• Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

aenigma – Images and stories from the movies and fashion

  • Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact

Funny Face

Richard Avedon – art and commerce

Richard Avedon was one of the all-time-great fashion photographers. For decades after his emergence onto the scene in 1946, he was a dominant influence on the industry thanks to the energy, imagination and willingness to take risks that he brought to his work.

Fashion was where Avedon made his name. It was also his undoing – at least in his own mind. He came to regard it as “merely” commercial, whereas what he really wanted was to be, and be seen as, a serious artist. So he turned his attention to portraiture, using fashion commissions to fund his endeavours.

But such was Avedon’s reputation in the field of fashion that despite all his efforts it continued to dominate his image for most of his career.

Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt by Richard Avedon
1966. Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt in new Mainbocher evening look. Photo by Richard Avedon. Read more.

Avedon – fashion and portraiture, two sides of a coin

At first sight, Avedon’s portraits seem to be the polar opposite of his fashion work. A distinguishing characteristic of a typical Avedon fashion shot is its energetic high spirits. By contrast, what distinguishes many Avedon portraits is the bleak, unflinching, often inquisitorial dissection of his subjects’ vulnerabilities. His portraits are rarely kind, let alone flattering. More than occasionally, they shock his subjects.

But look more closely and you’ll discover a dark seam of existential angst running through Avedon’s fashion work too. He’s all too aware that beauty can be isolating and that it fades. You can see that in the expression of Dorian Leigh as she looks at herself in the mirror in a photo taken in 1949 at the beginning of Avedon’s career. Pathos is more to the fore in his 1955 shot of Dovima with Émilien Boulione and a clown. But nowhere is his existential angst more explicit than in In Memory of The Late Mr and Mrs Comfort, a harrowing editorial for the November 6, 1995 issue of The New Yorker.

In an interview quoted in Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, he traces the underlying anxiety in his fashion work back to his experience as a boy growing up in a home dominated by women:

I watched the way in which they prepared themselves to go out, what clothes meant, what makeup meant, what hair meant, what men meant. That anxiety was a very important thing that I tried to work into the magazines. And very often they [the photos] were rejected.

Avedon – the great storyteller

Another common denominator between Avedon’s fashion and portrait studies is drama and stories. Throughout his life, he never passes up an opportunity to go to the theatre, the ballet and the movies. He’s also an avid reader. All this helps to provide inspiration and fuel his own creativity

Enlarge
Dovima photographed in Egypt by Richard Avedon

Dovima by the great pyramids at Gizeh

1951. The model for this shoot, published in the May and June 1951 issues of Harper’s Bazaar, is Dovima, whose face reminds Avedon of the...

Read more
Enlarge
Dovima photographed in Egypt by Richard Avedon

Dovima by the great pyramids at Gizeh

1951. The shoot takes place during Avedon’s honeymoon with his second wife, Evelyn, whom he marries on 29 January 1951. So presumably Evelyn is lurking...

Read more
Enlarge
Dovima photographed in Egypt by Richard Avedon

Dovima at the mosque of Mohammed Ali, Cairo

1951. Winthrop Sargeant, in an article for the November 8, 1958 issue of The New Yorker, observes that like all Avedon models,...

Read more
Enlarge
Dovima photographed in Egypt by Richard Avedon

Dovima at the feet of the pharaohs

1951. According to Winthrop Sargeant, Dovima is so overcome by the grandeur of her Egyptian role that she undergoes a mystical experience....

Read more
Enlarge
Dovima photographed in Egypt by Richard Avedon

Dovima at the Temple of Karnak, Luxor

1951. In a memo to Avedon about the Egypt shoot, Diana Vreeland (Fashion Editor at Harper's Bazaar) writes, “Dick, before you plan these pictures, just...

