paris, recounts that when she arrived there in 1954, “Much of Paris was still infected by a war-weary shabbiness that cast a despairing shadow over the grandeur of the ancient city.”

According to Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper (Paris After The Liberation) in April 1945 the city’s population averages only 1,337 calories a day. This overall figure hides terrible imbalances between the beaux quartiers and working-class districts where many, especially the old, virtually starve to death. And the truth is that there is a group of wealthy Parisians, diplomats and visitors living a life of luxury. Everyone else has to do whatever they can to look after themselves. The black market is in full swing.

There is a collective sense of shame at the way the country rolled over without a fight in the face of the Nazis. There is a settling of old scores, the most visible face of which is the meting out of summary justice: collaborators are executed or, in the case of women, their heads shaved. Increasingly politicized, Parisians stage public protests as often as celebrations.

In 1947, the year Christian Dior unveils the New Look, France is still suffering terribly from wartime shortages. There is little coal, and electricity is rationed. Daily circumstances for the average Parisian are not much better than they were during the war. That summer, Paris is paralyzed by an increasing number of workers’ strikes. The humorist S J Perelman describes his impressions of Paris during a trip that summer:

The food scarcity was acute, the cost of living was astronomical, and a pall of cynicism and futility hung over the inhabitants. Everywhere you went, you sensed the apathy and bitterness of a people corroded by years of enemy occupation.

In October of the same year, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The regular afternoon showings at the great couturiers are crowded with some wealthy French women; some members of the diplomatic set; some tourists, and many members of what is called “international society.” The girls who model the gowns are scrawny and petulant looking. The dresses themselves have never been so elegant nor so luxurious. One couturier makes it a business to feed his models. “I want them to look like human beings, not skeletons,” he said. “And, if they have enough to eat, perhaps they’ll smile,” he added hopefully.

Arthur Miller, another visitor, that winter observes:

The sun never seemed to rise over Paris, the winter sky like a lid of iron graying the skin of one’s hands and making faces wan. A doomed and listless silence, few cars on the streets, occasional trucks running on wood-burning engines, old women on ancient bicycles.

Rationing of bread continues until February 1948; coffee, cooking oil, sugar and rice are rationed until May 1949. Even foreign residents have to line up outside the town hall to get coupons for everything from food to clothes. Harper’s Bazaar’s “Report from Paris” in the autumn of 1949 opens, “In an atmosphere tense from the bitter strike in the dressmaking trades, the collections finally came off.”

1950s Paris – the nightlife

Between the wars, Paris had embraced jazz, which was very much in tune with the city's artistic, bohemian reputation. Here, is a glimpse of Paris by night in the late '50s, with rock-and-roll dancers prefaced by some nice neon lights. It's reminiscent of the nightclub scene in Funny Face. Too bad there's no soundtrack.

1950s Paris – the streets of Montmartre

Here's a taste of Montmartre, Paris' bohemian quarter. There's no soundtrack but there is a goat grazing under a tree, an old man asleep at a table and a girl brushing a little boy's hair in a doorway – a nice companion piece for the tourist version of Paris and, despite the dilapidated houses, no less affectionate. It's a kind of movie equivalent to the stills of the humanist photographers.

1950s Paris – the tourist version

This promotional video from the early 1950s is shot by none other than the great Jack Cardiff, who has recently been working with Albert Lewin and Ava Gardner on Pandora and the Flying Dutchman and with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

Paris after World War II – fashion

21^st century marketers seeking to launch or reposition a product or service look for “flagship attributes” – features that will grab headlines and capture people’s imagination. The flagship for the post-war renaissance of France in general and Paris in particular is fashion.

Why fashion? Because that’s what the city was synonymous with the before the war. The sector employs some 13,000 skilled artisans in such highly specialized workshops that despite their efforts the Nazis have failed to move it to Germany. France is desperately short of foreign currency, and rich women overseas, especially in the Americas, are willing to pay a fortune for their clothes. What’s more, couture is a high-profile and exportable manifestation of l’art de vivre for which France would like to stand.

In the summer of 1944, shortly after the liberation of Paris, led by Lucien Lelong and Robert Ricci, a group of French artists and designers develop a plan to enable Paris to recapture its position as the world capital of haute couture. They create 170 figures, each one-third the size of a real person, to display the first post-war Paris collections, complete with jewellery, designed to scale by Boucheron, Cartier and Van Cleef. The dolls are shown in a miniature theatre (Le Petit Théâtre de la Mode), with sets by the likes of Jean Cocteau and Christian Bérard.

The show opens at the Louvre in March 1945, and attracts more than 100,000 visitors, as well as raising a million francs for French war relief. The same year, it moves to Barcelona, London and Leeds, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna before crossing the Atlantic in 1946 to New York and San Francisco. Meanwhile, the devaluation of the franc in December 1945 acts as a powerful incentive for tourists and buyers to come and spend money in France: couture has never been so reasonable!

Paris after World War II – A double-page spread in Vogue introduces the New Look — April 1947. A double-page spread in Vogue introduces the Paris collections and with them the New Look. The sketch is by Nobili, the setting Maxim’s restaurant. The photo is by Clifford Coffin. Cecil Beaton unkindly observed that Dior looked “like a bland country curate made out of pink marzipan.”

