In the hundred-plus years since the birth of the modern fashion magazine, it’s safe to say the definition of American beauty has expanded in leaps and bounds. And yet every so often, a model appears on the scene who captures the country’s collective imagination. Distilling all the values of a particular time and place into one willowy, superhuman frame, these rare creatures serve as both muse and marker for their generation.
What would the 1950s be, after all, without the immaculate sangfroid of Dovima—a New York City–born beauty with the face of an aristocrat who, as the modeling agent Eileen Ford once put it, “looked like she could freeze ice.” The ’60s ushered in a wave of idiosyncratic ingenues culminating with Marisa Berenson, whose tawny skin and liberated good looks would go on to epitomize the jet-set bohemianism of the 1970s alongside glamorous late-era superstars Jerry Hall and Pat Cleveland.
The ’80s were all about the healthy athleticism and wholesome voluptuousness that would indelibly characterize the world’s notions of all-American beauty. But it was an irrepressible spirit combined with an unmistakable signature—Brooke Shields’s brows! Cindy Crawford’s mole!—that eventually gave rise to the ’90s supermodel. The California-born Christy Turlington was among the decade’s first to lay claim to that illustrious title. Then came Pennsylvania-bred Kristen McMenamy, who, with her fearless personality, shaved brows, and androgynous good looks, wiped the slate clean for a less conventional brand of bombshell.
Full story at Vogue.
By Catherine Piercy.
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