Read more

The stories are most evident in his fashion editorials, especially the iconic series of images he creates for Harper’s Bazaar to showcase the Paris collections, and which in the process help transform the image of the city after World War II. In A Woman Entering a Taxi in the Rain, an article published in the November 8, 1958 issue of The New Yorker, Winthrop Sargeant remarks:

His leading lady must always be involved in a drama of some sort, and if fate fails to provide a real one, Avedon thinks one up. He often creates in his mind an entire scenario suggested by a model’s appearance. She may be a waif lost in a big and sinful city, or a titled lady pursued in Hispano-Suizas by gentlemen flourishing emeralds, or an inconsolably bored woman of the world whose heart can no longer be touched – and so on. Avedon models play scene after scene from these scripts, and sometimes helps out by actually living an extra scene or two. The result is extraordinary for its realism – not the kind of realism found in most photography but the kind found in the theatre.

Think Elise Daniels with street performers and Suzy Parker and Robin Tattershall.

The mood of those shots might feel improvised, but the shoots themselves are far from spontaneous. They take a great deal of preparation: research into locations, sketches of proposed shots and test photos. On the day, Avedon coaxes and cajoles his models into the personas and poses he has in mind, chatting to them, joking with them and, crucially, telling them the stories he wants them to act out. He’s a bundle of energy, enthusiasm and inspiration and he won’t take no for an answer.

Enlarge
Twiggy photographed for Vogue by Richard Avedon

Twiggy – annotated working print

1968. A working print of a variant of a photo of Twiggy that appeared on page 60 of the July issue of Vogue. The wax...

Read more
Enlarge
Twiggy – final print

Twiggy – final print

1968. A variant of a photo of Twiggy that appeared on page 60 of the July issue of Vogue captioned:

Looking like a picture, left:...

Read more

Hiro, once upon a time an assistant of Avedon, says:

Dick was the most brilliant of all the flashes that illuminated my professional path. His impatience was an inspiration in itself. The preparation he made for each sitting, the perfectionism – sharp, like a scalpel. And then the way he directed. His personality, which helped him clinch every shot. His timing. This man created the modern woman – the Avedon Woman.

In Avedon’s portraits, the drama is in the eyes, faces and expressions of his sitters, usually accentuated by ascetic, plain white backgrounds. More often than not the drama is dark, and not just by coincidence. Before the shoot, Avedon researches his subject and forms a view of what he wants his portrait to convey. And he seems inexorably drawn to his sitter’s vulnerabilities and failings – the skull beneath the skin.

He’s fond of telling a story of how he took his celebrated photo of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The challenge: find a way of getting them to drop their guard – the happy, smiling “Ladies Home Journal cover faces” they would present for their portrait in contrast to the expressions he’s seen as he stalked them at the casino. He wants his portrait to reveal their “loss of humanity.” When he turns up at their NYC apartment for the shoot, he notices their pug dogs, which they adore. So he sets everything up, gets the couple into position and says, “If I seem a little hesitant, a little disturbed, it’s because my taxi ran over a dog.” Both of their faces drop, he clicks the shutter and catches the expression he’s looking for.

It turns out that this story might itself be made up. Either way, it gives us an insight into the store Avedon sets by stories. It also illustrates another aspect of what Avedon is like and how he captures images like no others – he is an arch manipulator, charismatic and ruthless, who knows what he wants from a shoot and also how to get it.

That applies not just to individual shoots but also to Avedon’s legacy and the brand he is determined to create for himself. He’s perfectly prepared to edit his archive, destroying photos that don’t fit with the narrative he wants to create for himself. And when he talks about his experiences, it’s not always clear where fact ends and fancy begins. Indeed, according to Norma Stevens, his studio manager:

Dick would sometimes make merry with the facts—he even joked that if he ever wrote an autobiography he would call it Here Lies Richard Avedon. He said, “There is no truth, no history – there is only the way in which the story is told.”

Avedon at work on Funny Face
1956. Richard Avedon (right) at work on Funny Face. Read more.

Avedon – the Hollywood connection

Not only do many of Avedon’s fashion shoots seem to come straight out of a movie, they even inspire one. Funny Face is based loosely on the exploits of Avedon and his first wife, Doe, played by Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Avedon is retained as a consultant for the movie, revealing some of his working methods, providing tips on lighting and on Audrey Hepburn’s wardrobe, and creating title credits and backgrounds plus a montage of freeze-framed fashion.