The turning point comes in spring 1947 with the launch of Christian Dior’s New Look, his first collection. The lead up is chaotic. With less than two months to get the collection ready, an untried staff, and not enough space, work has to be done in corridors and on the stairs. A key workroom lady collapses with nerves and a model passes out in Dior’s arms at a fitting.

The turmoil and excitement carry over into the show itself, as Vogue editor, Bettina Ballard recalls in In My Fashion:

I was conscious of an electric tension that I had never before felt in the couture. Suddenly, all the confusion subsided, everyone was seated and there was a moment of hush that made my skin prickle. The first girl came out, stepping fast, switching with a provocative swinging movement, whirling in the close-packed room, knocking over ashtrays with the strong flare of her pleated skirt and bringing everyone to the edges of their seats. After a few more costumes had passed all at the same exciting tempo, the audience knew that Dior had created a new look. We were witness to a revolution in fashion…

The New Look, a reprise of mid-19^th century fashions with billowing skirts below nipped-in waists, is a sensational departure from the frugality and angularity of wartime fashion with its broad shoulders reminiscent of military uniforms. The New Look is also totally uncompromising. It calls for unusually intricate workmanship and a return to sewing techniques that have been almost forgotten. And it requires serious undergarment engineering to create the distinctive, curvaceous silhouette. “Money no object” would summarize it nicely.

Christian Dior – the man behind the myth

It’s 1947. France is in the midst of reconstruction after the war. Although fabrics are rationed, a young designer wins the world over to his daring vision of feminine elegance. His name, Christian Dior, is destined to reach the realm of myth. But what do we know about the man himself?

Fashion in motion

This rare archive footage shows fashion by five of the leading couturiers working in Paris in the early 1950s: Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jaques Fath, Pierre Balmain and Coco Chanel. The clothes are gorgeous and it’s fascinating to see how the models move.

Paris – city of fashion

Paris – City of Fashion, is a British Pathé production that likely dates from the early 1950s. Don’t be put off by the schmaltzy soundtrack and the cringe-worthy French accent affected by Lambton Burn for the voice-over. Focus instead on the gorgeous clothes, the stylish mannequins and, of course, the shots of the city itself.

It’s a triumph for Christian Dior, garners acres of press coverage around the world, and marks the beginning of a renaissance for French couture. The fashion editors, the rich and the famous love it. Most of those who can’t afford it, aspire to it. It’s just a must-have, as a Parisian around at the time recalls:

For two years after the war, fashions – wide shoulders and knee-length skirts – didn’t change. SUDDENLY, Christian Dior arrived and over night we all adopted his New Look. We immediately threw away all our previous dresses and skirts. It was still hard to find material, but it was inconceivable to still wear short dresses! At that time, there were big differences in fashion between the cities and the countryside, where women went on being dressed as before, an object of ridicule for us city-dwellers.

But, particularly in France, the New Look is controversial, as demonstrated by a photo shoot organized to show Dior’s clothes in a Montmartre street market.

The clothes were dispatched to Montmartre in great wooden packing cases on board a camionette. The models changed into them in the back room of a bar. But when, proud and graceful, the first one walked out into the rue Lepic market, the effect was electric. The street sank into an uneasy silence; and then, with a shriek of outrage, a woman stall-holder hurled herself on the nearest model, shouting insults. Another woman joined her, and together they beat the girl, tore her hair, and tried to pull the clothes off her. The other models beat a hasty retreat into the bar, and in a very short time clothes and models were heading back to the safety of the Avenue Montaigne.

That anecdote comes from Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper’s book.

1948. The New Look

Around 1948. Could the setting for this shot be the bank of the Seine? The unknown model turns away from the camera to glance at...

1949. Pure escapism

July 1949. It's not just the super-extravagant, strikingly asymmetrical gown (surely a Paris creation?) that's escaping from the privations of World War II. It's the...

1950. The mirror of fashion

October 1950. A tunic coat by Dior, apparently shot on the streets of Paris by Richard Rutledge. Relatively unknown today, he is one of...

1951. Fashion headlines

1951. Pioneered by the likes of Richard Avedon and Norman Parkinson, outdoor shoots become increasingly popular in the fashion magazines of the 1950s. But, as...

1954. Chez Dior

1954. The black tweed afternoon dress is being modeled by Renée Breton just outside Christian Dior’s studio at 30 avenue Montaigne. The photographer is Willy...

1955. Studied sophistication

1955. The model is Rose Marie. But the only information on the back of the photo is the year together with a pencil annotation identifying...

1953. Sculpted elegance

1953. The black wool dress and black leather belt are by Jacques Fath. Guy Arsac, the man behind the camera, is one of Jacques’ favourite...

1952. Ensemble by Paquin

February 1952. Jeanne Paquin was the first woman to gain international celebrity in the fashion business. Known for her innovative designs as well as her...

1957. Quintessential Paris

1957. This may be a fashion shot but it could equally well be a movie still – perhaps from one of the early films of...

1956. Fashion magnet

August 1956. Dior has named this line, part of his autumn-winter collection, “Magnet”. Not only is the grey, rustic-Garrigue wool dress a Dior creation, so...

