Styles / Fashion & commercial
Postwar couture fashion photography
- Window: a large soft source, 140 × 220 cm, 1.4 m from the face, beside the subject, at the camera’s left, 17 cm above the eyes.
To scale, from the render’s scene file. One way to get this light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Rendered with this plan. A top-floor studio's daylight from one tall window at the side, plain grey paper behind.
Render: a synthetic clay head made with MakeHuman, not a person, in Blender Cycles, 85 mm, f/5.6.
Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London
Toni Frissell, Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London, 1951 (Harper's Bazaar). Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-4320 / negative LC-F9-01-5103-008-06; no known restrictions on publication. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-Frissell). Source: Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London at Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (Toni Frissell Collection), via Wikimedia Commons
Editorial pictures of Paris couture and American ready-to-wear for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar after the war. A model, seen whole or at three-quarter length, is posed and directed so that the cut and silhouette of the clothes read at once: against a bare grey backdrop or old curtain in studio daylight or broad lamplight, or out in a street, station, circus or bright sun, where the setting plays against the dress and the model may be caught mid-step. Mostly full-scale black and white from roll and sheet film, retouched and printed for the page; colour transparencies for covers and colour pages.
How the look is made
- Make the garment the subject: show the model whole or at three-quarter length, with room around the figure, so the waist, shoulders and hem of the dress read at a glance.
- Strip the studio bare: stand the model against plain grey or white paper or an old mottled curtain, lit by the daylight of a top-floor studio or by broad soft lamps, with no furniture and no painted set.
- Or take the clothes outside: place the model in a street, a station, at a monument, in a circus or in bright sun on a distant location, and let the setting, a passer-by or an animal answer the dress.
- Direct every gesture: a hand on the hip or waist, the head turned in profile, an arm stretched along a line of the dress; hold it still in the studio, or outdoors let the model walk, run, leap or turn and stop the movement with a fast shutter, as Avedon did after Munkácsi.
- Print a full black-and-white scale, spotted and retouched for the magazine page; burn in, bleach or diffuse the print when you want softness rather than detail, or push contrast and grain as Bassman did; use colour transparency for covers and colour pages.
Shoot sheet for your kit
Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.
Light
Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.
Reflector: a white card or reflector, about 55° to the camera’s right, soft.
- Daylight studio: a skylight, a glasshouse or a courtyard, with a backdrop behind the sitter.
- Shadow edges
- Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.
- Shadow depth
- Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).
How the style is lit
- A top-floor daylight studio: soft daylight from one side, a discarded theatre curtain or plain grey or white paper behind (Penn, Paris 1950).
- Overcast or evening daylight on location, the model set against a bright sky or a long, evenly lit interior such as a station hall.
- Bright natural sun outdoors, on a beach or on distant locations from South America to Africa, with hard, crisp shadows (Dahl-Wolfe; Munkácsi's beach pictures before her).
- Broad tungsten floods or, from the later 1950s, electronic flash in large reflectors, against white or grey seamless paper.
This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. The set-up at the top of the page is the one we rendered, to scale. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Lens and settings
Start at
On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.
- The style’s f/11 on 6 × 6 cm gives about the depth of field of f/6.1 on full frame.
- Then
- 40–70 mm · f/5.6–f/22 · 1/500–0.5 s · ISO 50–200 on 6 × 6 cm, inferred from the gear and the look. Cameras documented: 8 × 10 and 4 × 5 Deardorffs in the studio (Penn), the Rolleiflex outdoors (Penn, Frissell, Avedon). Stops and times inferred: f/16–f/22 and fractions of a second on sheet film in daylight studios, 1/250–1/500 s to stop a leap.
- White balance
- Mostly black-and-white film, where the colour of light does not register; colour covers and pages on transparency film matched to daylight or studio lamps (inferred).
- Focal length
- Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.
- Angle
- Looking up: the subject towers.
- Distance
- Whole figures and their immediate surroundings.
- Balance
- The subject in the middle, the frame balanced around it.
