Word: modell
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Model. What makes a face and a figure worth $40 an hour? The answer to that lies in the way Lisa Fonssagrives works...
Even if a girl is accepted by one of New York's 23 agencies (the best known: Powers, Conover, Thornton, Hartford, Ford), it is still a long road to a magazine cover or a four-color ad. Most agencies register far more models than they can possibly place, are little more than clearinghouses which keep the models' bookings, relay telephone messages, give them a place to sit around and wait between jobs, and collect 10% of their fees. It is usually the model who has to sell herself, tramping in & out of photographers' studios, showing her scrapbook...
...first Manhattan stop was her office, where she picked up" gloves, shoes and a list of bookings which her secretary had prepared for her. Then she went to Seventh Avenue for a fitting of a dress she would model later in the week. From Seventh (where a gown is a garment, a batch of dresses a line and a model a dearie), she taxied two blocks east to Fifth (where a garment is a creation, a line a collection and a dearie a darling). After a session with the hairdresser (Lisa's hair, which used to be black...
...Good Clothes Hanger. Working with a less accomplished model, the photographer might spend hours trying to prod and push her into the proper pose. But not with Lisa. With a dancer's discipline and grace, she responds instantly to the photographer's every direction, almost before it is spoken. Her body (bust and hips 34 in.) is so supple that she can pull in her normally 23-inch waist to 18 inches. She has the gift of mimicry every good model needs, and a keen fashion sense. Once, she appeared 103 times in a single issue...
...went to Paris where she got engagements with minor ballet companies (her 5 ft. 7 made her too tall for the Paris Corps de Ballet). In 1935, she married her fellow dancer, handsome Fernand Fonssagrives. Both soon gave up dancing, he to be a photographer, she to be a model. She tripped into the profession by chance: a young photographer asked her to pose for him. The results were sensational. Vogue and Harper's Bazaar fought to get her services as a mannequin; she has worked for both. Horst, one of the first photographers for whom she posed, recalls...