1959 Poster girl

Around 1959. With the 1960s around the corner, hemlines are moving in just one direction. Once again on the streets of Paris, this time in...

For all the protests, The New Look reflects a genuine change of mood in society and sets the tone in the fashion world for the next decade. What’s striking is how savvy Dior is as a businessman. An article by Theodocia Stavrum in the San Francisco News describes his establishment in its first year of operation, about six months after the launch of the New Look:

Little do you realize when you sit I the elegant high-ceiling, gray-walled salon, with sleek French models displaying clothes, that in the back of the charming od building there is a modern “skyscraper” as they term it. It’s actually five stories high, as high as French law allows.
Here we found the workrooms and the head cutters, fitters, tailleurs and their staffs, first and second hands and apprentices. There’s also an employees’ “canteen” where we found many of them eating a hot luncheon with a bottle of beer or wine at each place.
There’s a complicated system of selling. Some saleswomen are socially prominent and wear the clothes, bringing friends in to buy. There are various saleswomen who rate according to experience and ability. A crew of chauffeurs deliver the things and a concierge must be on the place day and night. There are about 12 models, a head of the dressing room, and four dressers … plus several dozen other men and women who tend to the intricate details of the business.

And Christian Dior is not the only entrepreneur. In the course of the 1950s, his counterparts, like him, create perfumes, open boutiques and license their designs to foreign manufacturers so that by the end of the decade the leading couture houses have become global brands.

Paris is right back on the international map.

Jacques Heim

Around 1950. As a designer, Jacques Heim is not in the same league as Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain and Jacques Fath, but then who is?...

Christian Dior

1957. During World War II, along with Pierre Balmain, Christian Dior works as a designer for Lucien Lelong. In December 1946, backed by textile-magnate Marcel...

Yves Saint Laurent

February 1958. The scene at Dior after the showing of Yves Saint Laurent's first collection. The model leading the way is Victoire Doutreleau, who was...

Jacques Fath larking about with Paulette Goddard

1951. As is apparent from this photo (in which he is imitating Maurice Chevalier while Paulette Goddard is hamming it up as Joan Crawford), unlike...

Pierre Cardin

1959. Pierre Cardin moves to Paris in 1945 and works at the fashion house of Paquin and with Elsa Schiaparelli. The following year he is...

Pierre Balmain

1955. Pierre Balmain works with Edward Molyneux and Lucien Lelong before opening his own couture house in 1945. Along with Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jacques Fath and...

Paris after World War II – fantasy

But there’s more to Paris’ renaissance than the couturiers. Important as they are, their success and influence are underpinned by the efforts of the international fashion press, particularly Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

1959. Carmel Snow, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who sends Richard Avedon to Paris.” Photo by Gleb Derujinsky. Read more.

Ann Montgomery remembers how “Every fashion magazine in the western world was represented by top editors accompanied by photographers racing to record the work of the fabulous couturiers during the two-week blitz of showings” of the spring and autumn collections. Vogue sends Irving Penn, Harper’s Bazaar Richard Avedon.

It is Avedon who probably plays the biggest part in creating Paris, the fantasy of popular imagination. Whereas Penn captures the collections in a studio, Avedon takes the fashions out on the streets, turning Paris into a film set for an increasingly ambitious series of fashion stories. For example, for the September 1954 issue of Harper’s Bazaar he and his model, Sunny Harnett, stage a series of night scenes for which he has to use large floodlights to compensate for the slowness of the photographic film available to him. He ends up renting generator trucks to illuminate whole blocks of Paris, and police to hold back the crowds who gather to watch the proceedings.

The resulting editorials together with the published work of other less famous photographers such as Gleb Derujinsky and Kenneth Heilbron revive an image of Paris that has been decades in the making. During the Belle Époque (the period between the 1870s and the beginning of World War I), Paris established itself as the cultural capital of Europe and a go-to destination for any US citizen of wealth or artistic pretension. In the 1920s and ’30s it acquired almost mythical status as an artistic melting pot, attracting a host of American luminaries including Ernest Hemmingway, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Man Ray and Cole Porter.

1951. An American in Paris

After the initial titles, the trailer opens with an archetypal view of Paris dominated by the Eiffel Tower. We go on to meet Gene Kelly’s impoverished painter together with his fellow artists, living and, of course, falling in love in Montmartre, Paris’ bohemian quarter. “Paris is like love or art or faith, it can’t be explained, only felt.”

1954. Sabrina

Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) returns to Long Island, transformed by her stay in Paris and complete with all the essential accoutrements: the poodle, the clothes and the La vie en rose soundtrack. No wonder David fails to recognize her!

1957. Funny Face

A wonderfully rich American caricature of “Paree” – the volatile couple sharing a bottle of wine by the nightclub entrance, the moody bohemian cellar, the girls’ names (Mimi and Gigi), the fake French accents, the trippy music and the expressive dance, albeit that it reassuringly develops into a more conventional tap dance with which Hollywood audiences could feel right at home.