- Instant
- Movement stopped dead by a fast shutter or flash.
- Duration
- An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.
Direct
Stand the model whole or at three-quarter length, weight on one leg, a hand on the hip or waist, fingers shaped; turn the head into profile or let the eyes look away from the lens, face composed and unsmiling, an arm extended along the line of the dress. Hold it still in the studio; on location let the model walk, turn or glance at a passer-by.
- Body position
- Weight on one leg, the other knee relaxed, so hips tilt one way and shoulders the other and the body draws an S (the stance of classical statues).
- Turn to the camera
- Seen from the side, the face or the whole body turned 90° from the lens, like a head on a coin.
- Head & gaze
- Eyes off the frame, past the camera or into the distance, as if lost in thought.
- Arms & hands
- One or both hands on the hips, elbows out, opening a triangle of space beside the waist. Fingers placed on purpose: relaxed and separated, shown edge-on, wrists softly bent, as in ballet, fashion and glamour.
- Expression
- Unsmiling, composed and blank: the face gives nothing away.
- With the sitter
- The subject performs for the camera and shapes the picture.
- The set-up
- A scene staged and directed like a film still or a painting.
Style the set
A designer's collection fitted and pinned for the shoot: gowns or suits, gloves, hats, bags, jewellery; set hair, strong lips, pencilled brows; bare grey paper or an old mottled curtain and nothing else, or a chosen street, station, monument or circus; all set by editor, stylist and photographer.
- Clothes
- Clothes from a designer’s collection, chosen, fitted and pinned by a stylist for the shoot.
- Hair & make-up
- Visible artifice: sculpted brows, strong lips, lashes, contouring and set or sculpted hair.
- Set & props
- A painted, cloth, paper or seamless backdrop behind the subject. A real place picked for its look as the setting for a shoot, not the subjects’ own: a street, a field, a palace, a hotel room.
- How much is styled
- Clothes, hair, make-up, props and set all chosen and placed by a team to one idea.
Finish
- Monochrome
- Rich blacks, clean whites and every grey between.
- Film
- Roll film in a medium-format camera, often square. Transparencies: dense, saturated colour.
- Texture
- Smooth tones with no visible grain.
- Post-production
- Perfected skin and surfaces. Areas lightened and darkened by hand in printing.
- Shown as
- Each picture stands on its own.
- Shown in
- Pictures made for magazine pages and spreads.
Stay away from candid & unobserved, snapshot, direct on-camera flash, unseen camera, wide angle, tight crop, awkward & in-between, cute & playful faces, unstyled, as found and flat form.
Before you shoot it
The pictures show real, named models (Lisa Fonssagrives, Dovima and others) and a narrow ideal: very thin, mostly white women in the clothes of a small elite. Dovima with Elephants used chained circus elephants as props: do not pose models with captive wild animals.
Photographs that define it
From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.
Fashion model, Washington, D.C.
Toni Frissell, Fashion model, Washington, D.C., June 1949. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19689 (negative LC-F902-4906-061). Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-Frissell: rights in the Library's original negatives dedicated to the public). Source: Fashion model, Washington, D.C. at Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (Toni Frissell Collection), via Wikimedia Commons
In copyright, so linked
- Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris , Irving Penn, 1950, printed June 1979. Art Institute of Chicago.
- Dovima with Elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955 , Richard Avedon, August 1955. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
With other styles
Pairs with French humanist photography. Take the couture model into the Paris streets and stations humanist photographers worked in, and let a passer-by or a policeman answer the gown.
Pairs with Surrealist photography. Borrow surrealism's mirrors, odd props and double exposures for a stranger couture story, as the fashion magazines did from the 1930s on.
The opposite: E-commerce packshot on white. Both put clothes against a plain backdrop, but the packshot flattens the garment into evidence; the couture picture directs a body and a gesture around the silhouette.
The opposite: Y2K digicam and flash revival. A hard on-camera flash on friends in their own clothes is the opposite of the directed, retouched couture page; use it as the foil when you want fashion without ceremony.
