When Coco Chanel ran a critical eye over her atelier one morning and declared, “These models look like housemaids on a day off!” she was probably close to the mark. Modelling during the 1920s, in and out of the studio, was not yet a profession considered entirely suitable for girls from smart -families. At best it was a juvenile novelty, at worst it was -considered shameful or slightly provincial, like -“taking to the stage”.
As late as 1947, Barbara Goalen, who was left to raise her children alone after her husband’s death, had wavered between taking in laundry and modelling; the studio won, and she became the British mannequin ne plus ultra of her day. In the US, Mary -“Mimsie” Taylor’s well-to-do parents had been appalled by her plea to model dresses for her favourite magazine, but she was suffering from a blood disease and was not expected to survive her teens. Cecil Beaton answered her letters to Vogue and she became an early favourite (she lived to be 93).
When British Vogue was launched in 1916, models were not credited. In fact, they often seemed to shy from view, their faces hidden by wide-brimmed hats, heads tilted away, or in some cases cut off altogether in favour of a fine lace trim. This was, after all, the era in which a -correspondent could report – without irony – on the “spectacle of a young woman … actually -powdering her nose in the presence of the young man with whom she had just been dancing”.