In 1947, early in his long career at Vogue, Irving Penn did the unthinkable: he made a fashion photograph that was as much about the women in it as it was about the clothes. At that time, models were little more than glorified mannequins, rarely named or acknowledged. Penn titled his picture The Twelve Most Photographed Models. The image landed on Vogue’s cover.
Among the 12 beauties was the 36-year-old Lisa Fonssagrives. She’s the graceful blonde seated in the back and showing us her profile. Two years later, she became the first model on the cover of Time. The caption read, “Do illusions also sell refrigerators?” They do. By then, Fonssagrives had perfected the art of suggestion—arching her back just so, casting doe eyes at the lens.
She never aspired to be a model. Born in Sweden in 1911, Lisa Birgitta Bernstone studied sculpture, painting, and dance. Her family set its sights on a ballet career for her, and eventually she moved to Paris for more classical training. There she married a fellow dancer, Fernand Fonssagrives. Together they gave private lessons around town.
In 1936, after a long day en pointe, Fonssagrives took the elevator to the 10th floor of her building and by chance met the photographer Willy Maywald. Could he shoot her wearing a friend’s hat? he asked. She said yes.
The photo put Fonssagrives on the map. Horst P. Horst called for a test shoot. Then came George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, and Richard Avedon. Within two years, she was a star. “I had never seen a fashion magazine,” Fonssagrives said in 1985. “I didn’t even know what fashion was.”
Harnessing her dancing skills for the camera, Fonssagrives shape-shifted into different personalities. She channeled Henry Moore for poses, and she never let a makeup artist touch her face. “My training gave me terrific control,” she said. “There are dancing things in nature that inspire me enormously—branches swaying in the wind, water crashing over rocks.”
After that 1947 shoot with Penn, the pair fell in love. Some of his most memorable portraits are of her—Fonssagrives in a chicken hat, Fonssagrives in Cristóbal Balenciaga’s petal dress, Fonssagrives dangling precariously off the Eiffel Tower. They married in 1950.
Fonssagrives retired in the 1960s. She was certainly the most refined persona in that first generation of celebrated models, which includes Dorian Leigh, Dovima, Suzy Parker, and Carmen Dell’Orefice. The new book Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn: Fashion Icon compiles her personal collection of portraits by the world’s greatest photographers. Look once more at that photo of the 12: Fonssagrives could have been posed by Degas himself. —Elena Clavarino
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL
