Fashion

The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more

Welcome to the sixties, a decade of controversy, creativity and consumerism; effervescence, experimentation and excess; babes, boutiques and blasphemy.

At the dawn of the sixties, the economies of the US and Western Europe are booming and post-World War II austerity measures are a thing of the past. There’s an air of optimism, tempered by the ongoing Cold War, which comes to a head in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis – a close brush with full-scale nuclear war. But to every cloud, a silver lining, and for the movie industry the Cold War serves as inspiration for a string of films including The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Dr Strangelove (1964) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) – ironically, From Russia With Love (1963) is not really about the Cold War

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

No movie better epitomises the paranoia, cynicism and squalor of the Cold War than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is based on a novel by John le Carré, who was familiar with the grim reality, having worked for both MI5 and MI6 in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film is arguably the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. Among other things, it’s been called awesome, influential, mind-blowing, cool, obsessional and pretentious – and it lives up to all of these designations. It also has a quintessentially sixties style, not least the interiors of the spacecraft.

3. The first moon landing

In 1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon with his now legendary words “One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” The computer on Apollo 11, his spaceship, is much less powerful than a smartphone.

During the sixties, the ideological battle extends way beyond the borders of the Western and Communist powers. In May 1961, in response to the Soviet Union’s rapidly advancing space programme, President John F Kennedy promises to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong makes good the promise. Together with “Buzz” Aldrin, he walks around for three hours, does some experiments, picks up bits of moon dirt and rocks, plants a US flag and leaves a sign. As if in anticipation, three sci-fi movies appear the previous year: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes and Barbarella.

Both the pioneering spirit and the technological advances of the space race fuel developments during the decade. The sixties see the launch of colour television, the audiocassette and quick-drying acrylic paint. Injection-moulded plastic becomes a material of choice, not least for furniture. And the introduction of pantyhose paves the way for the miniskirt. Novelty, instant gratification, disposability, living for the day are all in.

The sixties – the younger generation

Young people are better off than ever and ready to challenge their elders and betters. They feel a new sense of identity and they’re determined to express it.

Nowhere is this more evident than in London where, in 1963, the bowler-hatted establishment is embarrassed, humiliated and thrown into disarray when Secretary of War, John Profumo, is forced to admit that he has lied to the House of Commons about an affair with Christine Keeler, an alleged call-girl. Unfortunately for him, Ms Keeler is also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. Although Profumo assures the House that he hasn’t compromised national security, he is forced to resign and the scandal threatens to topple the Conservative government.

In 1964, Peter Laurie in an article in Vogue observes that:

London is a city of and for the young. Probably no other in the world offers us the opportunities that are here. Wherever enthusiasm, energy, iconoclasm or any kind of creative ability are needed, you’ll find people in their mid-twenties or younger.

Christine Keeler

1963. Christine Keeler leaves the Old Bailey surrounded by police, press and paparazzi after giving evidence at the trial of Dr Stephen Ward. The 50-year-old...

Marianne Faithfull

1967. Marianne Faithfull has grown up as a well-bred, West London schoolgirl. At the outset of her career and still a teenager, she looks for...

Paul McCartney

1964. Paul McCartney, bass guitarist, singer and song-writer for rock band The Beatles, relaxes at a party. It could almost be a scene from Michelangelo...

Mandy Rice-Davies

1961. 17-years-old Mandy Rice-Davies poses in front of a window two years before going down in history with the quip “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”...

David Bailey and Veruschka

1965. Sixties supermodel Veruschka dances over photographer David Bailey as he writhes on the ground looking to capture an unconventional angle. Bailey, the son of...

Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee

1967. Seated on the baroque throne is Patrick Macnee as suave, unflappable, debonair secret agent John Steed. His wardrobe is inspired by that of Patrick’s...

Sandie Shaw

1964. 17-year-old Sandy Shaw hugs the cover of her first hit, Always Something There to Remind Me. She will go on to rack up more...

Sarah Miles and David Hemmings

1966. Sarah Miles is an Essex girl whose career as an actress kicks off with two sexy roles. Her debut, age 21, is as Shirley...