Avedon’s idea of Paris (and we’re talking here about an idea rather than just a place) reaches the movie-going public with the release in 1957 of Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. The plot is loosely based on the lives of Avedon and his first wife, Doe. It is about a successful photographer who transforms a bookish clerk into a reluctant model and then falls in love with her. Avedon is hired as a special visual consultant to director, Stanley Donen. He designs the opening credits, which are accompanied by his fashion shots, and he makes a series of boldly graphic fashion images based on the numbers one to ten (see Richard Avedon – ways to be lovely). Funny Face is one of several movies that help mythologize Paris for the US market

Simone Simon with Pierre Balmain

September 1950. Pierre Balmain, sporting a prodigious moustache, makes final adjustments to the evening gown that Simone Simon wears at the highlight of the Biarritz...

Audrey Hepburn with Hubert de Givenchy

1959. At 6ft 6ins in height, Hubert de Givenchy towers over his client. Six years earlier, while filming Sabrina, Audrey visits the couturier’s studio to...

Lana Turner with Jacques Fath

June 1948. Lana Turner contemplates the gown, her husband contemplates the model, the assistant contemplates the camera while Jacques Fath is lost in contemplation. A...

Brigitte Bardot wears a gown by Pierre Balmain

October 1956. What more potent combination could there be to boost the glamour and prestige of Paris than a combination of Pierre Balmain and Brigitte...

Ava Gardner with Christian Dior

1957. Ava Gardner is just one of Christian Dior’s movie-star clientele. Other clients include Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Jane Russell and Sophia Loren....

Paulette Goddard at Jacques Fath

November 1953. The model looks defiant in contrast to the movie star’s relaxed demeanour. Contrary to what the caption on the back of the photo...

The relationship between Paris and Hollywood doesn’t begin or end with the movies themselves. When couturiers and stars get together, everyone’s a winner. The cult of celebrity goes from strength to strength during the 1950s, promoted by a host of magazines and newsreels. If the most famous hookup is between Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, there are plenty of other stars eager to beat their way to the couturiers’ salons, including Rita Hayworth, who wears a Dior gown to the preimiere of Gilda. What’s more, the couturiers become celebrities in their own right.

31 March 1951. The Vendôme Column dressed by Jean Dessès.

If the Americans are doing their bit to help the couturiers burnish the image of Paris on the international stage, a talented group of photographers, known as the French humanists, also lend a hand. Notable among them are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Édouard Boubat. Their warm, lyrical and witty images of street life (a small boy running home with a baguette under his arm, a young couple snatching a kiss outside City Hall, a man jumping over a puddle) capture the appealing face of a more gritty reality. Photographers from abroad such as Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken also contribute.

And what of Paris itself? The rive gauche, particularly Saint Germain, with its intellectuals, academics and artists, its jazz clubs, poets and singers, is definitely the place to be in the 1950s. At the same time, an almost unbearable nostalgia for the hedonism of the past crystallizes around threatened sites of fin-de-siècle Paris, in particular Montmartre, where the facades of the celebrated Place du Tertre, meeting place of Paris’ turn-of-the-century artistic community, are restored. As the years go by, the district is transformed into a theme-park version of its former self – a perfect fusion of France and the US!

Paris after World War II – postscript: a real-life romance

In September 1950, a young photographer comes to Paris to record the autumn collections for Vogue. He is Irving Penn, a protégé of Alexander Liberman, the magazine’s art director, and a rising star in the publication’s firmament. She is Lisa Fonssagrives, a Swedish model who has been appearing on the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar since 1940.

Lisa Fonssagrives is an artist in her own right. She began her career as a professional dancer and until recently she was married to Fernand Fonssagrives, a dancer-turned-photographer. She herself has tried her hand at photography and will go on to have a distinguished career as a sculptor.

Lisa Fonssagrives in a coat by Cristóbal Balenciaga

1950. In his celebrated book, Moments Preserved, Irving Penn writes:

Clothes from great designers preoccupy Paris twice a year when the new collections are shown...

Lisa Fonssagrives in an evening dress by Jeanne Lafaurie

1950. Information about Jeanne Lafaurie is thin on the ground. She sets up her fashion house in 1925, and it becomes known for dependable, if...

Lisa Fonssagrives in a tunic dress by Marcel Rochas

1950. Encouraged by his wife and supported by Jean Cocteau, Cristian Bérard and Paul Poiret , Marcel Rochas sets up his couture house in 1925.

...

Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives are in love, and together they embark on a collaboration that within a matter of years will become legendary in the world of fashion photography. The ground has been well prepared. A notebook entry by Irving Penn reveals that:

Always sensitive to possibilities, Alexander Liberman arranged for me in Paris the use of a daylight studio on the rue de Vaugirard, on the top floor of an old photography school. The light was the light of Paris as I had imagined it, soft but defining.
We found a discarded theater curtain for a backdrop. As it turned out, 1950 was the only year we were able to have couture clothes during daylight hours at the height of the collections. Clothes were hurried to the studio and back to the salons by cyclist.