Sources
- Irving Penn, Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris, 1950, Art Institute of Chicago 1996.237: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/144834 (in July 1950 Vogue sent Penn to Paris for the fall couture collections; over ten days clothes by Balenciaga, Dior, Rochas and others were rushed to an old top-floor studio, where he posed models against a discarded theater curtain; published across two September issues; a stark departure from the elaborately staged sets of the previous decade; square 50 × 50 cm print)
- Irving Penn, Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris, 1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2025.759.5: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/714772
- Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1981.1137.11 (gift of the artist, 1981): https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/262997
- Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, 1955, Whitney Museum of American Art 2001.187: https://whitney.org/collection/works/12709
- Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2005.27.416: https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/48816 (a woman in a dark evening gown with white bow trim standing in front of two elephants)
- Alexey Brodovitch, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Brodovitch (art director of Harper's Bazaar 1934–1958; in Paris met Suprematism, Constructivism and Bauhaus design; favoured location shoots; surrealism reached the magazine's pages in experimental forms, and Man Ray worked for Bazaar; Avedon a regular contributor; Penn, Bassman and Frank among his students)
- Richard Avedon, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon (first work in Junior Bazaar, October 1944; hired by Brodovitch and Carmel Snow; to Vogue in 1965; specialised in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion; turned from daylight and open air to studio strobe in the late 1950s; Rolleiflex; Homage to Munkacsi, Carmen, Paris, 1957 among his noted photographs)
- Irving Penn, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Penn (Alexander Liberman brought him into Vogue's art department; first Vogue cover October 1943; among the first to pose subjects against plain grey or white backdrops; met Lisa Fonssagrives in 1947, married 1950)
- Lillian Bassman, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Bassman (photographer and art director for Junior Bazaar and Harper's Bazaar; most of her Bazaar work published 1950–1965; high contrast and graininess)
- Lillian Bassman, Hundred Heroines: https://hundredheroines.org/historical-heroines/lillian-bassman/ (art director of Junior Bazaar from late 1945; darkroom work with tissue and gauze, burning in and bleaching; 1949 Paris collections with Barbara Mullen)
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Dahl-Wolfe (Harper's Bazaar staff photographer 1936–1958; 86 covers, 600 colour pages; outdoors in natural light on distant locations from South America to Africa; her use of natural sunlight and outdoor shooting became the industry standard; archive at the Center for Creative Photography)
- Toni Frissell, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Frissell (fashion for Vogue from 1931 and later Harper's Bazaar; one of the first fashion photographers to work outside the studio; archive given to the Library of Congress in 1971)
- Template:PD-Frissell, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Frissell (Frissell dedicated to the public the rights in the negatives held by the Library of Congress; Vogue, for which she was a staff photographer from 1933 to the late 1940s, claims no rights in them)
- Toni Frissell, Fashions, ca. 1951–1952, 120 mm colour transparency, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fashions_(LOC)_-_Flickr_-_The_Library_of_Congress.jpg
- Christian Dior, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Dior (first collection 12 February 1947; Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar named it the New Look)
- Norman Parkinson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Parkinson (Vogue 1941–1960; moved models from the studio to outdoor settings after Munkácsi)
- Willy Maywald, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Maywald (back in Paris from August 1946, fashion and celebrity photography; Christian Dior's elite or main photographer, who also worked for other houses)
- Fashion photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_photography (house photographers such as Steichen, Hoyningen-Huene, Horst and Beaton transformed the genre; Vogue and Harper's Bazaar led the field in the 1920s and 1930s; Munkácsi's sporty outdoor model photographs taken up by Harper's Bazaar under Brodovitch)