Pattie Boyd

1964. This is a whirlwind year for fashion model Pattie. Cast for The Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night, she meets George Harrison on set,...

The people making the headlines come from all sorts of backgrounds, not just from posh public schools. They include pop singers and pop artists, actors, models, hairdressers, photographers, interior decorators and designers. Think The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Michael Caine, Terence Stamp, Tom Stoppard, Vidal Sassoon, David Bailey, Terence Donovan, David Hicks, Alan Fletcher and Theo Crosby. All are concerned in one way or another with “image.” Private Eye refers to this group of talented, self-confident young people as “the new aristocracy”.

The sixties – new and not-so-new attitudes

If there’s a single theme that runs right through the sixties like letters through a stick of rock it’s challenge. Traditional notions of values and morality, style and taste are up for grabs.

Taboos around sex outside marriage, under threat since at least the 1940s, are further eroded by the introduction of the contraceptive pill, which opens the door for the permissive society. As the decade goes by, nudity features more and more regularly in magazines, on stage and on screen, to howls of outrage from the likes of Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association in the UK. They are fighting a losing battle – as demonstrated by, for example, the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967 and a rash of movies about sex and power that are released in the early seventies.

Susan Bottomly, aka International Velvet, by Billy Name — *Andy Warhol superstar Susan Bottomly, aka International Velvet, in a promotional shot for Chelsea Girls (1966). Photo by Billy Name.*

In the US, the civil rights and anti-war movements are gathering pace. The latter, in particular, is associated with alternative lifestyles. This is the age of communes and collectives, of yoga and mysticism, of rock and roll and recreational drugs, particularly marijuana. In 1967, Marianne Faithfull, convent-educated chanteuse, single mother and girlfriend of Mick Jagger (impossible to be closer to the epicentre of swinging London), is found wearing nothing more than a fur rug by police searching for drugs at Keith Richards’ house in Sussex. Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are subsequently sentenced to three and 12 months in prison respectively.

Reactions to the scandal reveal the extent to which underlying attitudes and prejudices have and haven’t changed. The liberals in the establishment are outraged and The Times publishes a leader titled Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”. Under pressure, the Lord Chief Justice quashes the jail terms, a decision that liberalises drug-enforcement policy going forward. But Marianne will later recall:

It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.

1968. Sex and drugs and rock and roll. Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton in Performance.

The theme is referenced in Darling (1965), a British film about an ambitious girl played by Julie Christie, who is happy to sleep around, moving from one relationship to another to further her career only to get her come-uppance. It turns out that the ideal woman of the sixties is perhaps closer to her counterpart of the previous decades than would appear at first glance. As Betty Friedan observes in The Feminine Mystique (1963), the stereotype of the “ideal woman”…

…held that women could find fulfilment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love. It denied women a career or any commitment outside the home and narrowed woman’s world down to the home, cut her role back to housewife.

Nevertheless, the counter-culture is in full swing, often taking its inspiration from advertising and fast-moving consumer goods. In London, Bridget Riley is at the forefront of the Op Art movement. In the US, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg shock and amaze audiences with their Pop Art creations. Psychedelic art emerges from the drug and music sub-cultures of London and San Francisco.

Andy Warhol

The first part of this five-minute video introduces Andy Warhol’s approach to movie-making and collaborator Edie Sedgwick’s method of non-acting. The second part is an audio recording of Andy and Edie talking about the next day’s filming, illustrated by a collage of movie clips and stills.

Bridget Riley

After working for a few years in a semi-impressionist style, Bridget begins to develop her signature Op (short for Optical) Art style around 1960. It uses black and white geometric patterns to explore visual effects and produce a disorienting effect on the eye. In this brief video clip she talks about her work.

Italy, the new domestic landscape

The commentary for this 10-minute video on Italy is authored by Emilio Ambasz, curator of design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and responsible for the landmark exhibition, Italy, the new domestic landscape. In it, he identifies three main groups of designers. In their work, conformists continue to refine already established forms and functions. Reformists, questioning the designer’s role in a consumer society, redesign known objects with new, ironic and sometimes self-deprecatory social, cultural and aesthetic references. One faction of contestatory designers focus their attention on political and philosophical discussion, the other seeks to develop objects that are flexible in function.