The photographs of the Paris collections that Irving Penn produces with Lisa Fonssagrives and three other models are the antithesis of those of Richard Avedon. Penn austere and serious, Avedon ebullient and capricious. Penn is entranced by stillness, Avedon by movement. Penn works exclusively in a studio, Avedon takes his models out onto the streets…

A brief article in the November 14, 1960 issue of Life Magazine highlights what Irving Penn, inspired and supported by his muse, achieves:

Into a world of photography that had equated elegance with rich and ornate props, there popped, about 15 years ago, some sparse, harsh, intensely realistic – yet still elegant – pictures. They were the work of Irving Penn, a junior art director of Vogue, who was “trying to create a new kind of fashion picture.” What he created was a new, austere style that influenced all modern photography.

Later that year, Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives marry; and they live, by all accounts, happily until her death in 1992.

1957. Dior fashion show in Chicago. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron. Read more.

Want to know more?

There’s a wealth of material out there and you can do worse than Google the designers, photographers and subjects in which you’re interested.

The best source of information about what Paris was like during and immediately after World War II is Paris After The Liberation by Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper. Ann Montgomery’s self-published memoirs, Another Me, is a good read and contains some nice anecdotes written from the point of view of an American girl coming to Paris who ends up working as a model.

There is no shortage of monographs on Christian Dior. For a relatively brief, online option take a look at the material available at the Design Museum website, and don’t miss Inside Dior’s fitting room.

More generally, London’s V&A museum has excellent articles on the golden age of couture, the world of couture and the fashion show. A good website for information about fashion history generally, including the 1940s and ’50s is Glamour Daze. The Telegraph has an interesting article about How Haute Couture rescued war torn Paris by Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes; How the Women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s. If you’d just like to look at some nice pictures of the couturiers and their dresses, Vanity Fair’s slideshow, The Haute Couture Renaissance, is for you.

If you can beg, steal or borrow a copy, Richard Avedon, Made in France published by Fraenkel Gallery, 2001 is to die for. There are lots of monographs on both Avedon and Irving Penn. Angela Magnotti Andrews has written a nice article about Vintage Celebrity Marriages: Lisa Fonssagrives + Irving Penn. Last but not least, there’s an article by Robert Muir on Irving Penn.

Princess Ira von Fürstenberg – celeb, fashion model, movie star

Princess Ira von Fürstenberg has been gossip-column fodder ever since becoming a child bride in 1955. By the mid-’60s she was a glamorous fashion model and movie star too.

1966. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg with Yves Saint Laurent and friends. Photo: Reporters Associés.

Her celebrity credentials are impeccable. Her father, Prince Tassilo zu Fürstenberg, was a German aristocrat. Her mother, Clara Agnelli, was the elder sister of Fiat’s chairman, Gianni Agnelli. A perfect blend of nobility and wealth. And lest anyone fail to notice her elevated social status, her parents christened their daughter Virginia Carolina Theresa Pancrazia Galdina Prinzessin zu Fürstenberg.

Princess Ira von Fürstenberg – wedded to the jet set

But it is THAT WEDDING that shoots our Ira to notoriety. She is just 15 years old and, according to IMDb, she will later claim her parents threatened to disown her and send her to a convent if she refused her proposed husband.

At 31, he is twice her age. He is also Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, not just a compelling dynastic match but also a businessman with a flair for romance and marketing.

Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe, a scion of one of Bavaria’s grandest families and a man of silken charm, was touring the Spanish coast in his charcoal-burning Rolls-Royce in 1947 when, they say, he stopped for a picnic at Marbella, a small fishing village. Enchanted by the view and acting on his father’s mandate to find property to help revitalize the family’s depleted fortunes, he purchased a ramshackle vineyard for 150,000 pesetas (about $14,000 at the time) and proceeded to sell plots to his wealthy and influential friends, who had family names like Rothschild and Thyssen.

The resort quickly developed, and in 1954 Hohenlohe converted a farmhouse into a luxury hotel, dubbing it the Marbella Club. There, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor cavorted with Hollywood stars and European aristocrats. The crowd at the Marbella Club was so grand that even the sometime piano player, a Spanish nobleman named Don Jaime de Moray Aragón, whose sister was queen of the Belgians, was said to be directly descended from 56 kings.…
…The marriage didn’t last, but Hohenlohe’s hectic erotic career, conducted in the gilded fishbowl of Marbella, was the stuff of legend, with a dazzling array of lovers including Ava Gardner and Kim Novak.

You can read more in Christopher Mason’s History of the Jet-Set and their Favorite Travel Spots for Town & Country.

Off to get married

Venice, 17 September 1955. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg steps into the gondola that will take her to her wedding with Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

On the way

Venice, 17 September 1955. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg on the way to her wedding with Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

The wedding takes place in Venice and the celebrations are appropriately lavish, lasting for three days. A shot of the Princess arriving by barge appears on the front cover of the October 17, 1955 issue of LIFE magazine. And there’s a video clip of the event on British Pathé’s website. The couple have two sons before their divorce in 1960.

Ira von Fürstenberg meets her future second husband, Francisco “Baby” Pignatari, at a party. He is a Brazilian industrialist. The couple marry in 1961 in Reno, Nevada, only to divorce three years later. Ira continues to be romantically linked in the gossip columns with various beaux, the most famous being Prince Rainier, following Princess Grace’s death in 1982.

Meanwhile, in 1969 her younger brother, Egon, marries Diane Halfin, founder of Diane von Fürstenberg.