Funny Face and Avedon’s work as a stills photographer for The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959) bridge his fashion and portrait work, with one of his greatest portraits being of Marilyn Monroe lost in thought.

For hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that’s – she did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop. And when the night was over and the white wine was over and the dancing was over, she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone. I saw her sitting quietly without expression on her face, and I walked towards her but I wouldn’t photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.

On a lighter note is Avedon’s virtuoso shoot – witty, stylish, extravagant – with Marilyn for the Christmas 1958 issue of LIFE magazine. The idea is to recreate the images of five stars from different eras. With his interest in theatre and the movies, this is right up the photographer’s street.

In every age the entertainment world produces an enchantress who embodies the fancies men dream by – the places they might have visited with her, music danced to with her, suppers shared with her. In the Gay Nineties, it was Lillian Russell, 160 opulent pounds of curvy Victorian womanhood. Then it was Theda Bara, representing all the women who came bursting from their stays in World War I with predatory eyes and heavy make-up into the new freedom. Afterward there was Clara Bow and Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow. Heiress today of the fabled five is Marilyn Monroe. On the following pages, in a stunning feat of re-creation, Marilyn impersonates her predecessors in their most enduring images.

Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Clara Bow – whom Marilyn re-enacts in these photographs – was the heady...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Clara Bow – whom Marilyn re-enacts in these photographs – was the heady...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Clara Bow – whom Marilyn re-enacts in these photographs – was the heady...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Clara Bow – whom Marilyn re-enacts in these photographs – was the heady...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Lillian Russell by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Lillian Russell

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Marilyn’s sensitive, funny and loving impersonations start opposite with a radiant replica...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Theda Bara by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Theda Bara

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

The movies’ first heavy-breathing temptress and the original vampire was Theda Bara...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Marlene Dietrich by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Marlene Dietrich

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

This is Marlene Dietrich in the role that made her famous –...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe as Jean Harlow by Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe as Jean Harlow

1958. The caption in the December 22 issue of LIFE magazine reads:

Jean Harlow always looked as if she were being bent backward over...

Read more

The images here are scans of vintage black and white prints sent to a Hollywood producer, whereas the published versions are in colour.

Marilyn Monroe by Richard Avedon
1958. Marilyn Monroe as herself. Photo by Richard Avedon. Read more.

Avedon – fashion photography’s great innovator

One of the things that makes Avedon such a key figure in fashion photography is his ability to stay ahead of the curve. Fashion is by its nature so ephemeral that few photographers manage to remain current for more than about a decade. Avedon, almost uniquely, manages to evolve his approach to tap into the zeitgeist and reflect the changing times in which he lives. Perhaps that’s because he sees it as an important aspect of his remit.

I believe that the photographer’s job is to record the quality of the woman, of that moment he is working… Our job is always to report on the woman of the moment. The way she lives, the way she dresses. Our conception of beauty changes and is always changing.

Almost from the off, Avedon is pushing at the boundaries, getting his models to act rather than just pose, using blurred movement and soft focus when sharp focus and detail are what’s expected. According to Winthrop Sargeant, that was just the beginning:

The model became pretty, rather than austerely aloof. She laughed, danced, skated, gambolled among herds of elephants, sang in the rain, ran breathlessly down the Champs-Elysées, smiled and sipped cognac at café tables, and otherwise gave evidence of being human.

Some Avedon admirers date the turning point in his style from a celebrated photograph he made for Harper’s Bazaar in 1950, in which Dorian Leigh was shown bursting into laughter while throwing her arms around the winner of a French bicycle race. The picture created a sensation in the profession, since embracing sports heroes and laughing had not previously been thought suitable activities for fashion models, and the extent of its influence soon became clear as models began to appear everywhere embracing bicycle riders, matadors, coachmen, and Lord knows what else, in a state of hilarity. Next, Avedon, again a good jump ahead of the pack, started photographing models with handsome young men posing as their husbands, and then—most revolutionary of all—models wheeling children in perambulators or, to make the family scene complete, dangling them in baskets gaily held by the father, too.