In Italy, a new generation of architects and designers such as Paolo Soleri, Ettore Sotsass, Joe Colombo and Archizoom favour a more personal, expressive, even light-hearted approach. Their utopian visions will find their ultimate expression in the summer of 1972 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Italy, The New Domestic Landscape.

In music the headline acts include The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, but there are many, many others. What they all have in common is youthfulness and iconoclasm.

The sixties – from futuristic to nostalgic fashion

A new decade needs a new ideal of female beauty. Step forward Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey. She’s been brought up on a farm about 30 miles from London, he’s the son of a tailor’s cutter in the East End of London.

Bailey, together with partners-in-crime Brian Duffy and Terry Donovan, pioneers a new, raw, in-your-face, style of fashion photography characterized by strong contrasts, bold cropping and unsentimental poses. “The Black Trinity”, as Norman Parkinson, a photographer of the older generation dubs them, roam the streets of London shooting celebrities from all walks of life, most notoriously (in Bailey’s case) lethal gangsters the Kray Twins.

In fact, the photographers become celebrities in their own right, going out with actors, musicians and all manner of beautiful people. Nor is it just their photographic style that’s new. In the words of Duffy, “Before 1960, a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual!”

There’s no better introduction to their style, attitude and MO than Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, Blow-Up (1966).

Bailey meets Jean Shrimpton in 1960 while he is shooting for Vogue and she is working with Duffy in a nearby studio. She says: “‘Bailey’ was how he introduced himself and that was all I ever called him. We were instantly attracted to each other.” He says: “What attracted me to her was that she genuinely didn’t care how she looked. She honestly never understood what all the fuss was about. That was very attractive to me.” How very sixties!

He books her for a string of shoots (as well as a four-year relationship) and over the next few years they produce a deluge of iconic images that appear in Vogue, the Sunday supplements and other magazines. Suddenly the aristocratic hauteur of fifties fashion shoots is so passé. In its place is something younger, more energetic, more accessible, more fun, above all more overtly sexy.

Sue Lyon

1962. Sue’s work as a child model in a commercial for JC Penney leads to small parts on TV in The Loretta Young Show (1959)...

Raquel Welch

1966. When Raquel Welch appears on screen in a purposely depleted, furry, prehistoric bikini in Hammer Studios’ One Million Years B.C., she instantly becomes a...

Jane Fonda

1968. Jane is the daughter of Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men, On Golden Pond). Having become interested in acting in the...

Twiggy

1967. A skinny, freckled and crop-haired 18-year-old model, Twiggy weighs just six and a half stone. The previous year, she was told she’s too short...

Vanessa Redgrave

1966. This is the first year that Vanessa appears on the big screen – not in just one film, not in two but in three....

Penelope Tree with David Bailey

Around 1967. This is the year that American-born model Penelope moves in with David Bailey – "he had this dangerous, lion-king-on-the-savannah vibe." She’s 18 years...

Unlike the voluptuous beauties of the fifties such as Monroe, Mansfield, Dors and Sabrina, “The Shrimp” is a fresh-faced, slender girl-next-door. In her wake come a procession of waifs such as Twiggy, Jill Kennington, Penelope Tree, Patti Boyd and, at the more exotic edge of the spectrum, Veruschka, Peggy Moffitt and Donyale Luna. While the skinny, androgynous, doll-faced model dominates the decade, she coexists with her more curvaceous sister, embodied in the likes of Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch.

London designers in particular are quick to respond, creating designs for the new generation rather than expecting them to ape their parents. Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki, Zandra Rhodes, Marion Foale, Sally Tuffin, Bill Gibb and Ossie Clark are the new kids on the block and they are not afraid to experiment with new materials – perspex, PVC, polyester, acrylic, nylon, rayon, Spandex, even paper. Their fun, eye-catching, easy-care outfits are sold through boutiques. The most famous is Biba but many others cluster around Carnaby Street and the King’s Road.

Blow-Up

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 movie, set in swinging London, stars David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unwittingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. It’s both a stylish and intriguing mystery and a brilliant period piece. And at a deeper level it’s an exploration of the relationship between perceptions and reality.