Princess Ira von Fürstenberg – fashion model and movie star

In the mid ’60s, opportunity comes knocking on Ira von Fürstenberg’s door, as she recalls in an interview for Vanity Fair:

I was alone and without my children. I had divorced twice and suddenly, Dino de Laurentiis [an Italian film producer who, along with Sophia Loren’s husband, Carlo Ponti, helped put Italian cinema on the international stage after the Second Word War] asked me to do movies. They were the happiest years of my life. The best people I’ve tried. Passionate, different, loving. Each shoot was a new family and that’s what counts for me.

Ira von Fürstenberg in the world’s most glamorous crop top

1966. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg looks jaw-droppingly svelte in this minimalistic outfit she gets to wear as Arabella in Matchless. With a look like that she must have had her time cut out warding off the advances of any number of Prince Charmings. Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg up close and personal

1966. A closer look at that glamorous crop top. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, with smouldering eyes and pouty lips, gives the camera her most seductive, come-and-get-me expression. She's in the character of the irresistible Arabella in Matchless Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg, hello boys

1966. Does this shot remind you of anything? For instance, Eva Herzigova's eye-popping,traffic-stopping 1994 campaign poster for Wonderbra? In fact the sheer shirt and sequinned bra are one of the costumes worn by Princess Ira von Fürstenberg as Arabella in Matchless. Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg at the casino

1966. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg as Evelyne Rossan in Hello, Goodbye. Casinos, with their jet-set associations, were a favourite venue for so many 1960s thrillers and spoofs, and bring to mind Richard Avedon's famous 1954 shot of Sunny Harnett modelling a Grès evening dress at the Casino, Le Touquet. Photo from the Pierluigi Picture Feature Service.

Her first appearances are in three movies released in 1967: Rasputin, Dead Run and Matchless. The last of those, a frothy piece of period silliness, is available to watch on YouTube. In a scathing review, the New York Times reports that:

A real, sure-enough member of royalty from the society columns, Princess Ira Furstenberg, plays a bland, casually clad femme fatale. Talent aside, she makes a luscious eyeful.

Ira does, indeed, look gorgeous and goes on to make a further 26 appearances in European B-movies. But Ira’s movies meet with little success, as Andy Warhol notes in his diaries:

Went to Regine’s dinner for Ira Von Furstenberg (cab $2). Regine never showed up. Talked to Ira. And then her son came in and he was so good-looking. … Princess Ira has always wanted to be a movie star. Always. She’s been in lots of movies that never made it. I saw on TV the other night the Darryl Zanuck movie that he made for his girlfriend, Genevieve Gilles, and Ira was the second lead.

Regine is of course Régine Zylberberg, the night-club impresario credited with inventing the disco.

Ira von Fürstenberg combines fashion and jet setting

Around 1967. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg travelling in style in a striped, raw-silk dress. Could she be on a private jet headed for Monte Carlo or Marbella? Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg models a dress by Paco Rabanne

1967. The dress of metallic disks is classic, space-age Paco Rabanne and Princess Ira von Fürstenberg has the looks, the figure and the chutzpah to carry it off. Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg models a dress by Paco Rabanne

1967. A closer look at that Paco Rabanne classic modelled by the gorgeous Princess Ira von Fürstenberg. Photo by Glauco Cortini.

Ira von Fürstenberg ready for business

1966. Princess Ira von Fürstenberg wears a crisp, striped shirt and layers of mascara. Photo by Glauco Cortini.

By the mid-’60s Ira von Fürstenberg is also featuring on the pages of fashion magazines including Vogue. Her suave and sophisticated looks clearly appeal to the fashion editors and photographers of the time including Gianni Penati, Henry Clarke and Irving Penn, as you can see in this Flickr album. You might also like to take a look at the scans of Alexis Waldeck’s shoot at Femme Fatale.

Angelo Frontoni prepares Ira von Fürstenberg for a photo shoot — 1967. Angelo Frontoni, prepares Ira von Fürstenberg for a photo shoot. Read more.

These days she works as an artist, creating sculptures and jewelry from found objects discovered on her travels.

Donyale Luna – the fashion world’s wayward moon-child

1967. Donyale Luna in Qui Etes Vous, Polly Maggoo? Photo: Reporters Associés.

Donyale Luna took the fashion world by storm in the mid-’60s, becoming the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Vogue. She worked with some of the most creative spirits of the time including Richard Avedon, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.

No wonder she’s now a cult figure, with no shortage of information and misinformation about her on the Internet. I really can’t do any better than begin with this introduction from the Donyale Luna Blog:

Six feet three inches tall and slender as an adder, with eyes the size of demitasse saucers, Donyale Luna was not only the first black supermodel and the highest-paid fashion model of her time: she was a unique phenomenon, arguably the most strangely beautiful woman to grace the planet in the 20th century. The fashion world—indeed the world at large—will never see the likes of her again.

Looking at her photos, watching her movies and reading about her I’m struck by seven aspects of her personality and career.

Donyale Luna, shape-shifter

When asked where she came from, Donyale would reply, “I’m from the moon, darling.” The reality was more prosaic.