- Toni Frissell, Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London, published in Harper's Bazaar, 1951, Library of Congress cph.3g04320 via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paddington_Station_by_Toni_Frissell_1951.jpg
- Toni Frissell, Fashion model, Washington, D.C., June 1949, Library of Congress ppmsca.19689 via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toni_Frissell,_Fashion_model,_Washington,_D.C.,_1949.jpg
- Martin Munkácsi, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Munk%C3%A1csi (Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung from 1928, meticulously composed action photographs, new viewpoints; discovered by Carmel Snow, who in 1933 persuaded him to photograph the December Harper's Bazaar 'Palm Beach' bathing-suit issue, where he had Lucille Brokaw run towards the camera, the first fashion model photographed in motion; often left the studio to shoot outdoors; Avedon: 'the world of what is called fashion is peopled with Munkácsi's babies, his heirs')
- Richard Avedon, 'Carmen (Homage to Munkacsi), coat by Cardin', Place Francois-Premier, Paris, 1957, printed 1978, Victoria and Albert Museum PH.14-1985 (published in American Harper's Bazaar, September 1957): https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82823
- 'Jewish immigrants gave us magazines' aesthetic style', The Jewish Independent, 20 April 2021, on the Jewish Museum exhibition Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine: https://thejewishindependent.com.au/jewish-immigrants-gave-us-magazines-aesthetic-style (Avedon's Carmen (Homage to Munkacsi), Harper's Bazaar, September 1957: the woman leaps over a puddle; émigré photographers and designers who arrived 1930–1950 married photography, graphic design and modernist principles in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar)
- Erwin Blumenfeld, Encyclopædia Universalis: https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/erwin-blumenfeld/ (co-founder of Amsterdam Dada; Harper's Bazaar 1941–1944, then Vogue 1944–1955, with many covers; put his Dada experiments to use in fashion photography; solarisation, positive-negative combination, photomontage, colour-slide sandwiches and mirror fragmentation; the very surrealist Minotaure, 1936)
- Erwin Blumenfeld, Model and Mannequin, New York, American Vogue cover, 1 November 1945, dye-transfer print from the original Ektachrome, Victoria and Albert Museum PH.231-1985: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O167185
- Erwin Blumenfeld, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Blumenfeld (emigrated to the United States in 1941; freelance for Harper's Bazaar, Life and American Vogue; distortion, multiple exposure, photomontage and solarisation)
- Irving Penn: 1950, Pace/MacGill Gallery, 3 May – 29 June 2017, Artrabbit: https://www.artrabbit.com/events/irving-penn-1950 (using the daylight of a top-floor studio and a discarded theater curtain as a seamless, neutral backdrop, in 10 days Penn produced a series of editorial images that transformed the visual aesthetics of fashion photography)
- Irving Penn, Mermaid Dress (Rochas), Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, 1950, platinum-palladium print 1979, 2/25, Phillips, New York, lot 79 (Collection of Robert A. Taub): https://www.phillips.com/detail/irving-penn/79498 (Vogue commissioned Penn to photograph the Paris couture in 1950; he asked for a studio with ample natural light; the picture first appeared in Vogue, and a tear sheet is in Penn's archive)
- Irving Penn Archives: View camera, Art Institute of Chicago: https://archive.artic.edu/irvingpennarchives/view (in his early studio work for Vogue Penn frequently used large-format Deardorff view cameras, a 4 × 5 in and an 8 × 10 in model, for still lifes, portraits and fashion)
- Irving Penn Archives: Rolleiflex, Art Institute of Chicago: https://archive.artic.edu/irvingpennarchives/rolleiflex (Penn's first camera, bought 1938; used for many projects including his early outdoor fashion photographs for Vogue; 6 × 6 cm square image)
- Photographs (New York, 2008), lot 44, Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Sotheby's: https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/photographs-n08475/lot.44.html (the print was made from the original 8-by-10-inch negative, now in the archives of the Richard Avedon Foundation)
- Toni Frissell, Infinite Women (republishing the Library of Congress essay on Frissell): https://www.infinite-women.com/women/toni-frissell/ (Frissell: 'They gave me a roloflex [Rolleiflex] and little by little I built up my hundreds of feet of ruination of film')