Carnaby Street

1968. In the 1960s Carnaby Street’s independent fashion boutiques are where it’s at whether you’re one of the mods (a clan of youthful dudes) or, a few years later, a hippie. With bands such as the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Small Faces working, shopping and socialising in the area, it becomes one of London’s coolest destinations. By the mid-sixties its fame has reached the US courtesy of Time magazine. According to the leading article in the 15 April 1966 issue, London: The Swinging City:

Perhaps nothing illustrates the new swinging London better than narrow, three-block-long Carnaby Street, which is crammed with a cluster of the 'gear' boutiques where the girls and boys buy each other clothing...

Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?

The fashion show at the beginning of William Klein’s zany, irreverent, subversive 1966 movie is a scathing satire on the Paris couture houses of the time. It’s familiar territory for him – he’s been working for Vogue US for almost a decade.

Meanwhile, space-age fashion dominates the catwalks of Paris. André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin in particular put a bomb under traditional notions of couture with their emphasis on short skirts, white boots, chain mail – clothes that can be carried off only by the jeunesse dorée.

During the first half of the decade, the direction in which fashion is moving is pretty clear: skirts are getting shorter and silhouettes boxier, with an emphasis on new materials and bold colours. Then the pendulum begins to swing from futuristic towards nostalgic. In the search for something more romantic, styles proliferate. Towards the end of the decade three different looks coexist:

Flower-power blossoms at San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967 and at Woodstock two years later.
Its close cousin, the ethnic / peasant look, is built around items such as Afghan coats, Mexican blouses and ponchos, Indian pantaloons, floor-length gipsy skirts and head scarves.
Finally there’s the ruffles-and-ringlets look – all velvet, lace, frills and beads, taking its cues from Louis Malle’s Viva Maria! (1965), a romp set somewhere in early-20^th century Latin America, where Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau get involved in various high jinks with a bunch of revolutionaries.

Want to know more about the sixties?

I embarked on this piece as a showcase for some of the sixties photos in my collection. In order to provide some context for them, I’ve highlighted various themes, events and movies. Inevitably my choices have been subjective and partial. There’s no way that this collage of words, images and video clips can do justice to the sixties. But hopefully it will give you a flavour of the era and pique your interest to find out more.

Three books from my library inspired and informed this piece:

Sixties Design by Philippe Garner
Antonioni’s Blow-Up by Philippe Garner and David Mellor
In Vogue: Sixty years of celebrities and fashion from British Vogue by Georgina Howell.

The Internet is full of information about the sixties including specialist websites about specific models and movie stars, directors and films, events and designers. Just google your interest.

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

Cover Girl is a 1944 movie in which Hollywood embraces the business of fashion. It offers an opportunity to take a look at the modeling businesps, then burgeoning but still in its infancy. And it provides a showcase for the fashions of the day and the talents of Rita Hayworth and a bevy of models.

It’s a bright spectacle with songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, costumes by Travis Banton, Muriel King and Gwen Wakeling, choreography by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and that special early-Technicolor lushness. Donen would go on to direct Funny Face, another musical about the world of fashion, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn as its stars. Funny Face would help to cement the reputation of Paris after World War II as the world capital of fashion.

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby – "the most beautiful face this side of heaven and the sharpest tongue this side of hell," according to Valdemar Vetlugen, editor...

Cecilia Meagher

1943. Cecilia Meagher began modeling in 1936 when she was barely 17 years old. In the early 1940s she signed with Conover models. In 1942,...

Leslie Brooks

1943. Leslie Brooks started her career around 1940 as a model. In 1941 she signed with Columbia and had a makeover: she changed her name...

Peggy Lloyd

1943. Peggy was adopted age five by Harold Lloyd, a famous comedian, a shrewd investor and the richest man in Hollywood. Despite the family’s wealth,...

Eileen McClory

1943. Eileen McClory is a vivacious, cute, girl-next-door type, so has just the kind of looks and personality that Harry Conover likes. So when she...

Betty Jane Hess

1943. Betty Jane Hess began modeling in 1938, when she was barely 17 years old. Like many aspiring models, she competed in various pageants and...