She was born in 1945, the daughter of Peggy and Nathaniel Freeman, a working-class couple living in Detroit. They had a tempestuous marriage – they were married and divorced four times. In 1965, after Donyale had moved to New York, it ended in tragedy, Peggy shooting (and killing) her husband as he came home drunk and threatening.

Despite the unhappy ending, Donyale Luna seems to have grown up in a happy, respectable and relatively prosperous home. She was intelligent and ambitious. And as the gangly duckling morphed into a black swan, she turned herself into someone else – parallels here with another ’60s model, Veruschka. She changed her name (Luna is the Latin word for moon), she changed her voice and she changed her life story. The Donyale Luna Blog again:

When Sanders Bryant [a friend and beau] met the unfolding diva at age 15, “she was already radiant and gorgeous.” They were in the Cass Tech high school cafeteria, and our girl was working on a film script. She introduced herself as Donyale Luna, recently arrived from Hawaii. Her parents had been killed in an auto accident and she was adopted. “She continued that story as long as I knew her,” says Bryant, “even after I knew her mother and father and that she was born in Ford Hospital right here in Detroit.”

She dreamed of being a movie star herself (“like Anna Magnani”), a writer, a dancer. At age 16 and 17, Donyale was performing on stage at the Civic Center Theatre in Detroit.

What are we to make of it all? Well, what was a girl to do whose figure and beauty were so extraordinary and mesmerising? Try to be like her contemporaries or step out boldly on her own path? She chose the latter, but perhaps inside the diva there was always a scared little girl.

Donyale Luna lost in thought

1967. The crew are conferring just across the room, but Donyale, cigarette in hand, seems to be in a world of her own. Photo by Jack Garofalo.

Donyale Luna poses in front of a lacquer screen

1967. Who are the guys and what is the occasion? More urgently, who designed THAT DRESS? Photo by Jack Garofalo.

Jack Garofalo shoots Donyale Luna

1967. Is this a posed shot? Or has the photographer caught Donyale in an unguarded moment of dark despair? Whatever the case, it's a stunning image. Photo by Jack Garofalo.

Donyale Luna, new kid on the block

Donyale Luna was discovered in 1963 by David McCabe, an English photographer (the following year Andy Warhol commissioned him to document his daily activities for a year, resulting in a book called A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol).

I was on a photo assignment in Detroit, photographing Ford cars [and] there was a school nearby. I was struck by this almost 6-foot-tall beautiful girl – around 14-years-old at the time– wearing her Catholic uniform. She stopped to see what was going on.

He told her that he worked for magazines like Mademoiselle and Glamour, and invited her to call him should she visit New York. Her mother was unenthusiastic: “I tried to discourage her from going to New York because I had heard so much that was bad about it.” But Donyale kept insisting and they reached a compromise: she would go and live with her aunt in New Jersey and get a job while pursuing modeling in her free time.

So in 1964, Donyale flew to NYC and called David McCabe. He was as good as his word, sending photos of her to various agencies and introducing her to Nancy White, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar. She and her team immediately decided to tear up their January cover and hire an artist, ex-model Katharina Denzinger, to make the breakthrough line drawing of Donyale that replaced it, together with six full-colour sketches of her for the inside pages.

David McCabe also called Richard Avedon. “I said you’ve got to see this girl. She’s just unbelievable.” Avedon was blown away and had her signed to an exclusive one-year contract.

Donyale Luna, trailblazer

1966. Donyale Luna on the cover of Vogue. — 1966. David Bailey’s history-making Vogue cover shot of Donyale Luna.

Donyale Luna spent 1965 in New York. Avedon’s first pictures of her appeared in the April issue of Harper’s Bazaar – the one he guest-edited. A caption to one of the photos read, “As worn by Donyale Luna with all the grace and strength of a Masai warrior.”.

But it soon became clear that all was not well in the southern states. Advertisers objected to the photos of Donyale and readers began to cancel their subscriptions. William Randolph Hearst, who owned the magazine, called a halt. Avedon later recalled, “For reasons of racial prejudice, and the economics of the fashion business, I was never permitted to photograph her for publication again.”.

Before moving to London in December, Donyale had a nervous breakdown and spent time in Bellevue Hospital. Two years later she told the New York Times that she fled from New York when she found “they said beautiful things on one side and turned around and stabbed you in the back.”. But that and the racist response to her photo shoots were probably only part of the story. In the space of just a few months she had shot to fame, lost her father, been shocked by the decadence of Andy Warhol’s East 47th Street Factory and had a brief, failed marriage.

In London she became an even bigger hit and made history when a photo of her by David Bailey appeared on the front cover of the 1 March 1966 issue of Vogue – the first ever to feature a black model. It was around this time that she married Luigi Cazzaniga, a photographer. Three years later Donyale moved to Italy, where she would end her career.

Donyale Luna, the heavenly body

According to Bailey, “She was extraordinary-looking, so tall and skinny. She was like an illustration, a walking illustration.”

Donyale certainly made an impression on her friend, the model Pat Cleveland:

She had no tits, but lots of presence. We’d walk down the street and men’s mouths would drop open in awe. When we walked into restaurants people would stop eating and stand up and applaud. She was like a mirage, or some kind of fantasy.

