“My father didn’t label himself as a fashion photographer,” muses Tom Penn, executive director of the Irving Penn Foundation. Among the thousands of prints making up the elder Penn’s oeuvre, still lifes, city shop fronts, and nudes are as ever present as svelte models and era-defining styles. Swooping hats and lacquered lips are matched by poached eggs and poppies, and the canons of couture meet Hell’s Angels, Sherpa climbers, and frontline soldiers. And yet, while Irving Penn may not have identified as a fashion photographer, fashion is elemental to his legacy, a fact the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) underscores in its 30th-anniversary exhibition “Penn & Fashion,” which opens next Wednesday in Paris. READ ON