Dusty Anderson

1943. Dusty started out as Ruth Anderson from Toledo, Ohio. Harry Conover spotted her in New York “doing some designing”, decided that the name Ruth...

Jinx Falkenburg

1943. With her hazel eyes and lithe figure, Jinx Falkenburg is one of America’s highest-paid cover-girl models during World War II and, with her...

The plot of Cover Girl is both pure fantasy and pretty banal. A Brooklyn nightclub owner loves his principal dancing girl. The dancing girl loves the nightclub owner. But the dancing girl has a driving ambition to become a famous cover girl… Bear in mind that while the world of Cover Girl might feel like it has nothing to do with reality, former Vogue editor Rosamond Bernier would recall:

Vogue was something in those days. I came in my first morning and saw all the editors at the typewriters wearing hats with veils and big rhinestone chokers and earrings. I looked with absolute wonder!

To give you a flavour, here are three extracts from the movie

1. Put Me To The Test

Set to Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s Put Me To The Test, this number is one of the movie’s highlights: two phenomenally athletic and graceful dancers, a treacherous set (different levels, stairs, a ramp) and no quick cutting to mask mistakes. The supporting girls and the costumes are the icing on the cake.

2. The shoot

So they’ve hammed it up for the movie, but this scene offers a light-hearted insight into the art behind the stills photography that is such a focus for aenigma. We see the make-up artist (remember Perc Westmore – the makeup king of Hollywood?), the hairdresser, the dapper photographer and his assistant, and the final product – the magazine itself.

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

We’re in the Wheaton Theatre. The curtain goes up and an enormous lens is lowered onto a podium in the middle of the stage. Through the lens we see each cover girl in turn enter from the left and watch her pose full-length and close-up. Her session ends with a glimpse of the magazine cover on which she appears. The whole thing has a nice pace and wit.

It's followed by the wonderful "round the mountain" scene in which Rita Hayworth dances down and back up a cloud-shrouded Art Deco mountain peak. In this version, the original soundtrack has been replaced by a Madonna mash-up with Victor Cheng.

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

In 1944, the modeling business in the US is dominated by two agencies.

*Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.* *Read more*.

John Robert Powers has blazed the trail. In the 1920s as an out-of-work actor he finds himself using his network to help photographers find models. He spots a business opportunity and sets up shop. As he later recalls, he:

…had their pictures taken, made up a catalogue containing their descriptions and measurements, and sent it to anyone in New York who might be a prospective client – commercial photographers, advertisers, department stores, artists.

The depression that follows the 1929 stock market crash enables him to broaden his talent pool by attracting debutantes whose families are on their uppers. At the same time he works hard to make the business respectable. His success changes the social status of models. Society hostess extaordinaire Elsa Maxwell says that she might give a party without debutantes but she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting a few Powers Girls.

The 1940s see Powers basking in the light of success and publicity and expanding his business portfolio. He has a radio show and writes a regular syndicated newspaper column, Secrets of Charm. Warner Bros release The Powers Girl (1943), a movie about two sisters living in New York and aspiring to become high-profile models. And Powers Girls are hired by the Hollywood studios and go out with and marry the rich and famous.

In 1941 Powers publishes the first of many books, The Powers Girls. Promising “The story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” it’s partly a behind-the-scenes look at the agency, partly a beauty and grooming guide, and partly a marketing piece. In 1943 he launches a correspondence course, including “practical hints about what men really do and don’t like.” Meanwhile, his wife begins teaching charm courses covering grooming, diction and coiffure, the first step along the road to a nationwide chain of John Robert Powers Schools. But Powers has taken his eye off his core modeling business and this provides an opening for a new competitor.

Harry Conover begins his career in the modeling business as a model and works for John Robert Powers before deciding to set up in competition. He’s handsome, suave and unscrupulous, taking with him models Anita Colby, Phyllis Brown and her boyfriend, who agrees to invest in the start-up. The boyfriend is Gerald Ford and in 1974 he will become President of the US.

Harry differentiates his agency from that of his erstwhile employer by promoting a different kind of model. He mocks the Powers Girls as “Adenoid Annies, rattling bundles of skin and bones.” Focusing on preppies and campus queens, he pioneers a new type of model – “the windblown outdoor girl”, in the words of Bob Fertig his head of promotion. Conover calls these recruits Conover Coeds, then Cover Girls – and that’s where Columbia’s Cover Girl gets it inspiration and title. While, taking his cue from Hollywood, Conover develops a habit of rechristening his models – including his future wife.

In 1941, the winner of a Miss Atlantic City contest turns up at the agency. She introduces herself to Conover: “I’m Jessica Wilcox.” “You’re Candy Johnson,” he replies. “And your rate is $5 an hour.” He later shortens her name from Johnson to Jones because she has trouble remembering the longer version. By 1943, thanks to her looks and his promotion – including candy-striped outfits and calling cards – she is a top model. And in 1946 Conover marries her.

But the marriage is fated from the start. Conover is always chasing skirt – seemingly out with a different model night after night. He is also less concerned than Powers about respectability – he has a much more laissez-faire attitude when playboys approach him for dates with his models. “Right in my own office we have the very thing that every man looks for, works for, fights for and dies for,” Conover says, just before being excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

In 1952, having dropped out of the agency business and franchised his schools, Powers will move to Beverly Hills, where he will settle until he dies, age 84. Conover, by contrast, will die age 53, having succumbed to a classic combo of booze, lechery and profligacy. The modeling business, like the movie business, is unforgiving. It has a habit of chewing up its practitioners and spitting them out.

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Rita Hayworth and co-stars on the set of Cover Girl — *1943. Filming a scene for Cover Girl. Photo by Ned Scott. Read more.*

Cover Girl has more in common with Gilda than their very different plots and styles might lead you to expect. Both are Columbia productions commissioned by Harry Cohn. Both are directed by Charles Vidor with cinematography by Rudolph Maté. And both have scripts by Virginia Van Upp.

Cohn is known to be tightfisted but he makes an exception for Cover Girl. He sets aside no less than a million dollars for the production and accepts it going US $600,000 over budget, with the lavish dance numbers devised by Kelly in no small part to blame for the overspend.

The movie is quite a coup for the Conover agency – a massive riposte to (and possibly inspired by) The Powers Girl, released the previous year. Harry Conover and Anita Colby are both employed by the studio as “technical consultants”. The latter is in charge of a troupe of Conover models who travel west from New York in a special railway carriage – a great publicity stunt that’s lapped up by the press.

The girls are all excited about what lies in store for them in Tinseltown but they’re in for a nasty surprise. Harry Cohn has made arrangements to ensure that they stay out of trouble. Francine Counihan, one of the models and also Anita Colby’s sister remembers:

Cover Girl was produced by Harry Cohn. Oh, he was a monster. He decided to put us all in one house together where he could see that nobody could get out. So we stayed in Marion Davies’ home in California. He only let us out to go shopping.

And there they stay for months while Harry Cohn apparently searches for an actress to play the lead role. Surely he’s known all along that this is to be a vehicle for his studio’s leading star, Rita Hayworth? Perhaps he just likes the feeling of power over the girls.

Rita and the gang

1943. On a lawn, presumably outside the studio, Rita Hayworth poses with the cover girls. It looks like the photographer must be perched in a...

Lucky man!

1943. Some people have all the luck. Rita Hayworth gives Tech Sergeant Gordon L Smith a peck on the cheek. A caption on the back...

Tea time

1943. The stars relax in the hot California sunshine during a break in filming. The maid (as usual) is uncredited. A caption on the back...

Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

1944. Two of the era's supermodels pose on the set of Cover Girl. Susann Shaw is taken with the fashion sketch she's holding, while Jinx...

Anyway, whatever the reason, there’s a great story about how all the girls sneak out one night to go to a party. They have to return at intervals, one by one, to get past the security guards. To the guards’ growing consternation, each in turn announces herself as Anita Colby, who is the only member of the troupe allowed out. Inevitably, the last one back is the real Anita Colby.