Enlarge
Andrea Johnson

Andrea Johnson

1946. This print comes from the collection of post-World War II supermodel, Andrea Johnson. The reverse is inscribed in pen "other shot Larry Avedon S449-2...

Read more
Enlarge
The hand of Ara Gallant by Richard Avedon

The hand of Ara Gallant

1973. The smooth sloping shoulders (Beauty, youth), the manicured rough hand (The Beast, mortality), the balanced asymmetry… just the kind of unexpected magic and storytelling...

Read more

It’s not so easy for us now to appreciate quite how startling Avedon’s work is for people at the time. Over several decades, particularly the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, he helps to define and advance accepted notions of beauty as well as pushing the limits of what’s acceptable in a fashion magazine (for example, his photo of Countess Christina Paolozzi topless in the January, 1962 issue of Harper’s Bazaar). Landmark shoots include:

  • Harper’s Bazaar, January, 1959 – China Machado, the first non-Caucasian model to shoot the collections and feature on the cover.
  • Harper’s Bazaar, September, 1962 – inspired by the coverage of Elizabeth Taylor’s affair with Richard Burton, the autumn collections shot as if by paparazzi and laid out like a pulp magazine.
  • Harper’s Bazaar, December, 1963 – Rebecca Hutchings, the first black model to appear in the magazine.
  • Harper’s Bazaar, January, 1965 – set in Ibiza, an editorial implying a ménage à trois.
  • Harper’s Bazaar, April, 1965 – a far-out mash-up of pop culture, space age and high fashion shot and edited by Avedon and billed as “a partial passport to the off-beat side of Now.”
  • The New Yorker, November 6, 1995 – In Memory of The Late Mr and Mrs Comfort, a dark and satirical fashion editorial starring Nadja Auermann and a skeleton in a tale of decadence and death.

Avedon – his achievement

The second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st were a time of social, political and cultural change. Avedon’s fashion work as well as his portraits are a commentary on those decades, probing and revealing what power and wealth, confidence and vitality, deprivation and helplessness look like and what they do to people – a unique legacy of penetrating and iconic images.

Enlarge
Nylon dance dress by Wilson Folmar

Nylon dance dress by Wilson Folmar of Edward Abbott

1961. This photo (another copy is in the Hagley Digital Archives) is annotated in pencil on the reverse ‘253527’ and ‘RICHARD AVEDON’....

Read more
Enlarge
Jean Shrimpton and Marisa Berenson by Richard Avedon

Jean Shrimpton and Marisa Berenson perched in a tree

1966. Two of the top models of the day, Jean Shrimpton and Marisa Berenson, perch like birds in a tree in this photo published in...

Read more
Enlarge
Penelope Tree modelling a Cardin collar by Richard Avedon

Penelope Tree modelling a Cardin collar

1967. This is the year that American-born model, Penelope Tree, moves to London to live with David Bailey. She’s 18 years old and it's...

Read more

This piece is mainly about Avedon as a fashion photographer, but that’s not the half of it. Additionally, he created a whole series of influential advertising campaigns, the most notable of which starred 15-year-old Brooke Shields modelling a pair of Calvin Klein skin-tight jeans. He branched out into film and video. He initiated ambitious and important projects – In the American West is a great example. He ran a sizeable studio, which among other things acted as a kind of academy, training and inspiring generations of photographers. And through his exhibitions and books he helped raise the status of photography to challenge that of painting and sculpture in the minds of curators, collectors and the public at large.

Few photographers have the determination, the courage and the insightfulness to challenge themselves and their sitters to the extent that Avedon did. That is at the heart of his greatness.

Want to know more about Avedon?

Your preferred search engine will offer you many online sources of information and images.

Show more
The Most Sought After Photographer in the World

1. The Most Sought After Photographer in the World

If you’re strapped for time and looking for an overview of Avedon's work, take a look at this four-minute documentary.

