Imagine for a moment that you’re living in a different time. Place yourself in the 1950s, walking through New York. Your best friend is inside the automat, deciding on which fast food to snack on. You’d like to join her but it’s far too crowded inside to even sit down, so you let her know you’ll wait outside. You come out and notice some girls imitating their mothers walk, others sipping on a soda and even a small queue line forming in the distance in front of the new photo booth everyone has been talking about. You notice a woman has been staring at you for a little while, you make brief eye contact and look away but now she’s walking up to you. Maybe she has confused you for someone else. Instead, she asks you if you’ve modeled before. You’d like to say yes but know you’d be fooling yourself after spending seven whole years locked indoors, only socializing with others by telephone. She goes on to say that you have a stunning look and that she works for Vogue, insisting to take you to the offices for a couple of test photos. You decide to give it a shot, not realizing it’d be the best decision of your life. Now come back to real life, 2013, where having a chance of being discovered this way is practically only a dream. Curious to know who was discovered this way? Only the 1950’s supermodel and fashion icon, Dovima.
Born in New York City as Dorothy Virginia Margaret, she came up with the name “Dovima” for her imaginary friend at age 10. After contracting rheumatic fever, her mother forced her to stay in bed for seven years (although the doctors only suggested one year). The name for her imaginary friend comprised the first two letters of each of her given names: DO-rothy, VI-rginia, MA-rgaret, which she later acquired as her model name. After being discovered on the streets of New York, she had her first photoshoot with Irving Penn the very next day and literally became an overnight success.
Her image was spread all over Vogue and spread to other high-fashion magazines. Her look epitomized the perfect 1950’s woman with a tiny waist, angular poses and a light aristocratic beauty dressed in only the finest clothing. Of the many couturiers she posed for, her most remarkable contributions were for Christian Dior and in shaping his “New Look,” a revolutionary movement in fashion history. As an important sidenote, the New Look created a lot of controversy due to the amount of skin the silhouettes covered. After leaving the 1940s, women began to get used to showing more skin due to fabric rations. His New Look used more fabric and padding to create more extreme, ideal silhouettes. It was on the hands of models, such as Dovima, to bring a refreshing and desirable image to the New Look as a trend.
As war time rations diminished, more women looked to this new haute couture image and changed their look. Fashion photography grew more creative as photographers looked for new ways to photograph Dovima’s many poses. Richard Avedon captured her most famous photograph, and arguably the most famous fashion photograph ever, in Paris, 1955. Titled “Dovima with the Elephants,” she is shown posing in a full haute couture ensemble with circus elephants. This would mark the beginning of experimental fashion photography and cemented her place in fashion.
As years progressed, she ventured into different projects, giving acting a try. She was featured in the film, Funny Face with stars Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson. After several films, she decided to retire and moved to Fort Lauderdale to be near her parents. Although she was the highest paid model in the 1950s, she didn’t save any money and continued to make a living as a hostess at a pizza parlor. Those that knew her commented on how she was able to remain humble after her successful years and enjoyed keeping her “model appearance,” always in elegant clothing, hair and makeup. She has left a strong body of photographs that embody the glamour and elegance fashion constantly returns to. Fashion history would truly never be the same without her contributions to this era of sophistication.