Meanwhile, Anita Colby, who also acts as the girls’ agent, makes the most of the stay by managing to book three magazine covers each for the girls. Her success with the press doesn’t go unnoticed and she’s appointed “Feminine Director” of the David O Selznick studio.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

One of those most closely involved with the way Rita looks in Cover Girl is Robert Coburn, head of Columbia’s Photo Gallery. In John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth, Coburn talks about photographing Columbia’s biggest star:

The contract I signed put me in complete charge of the studio’s stills department. Mind you, if I ever relaxed and let a bad picture of Hayworth or any other star out, Cohn would call me on the carpet immediately.
In those days we had the Johnson Office, and if we had any cleavage showing the pictures would be sent back. The Code was very strict. Any sign of breasts, even the shadow between, had to disappear. A woman wasn’t supposed to have any. We spent all our time touching photos up.
Hayworth didn’t need touching up. She didn’t treat herself badly, she wasn’t an all-night carouser, although naturally we had to watch for wrinkles under the eyes and around the neck. Of course, any skin marks, small pimples, we would take them out. I don’t remember Hayworth ever looking at a picture, I don’t think she ever cared how she looked in a picture. She’d come in once in a while and ask how they looked but she didn’t bother checking or approving them. That’s rare for women. Whereas Cohn was interested in her every minute of the day. He’d call whenever he knew from the call sheet that I was shooting her. They fought a lot. I told Cohn a million times that if he stopped picking on her I’d get what I wanted but he kept needling her and fitting in more hours.
I’d usually talk to her all the time when I was photographing her, getting her in the mood. Then, I’d catch her at her peak. She had the famous Hayworth look, looking over the shoulder, and after doing three of those she’d had it. She’d say, “What do you want that for? Get something else.” She didn’t realize that she didn’t have that come-and-get-me look except in that one pose.

Cover girl Rita Hayworth with magazines — *1941. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell.* *Read more*.

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

“Cover Girl” – Rita learns new role is the title of an article that appears in the 18 January 1943 issue of LIFE magazine.

Rita Hayworth is just a little bit bigger in the bust and in the hips than the average top-notch photographer’s model. The movie star is 35 in. around bust and hips whereas the average model is, at best. only 34.
These extra inches, which look fine on Rita Hayworth, did not worry Columbia Pictures at all when they cast her for the lead part in their forthcoming movie, The Cover Girl. The movie, which goes into production soon, will tell about photographers’ models who appear on the covers of national magazines. In it Miss Hayworth will combine her looks, figure and talents with Technicolor, some songs and a complicated story about two cover girls, one of 30 years ago and the other of today. The second cover girl will be the first one’s daughter. Miss Hayworth will play both of them.
When Miss Hayworth was in New York City recently, it occurred to Columbia Pictures that she ought to go through a model’s routine to see how a photographer’s model really worked. Miss Hayworth, who is a game girl, spent a full day working out of Harry Conover’s model agency, making believe she was a real cover girl. She learned that beauty is not enough.
For $3 an hour – $10 an hour if in great demand – models work exhausting hours in front of hot lights and fussy photographers, always trying to be charming and intelligent. To get work they have to be on time for appointments, be well-groomed and sweet-tempered. They spend days tramping around from client to client just to keep up their contacts. They are on their feet so much, in fact, that after being a model for a few months a girl’s feet invariably grow a whole shoe-size bigger.
The girls with Rita are Conover models, each chosen by a national magazine to play its cover girl in The Cover Girl. Being the star, Miss Hayworth will not represent any single magazine. This week, however, she is LIFE’s own cover girl.

9 September 1943. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched. Read more.

In fact during the shooting of Cover Girl it turns out that Rita has two new roles. The second is as the wife of Orson Welles. It’s no secret that the couple have been dating. Even so, when it happens on 7 September 1943 their marriage takes everyone by surprise. According to Lee Bowman, the day the teams are shooting the film’s wedding scene, Rita arrives on the set.

She looked very lovely sitting there in her wedding dress [for the movie] while the crew were setting up. Rita sat there with her hands in her lap, her eyes very big and a lovely big pussy smile on her face. When any of us asked, “What is it, Rita?” she’d just shake her head and say, “Mmm, I’ve got a secret.” Wouldn’t say anything else. The first we knew what it was came during the lunch break when somebody brought us the papers with the headlines.”

