Lisa Fonssagrives
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One of Lisa Fonssagrives' more than 200 Vogue covers |
Lisa Fonssagrives (
May 17,
1911 â€"
February 4,
1992), born
Lisa Anderson in
Sweden, was a
supermodel,
dancer,
fashion designer,
photographer and
sculptor. She brought qualities from each of these talents to her
modeling creating a persona at once earthly and larger than life.
Many people consider Fonssagrives to be the first
supermodel; no model has surpassed her number of
Vogue magazine covers. The relationship between her image on these
Vogue covers and her name recognition led to the future importance of the magazine in shaping future supermodels. As shown on the cover to the right, Fonssagrives at the height of her career could be both sophisticated and yet a cook which every American woman could identify. Her image appeared on cover of every fashion magazine during the
1930s,
1940s and
1950s from
Town & Country,
Life and
Vogue to the original
Vanity Fair, but little is known about this Swedish beauty's early life. Fonssagrives' early training in
ballet added to her evident grace and poise. Photographers
George Hoyningen-Huene,
Man Ray,
Horst,
Erwin Blumenfeld,
George Platt Lynes,
Richard Avedon, and
Edgar de Evia, and both of her husbands,
Fernand Fonssagrives and
Irving Penn, photographed Fonssagrives during her modeling career.
Fonssagrives once described herself as simply a "good clothes hanger," but she was so much more. She was "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business". She moved from Sweden to
Paris to train for ballet and she would say that modeling was simply "still-dancing".
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Lisa Fonssagrives on the cover of Time, September 19, 1949 |
She was both
muse and inspiration to the cream of fashion photographers, with her 17-inch waistline. Married first to Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in
1935, they divorced and in
1950 she married Irving Penn. Asked how she maintained her figure, she always insisted on the importance of eating in small quantities. She would at times consume as many as ten tiny meals a day. To her a tiny meal might mean only six grapes, a single slice of cheese, one cracker and half a glass of wine. Always eating, but never anything much, was her motto.
She went on to become a sculptor and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in
Manhattan. The
Elton John photo auction held by
Christies on
October 15,
2004 sold a 1950 Irving Penn photograph of his wife for $57,360.
Lisa Fonssagrives died at the age of 81, survived by her second husband Irving Penn, her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow who is a costume designer, and her first husband, photographer Ferdinand Fonssagrives.
*Gross, Michael:
Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, New York: W. Morrow, 1995, ISBN 0688126596
*Seidner, David (ed):
Lisa Fonssagrives: Three Decades of Classic Fashion Photography, New York: Vendome Press, 1996, ISBN 0865659788