At a New York nightclub in 1966 Jackie Kennedy went up to Donyale and simply said, “You are very beautiful.” An article in the 1 April 1966 issue of Time magazine and titled “The Luna Year”, described her as:

…a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper’s Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain’s Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.

Donyale Luna, bohemian

Donyale Luna was drawn to creative people and they to her. And she brought that side of her character to her modeling, developing crazy runway walks including moving like a robot and crawling on all fours like a stalking animal.

In New York everyone who glittered want to know Donyale. She hung out with Miles Davis, she had Mati Klarwein (a psychedelic artist who made record covers for Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix) paint her body (another parallel with Veruschka), and she fell in with Andy Warhol and his crowd. She was one of only two black women to be part of his East 47th Street Factory.

Donyale Luna posing on Salvador Dali’s grand piano

1966. Pianos are a recurring theme in Dali's work, particularly in the 1930s. Donyale was one of his favourite models. So this must have been quite a fantasy scenario! Photo by Bill Claxton.

Donyale Luna modelling a dress decorated by Salvador Dali

1966. Dali drew the pattern onto the dress as Donyale modelled it. Love the fluid transition from flesh to bone and the integrated signature. Photo by Bill Claxton.

1966. Donyale Luna cradling Salvador Dali’s pet ocelot

1966. Dali's most treasured pet was a Colombian ocelot called Babou. It accompanied him nearly everywhere he went, including a restaurant in Manhattan. When a fellow diner became alarmed, he calmly told her that Babou was a normal cat that he had “painted over in an op art design”. Donyale certainly shares Babou's feline grace. Photo by Bill Claxton.

In London, her celebrity friends included Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Mia Farrow and Yul Brynner. She dated the actor Terence Stamp, and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. And she was photographed by William Klein, Helmut Newton and William Claxton. It was Claxton who introduced her to Salvador Dalí, who described her as “the reincarnation of Nefertiti”.

Donyale Luna, movie star

Talking of which, Donyale Luna features in Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali, a documentary biography narrated by Orson Welles. She also appears in a number of cult movies: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, William Klein’s Qui Etes Vous, Polly Maggoo? and Federico Fellini’s Satyricon.

She had begun acting during her time in New York, appearing in four of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. In Otto Preminger’s comedy, Skidoo, she plays the mistress of God; Groucho Marx got God’s role.

1966. Donyale Luna in Qui Etes Vous, Polly Maggoo?

This is the opening scene of Qui Etes Vous, Polly Maggoo?, William Klein's gleeful satire on the fashion industry. Donyale is one of the mannequins modelling metal fashions that parody the creations of Paco Rabanne. Miss Maxwell, the magazine editor inspired by Diana Vreeland, is played by Grayson Hall.

1969. Donyale Luna in Fellini’s Satyricon

This clip is as haunting as it is short. Donyale plays the part of the sorceress, Enotea in Fellini's extravagantly self-indulgent movie set in ancient Rome and based on the writings of Petronius. Martin Potter is her visitor, Encolpio.

1969. Donyale Luna with Patty Pravo

This double act is the epitome of the groovy, spaced-out, LSD-fuelled mood of the late '60s. Patty Pravo, an Italian singer who made her debut in 1966, sings a cover version of The Beatles' hit song, Michelle. But Donyale steals the show with her entrancingly exotic dance and equally exotic costumes (of which there are many!). This is a must-see for all Donyale fans; don't be put off by the brief technical glitch at 0:37.

Donyale Luna, lost soul

Given the pressure of her chosen career, her probable insecurity and the circles in which she moved from her time in New York onwards, it’s hardly surprising that Donyale Luna went off the rails. As time went on, she became more and more flaky and her behaviour got more eccentric. Beverly Johnson was a black model who broke onto the scene toward the end of Donyale’s career:

[Donyale] doesn’t wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she’s from — Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn’t show up for bookings. She didn’t have a hard time, she made it hard for herself.

At the age of 32 the drug-taking finally did for Donyale. Estranged from her husband and living in Rome, she died of an accidental heroin overdose in May 1979, leaving behind an 18-month-old daughter, Dream.

Donyale Luna frock hunting

1966. Donyale Luna hunts designer dresses at the Jardin Des Plantes, Paris. Photo by Jack Garofalo for Paris Match.

Donyale Luna poses on an operating table

1966. Seems like a premonition. So sad that just 13 years later she would be dead. Photo by Maurice Jarnoux for Paris Match.

Want to know more about Donyale Luna?

There’s so much myth and misinformation around Donyale Luna that you have to be careful where you look. By far the most interesting, thorough and well-researched source I’ve come across is the Donyale Luna Blog. It’s a work in progress.

If you’d like to read a book, you could take a look at Ben Arogundade’s Beauty’s Enigma – Donyale Luna – The First Black Supermodel. Articles on which I’ve drawn include:

The tragic tale of Donyale Luna by Ben Arogundade
Donyale Luna: the world`s first black supermodel and the first to grace the cover of Vogue
The First Black Supermodel, Whom History Forgot by Keli Goff
Luna Space Model by Philippa Burton
Donyale Luna in Formidable Magazine