Lisa
Fonssagrives
Lisa Fonssagrives
By Ines Mendoza
We have a habit of highlighting the
young and beautiful. Yes, we are indeed guilty of occasionally putting
boobs and bush ahead of brains or braun. Intelligence, class, glamour
and style often takes a backseat to bikini clad sex kittens.
So let's go to the other end of the spectrum, let's check out a lady of
class, of esteem : a 100 year old deceased woman!
Born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone in May of 1911 (that's right, over 100
years ago) Lisa Fonssagrives was a classy broad, a Swedish fashion
model widely credited as the world's first supermodel.
Raised in Uddevalla as a child, Fonssagrives showed a passion for
painting, sculpting and dancing as a youngster at Mary Wigman's school
in Berlin (where she also studied art and dance).
It wasn't long before she returned to her home town and opened a dance
school of her very own. Not to be contained, Lisa moved from Sweden to
Paris where she trained as a ballet dancer (she was rumoured to have
participated with choreographer Astrid Malmborg in an international
competition) and moonlit as a private dance teacher with Fernand
Fonssagrives.
As showbiz law dictates : it's who you know not what you know. So, not
surprisingly, the dancing led to a modeling career, which lasted from
the 1930s to 1950s in which she featured numerous times in Town
& Country, Life, Vogue, the original Vanity Fair, and Time.
But how did this all happen? As the fable goes, while in Paris in 1936,
infamous photographer Willy Maywald discovered her in an elevator and
asked her to model hats for him. Fonssagrives' photographs were then
sent to Vogue, and Vogue photographer Horst took some test photographs
of her.
At one point it was reported that Fonssagrives was "the highest paid,
highest praised, high fashion model in the business". Not one to be
swept up in the lifestyle, Fonssagrives famously described herself as
nothing more than a "good clothes hanger".
Lisa also worked with such fashion luminaries as George
Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes,
Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She even went as far as to marry
Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935, sadly the two
divorced (but it wasn't long until she shacked up with another
photographer, Irving Penn, whom she married in 1950)
Sadly, all good things must come to an end and Fonssagrives died, aged
80, in New York, survived by her second husband, and her two children:
Mia Fonssagrives-Solow and Tom Penn.
However, no matter how beloved she was within the fashion industry,
perhaps Lisa Fonssagrives' legacy will live on after it was revealed
that the 1001 Dalmations character Cruella de Vil was loosely based on
her.
Fashion legend - or most evil woman on earth? Either way, Lisa
Fonssagrives never did anything by halves!
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Photos : Unknown
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Lisa
Fonssagrives
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