Show more
Darkness and light

2. Darkness and Light

If you’d like to spend a bit longer finding out about Avedon, this documentary covers most aspects of his work and includes clips from interviews with him and people who knew him.

Show more
Norma Stevens on Richard Avedon

3. An Insight into Richard Avedon

An overview of Avedon’s fashion work by his biographer and erstwhile studio manager Norma Stevens.

Show more
Being shot by Richard Avedon

4. Being shot by Richard Avedon

Supermodel Kristen McMenamy, interviewed by photographer Nick Knight, recalls her experience of being shot alongside Nadja Auermann for one of Avedon's iconic Versace campaigns.

Here are four videos to watch here and a link to a fascinating and illuminating conversation between Philippe Garner and Michael Avedon, Richard’s grandson at ShowStudio. Plus, a handful of books worth looking up:

  • Avedon Fashion 1944–2000 by Vince Aletti, Carol Squiers and Philippe Garner is outstanding for both the images and the accompanying essays.
  • Richard Avedon: Made in France by Judith Thurman presents a collection of images made in Paris for Harper’s Bazaar during the 1950s, reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver’s prints made for Avedon, uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist’s notations on both front and back.
  • An Autobiography: The Photographs of Richard Avedon is a major retrospective of images chosen by Avedon himself. There is hardly any text.
  • Norma Stevens’ and Steven Aronson’s biography, Avedon: Something Personal is a compelling and insightful portrait, laced with reflections on the great man by people who knew and worked with him. Bear in mind, though, that many of the details are disputed and it’s inconceivable that the author remembered her conversations with Avedon verbatim.
  • What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon by Philip Gefter.
  • Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers by Michael Gross provides a context in which to assess Avedon’s achievements in the field of fashion photography.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Unknown model by Kenneth Heilbron
Kenneth Heilbron – mid-century fashion from Chicago
The Young Look in the Theatre by Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson – photographer and fantasist
Natalia Vodianova photographed by Paolo Roversi
Paolo Roversi – the beauty of intimacy
Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Andrea Johnson, Ara Gallant, Dovima, Funny Face, Hiro, Jean Shrimpton, Marilyn Monroe, Marisa Berenson, Penelope Tree, Richard Avedon, Suzy Parker, Twiggy

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy

Audrey Hepburn in Paris
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.”

Show more
paris youth scene

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.

Show more
paris streets

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.

Show more
paris tourism

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

21st 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-19th 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.

Show more
christian dior the man behind the myth

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?

Show more
1950s fashion – the designers

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.

Show more
paris city of fashion

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.

Enlarge
1948. The New Look

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1949. Pure escapism

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1950. The mirror of fashion

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1951. Fashion headlines

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1954. Chez Dior

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1955. Studied sophistication

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1953. Sculpted elegance

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1952. Ensemble by Paquin

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1957. Quintessential Paris

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1956. Fashion magnet

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...

Read more
Enlarge
1959 Poster girl

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...

Read more

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.

Enlarge
Jacques Heim

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?...

Read more
Enlarge
Christian Dior

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Yves Saint Laurent

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Jacques Fath larking about with Paulette Goddard

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Pierre Cardin

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Pierre Balmain

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...

Read more

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.

Carmel Snow
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.

Show more
american in paris

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.”

Show more
sabrina

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!

Show more
funny face

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

Enlarge
Simone Simon with Pierre Balmain

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Audrey Hepburn with Hubert de Givenchy

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Lana Turner with Jacques Fath

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Brigitte Bardot wears a gown by Pierre Balmain

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Ava Gardner with Christian Dior

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....

Read more
Enlarge
Paulette Goddard at Jacques Fath

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...

Read more

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.

The Vendôme Column dressed by Jean Dessès
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.

Enlarge
Lisa Fonssagrives in a coat by Cristóbal Balenciaga

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Lisa Fonssagrives in an evening dress by Jeanne Lafaurie

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...

Read more
Enlarge
Lisa Fonssagrives in a tunic dress by Marcel Rochas

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.

...
Read more

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.