While Rita is on cloud nine, director Charles Vidor is anything but. According to the film’s producer, Arthur Schwartz:

And you know who was terribly jealous and unhappy? The director. He had fallen in love with her. He came and cried on my shoulder and didn’t want to go on. He had to continue shooting every day and she was now married and looking more radiant all the time. She had a tremendous empathy, tremendous sex appeal. All those fifteen or so Cover Girls together didn’t have what she had.

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl wins the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award for Scoring of a Musical Picture. It is also nominated for Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Sound Recording and Best Song.

Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, says in his review:

The script is so frankly familiar that it must have come from the public domain. And the characters are as sleekly mechanical as only musical comedy characters dare to be. But it rainbows the screen with dazzling décor. It has Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth to sing and dance. And virtually every nook and corner is draped with beautiful girls. Further, this gaudy obeisance to divine femininity has some rather nice music in it from the tune-shop of Jerome Kern.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

At the office

1943. Rita Hayworth and models pose at the offices of Vanity magazine. This is just the epitome of mid-1940s chic in terms of both the...

Heavenly sight

1943. In this ravishing fantasy sequence, Rita Hayworth appears at the top of a stylized Art Deco mountain down which she dances into the arms...

Round the mountain

1943. Having indulged her admirers, Rita Hayworth dances back up to the mountain peak in a rain of golden snowflakes. The caption on the back...

Later on, Arthur Schwartz, whom Harry Cohn brought in to produce Cover Girl, recalls:

In spite of everything people have said about Harry Cohn, his vulgarity, his lack of education, neither of which was a unique characteristic among the men in his position – he had an instinct for quality. Cover Girl, as I made it, couldn’t have been made at WB: Jack Warner wouldn’t have had the taste somehow, while at Metro they would have overproduced it – too many girls and too many of everything.

Cover Girl magazines and models — The magazines and models: Cosmopolitan, Betty Jane Hess; McCall’s, Betty Jane Graham; Vogue, Susann Shaw; Harper’s Bazaar, Cornelia B Von Hessert; Woman’s Home Companion, Rose May Robson; The American Home, Francine Counihan (Anita Colby’s sister); Mademoiselle, Peggy Lloyd; Glamour, Eileen McClory; Coronet, Cecilia Meagher; Liberty, Karen Gaylord; Redbook, Martha Outlaw; The American, Jean Colleran; Farm Journal, Dusty Anderson; Look, Cheryl (Archibald) Archer; Collier’s, Helen Mueller; Rita Hayworth. Collage copyright and courtesy of Blonde at the Film.

In his programme notes for the BFI, director Karel Reisz observes:

In Cover Girl we can see the transition from the old to the new taking place. Though its story has the usual backstage background, many of its numbers are staged in the open air and characters dance in it for the joy of dancing and as an expression of mood, not simply as professional performers. The design of costumes and sets moreover, is notably above the usual standard of the routine product. Cover Girl also saw the emergence of Gene Kelly as a choreographer playing the role which he has since played many times: he dances pieces of the ‘plot’ instead of interpolating numbers, and his style is that of a ballet dancer, not a ‘hoofer’.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Apart from the LIFE article, key sources are Michael Gross’ book, Model – the ugly business of beautiful women, and John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth. You can find my favourite online article at Blonde at the Film. Other articles worth reading are at The Vintage Cameo and moviediva. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective. For biographies of some of the cover girls, take a look at Those obscure objects of desire.

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.

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.

Fashion

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2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

3. The first moon landing

The sixties – the younger generation

The sixties – new and not-so-new attitudes

Andy Warhol

Bridget Riley

Italy, the new domestic landscape

The sixties – from futuristic to nostalgic fashion

Blow-Up

Carnaby Street

Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?

Want to know more about the sixties?

Other topics you may be interested in…

1. Put Me To The Test

2. The shoot

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Other topics you may be interested in…

Other topics you may be interested in…

The Fashion Flight – one man’s vision

The Fashion Flight – Americans in Paris

The Fashion Flight – the show and its reception

The deal

Want to know more about The Fashion Flight?

Other topics you may be interested in…

Paris after World War II – fact

1950s Paris – the nightlife

1950s Paris – the streets of Montmartre

1950s Paris – the tourist version