Dior fashion show in Chicago
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.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Unknown model by Kenneth Heilbron
Kenneth Heilbron – mid-century fashion from Chicago
Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt by Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon – art and commerce
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: An American in Paris, Carmel Snow, Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Constantin Joffé, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Funny Face, Guy Arsac, Hubert de Givenchy, Irving Penn, Ivy Nicholson, Jacques Fath, Jacques Heim, Jeanne Paquin, Kenneth Heilbron, Lisa Fonssagrives, Mary Jane Russell, New Look, Paris, Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Renée Breton, Richard Avedon, Richard Rutledge, Rose Marie, Sabrina, The New Look, Willy Maywald, Yves Saint Laurent

Richard Avedon – ways to be lovely

Richard Avedon looks over photographs with Arlene Dahl
May 1956. Richard Avedon looks in a mirror with Arlene Dahl. On the wall are images created by Avedon for Funny Face. Read more.

Having made her name in Hollywood as a movie actress, Arlene Dahl began writing a syndicated beauty column in 1952. For the 1 June 1956 edition of the Chicago Tribune she interviewed Richard Avedon.

Avedon had studied photography under Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar. The two formed a close bond, and in 1945 Avedon was hired as a staff photographer for the magazine. He went on to become one of the 20th century’s greatest fashion photographers. Here’s a transcript of the interview…

Top Fashion Photographer Tells Ways to Be Lovely

Richard Avedon, a top photographer, is in Hollywood as technical advisor for the new Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire film, “Funny Face.” The Astaire role in the film is much like Mr. Avedon’s role in real life.Because he is widely known as a fashion photographer, Mr. Avedon seemed an ideal choice to discuss my favourite topic – feminine loveliness. And he was.

Emphasizes Lighting

“To begin with,” said this dynamic young man as we sat down to lunch at the studio, “women in private life shouldn’t try to be fashion models. The role of a model is to present a dress. The role of a woman is to present herself. Clothes and lighting and make-up are only a means of enhancing her personality.

“When I mention lighting, I am not speaking just as a photographer. I think lighting in the home is sadly ignored. A woman goes to the movies and admires a beautiful star on the screen. The star looks beautiful because she is beautifully lighted. Lighting can make or break the impression of beauty.

“A beautiful woman I know uses nothing but candles in her home which she entertains,” Mr. Avedon explained. “There is nothing more flattering than candle-light – she looks more beautiful than ever and so do the guests.

“Every woman should see that her home is flatteringly lighted, particularly the spot where she usually sits” he advised. “There should be no harsh line of light or shadow cutting across her face.”

Major Characteristic

In your work you meet many attractive women, I remarked. What qualities do you think contribute most to feminine charm?

“I think the most attractive quality a woman can have,” Mr. Avedon replied, smiling, “is the ability to be interested in things outside herself. And I like a sense of mystery. Everybody gives you so much these days. It’s nice to meet a woman who has a sense of privacy – who withholds something of her personality.”

Tell me, whom do you consider the most fascinating women you have photographed, I asked.

“The most attractive – Audrey Hepburn.” he replied. “The most beautiful – Gloria Vanderbilt. The sexiest – Anna Magnani. The most chic – Mrs. William Paley. The woman with the most poignant face – Countess Medina Visconti of Venice.”

Create Own Standards

“All of these women have something in common,” he said. “They bring more to the camera than just perfect features. And they have created their own standards of beauty. They discovered themselves, then the world discovered them.”

A wonderful way to put it. I told Mr. Avedon. Now, have you a last word to add?

“Believe it or not, I have a beauty hint, he answered. “This is something I heard about from an old lady in Paris: Peel a peach, and rub the inside of the skin over your face where there are tired-looking lines. It tightens and freshens the skin.”

Do you use it? I asked jokingly.

“No,” Richard retorted, “but I told some of the models who pose for me about it, and they say it’s wonderful.”

Filed Under: Fashion, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Arlene Dahl, Chicago Tribune, Funny Face, Richard Avedon

© 2023 - aenigma some rights reserved under a creative commons attribution-noderivs 3.0 unported license