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Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882)

12/5/2022

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Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1871, by George Frederic Watts
Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1871, by George Frederic Watts
​Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and William Blake. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister.

Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal (whom he married), Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris.
Lady Lilith (1868), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, model Alexa Wilding.
Lady Lilith (1868), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, model Alexa Wilding.

Biography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti self-portrait, 1847
Dante Gabriel Rossetti self-portrait, 1847
The son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti and his wife Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born in London, on 12 May 1828. His family and friends called him Gabriel, but in publications he put the name Dante first in honour of Dante Alighieri. He was the brother of poet Christina Rossetti, critic William Michael Rossetti, and author Maria Francesca Rossetti. His father was a Roman Catholic, at least prior to his marriage, and his mother was an Anglican; ostensibly Gabriel was baptised as and was a practising Anglican. During his childhood, Rossetti was home educated and later attended King's College School, and often read the Bible, along with the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron.

The youthful Rossetti is described as "self-possessed, articulate, passionate and charismatic" but also "ardent, poetic and feckless". Like all his siblings, he aspired to be a poet and attended King's College School, in its original location near the Strand in London. He also wished to be a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass' Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845, when he enrolled in the Antique School of the Royal Academy, which he left in 1848. After leaving the Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he retained a close relationship throughout his life.
The Eve of St. Agnes by William Holman Hunt
The Eve of St. Agnes by William Holman Hunt
​Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt's painting The Eve of St. Agnes, which illustrated a poem by John Keats, Rossetti sought out Hunt's friendship. Rossetti's own poem, "The Blessed Damozel", was an imitation of Keats, and he believed Hunt might share his artistic and literary ideals. Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which they founded along with John Everett Millais.

From the beginning of the Brotherhood's formation in 1848, the group's intention was to reform English art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo and the formal training regime introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Their approach was to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art, and their pieces of art included subjects of noble or religious disposition. 

The eminent critic John Ruskin wrote:

Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person.

For the first issue of the brotherhood's magazine, The Germ, published early in 1850, Rossetti contributed a poem, "The Blessed Damozel", and a story about a fictional early Italian artist inspired by a vision of a woman who bids him combine the human and the divine in his art. Rossetti was always more interested in the medieval than in the modern side of the movement, working on translations of Dante and other medieval Italian poets, and adopting the stylistic characteristics of the early Italians.
​Rossetti's first major paintings in oil display the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) portray Mary as a teenage girl.

In The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, finished in 1849, t
he subject of the painting, the Blessed Virgin, is sewing a red cloth, emphasizing the embroidering of altar cloths by women.
Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Ecce Ancilla Domini(1950) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Ecce Ancilla Domini(1950) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
After his second major painting Ecce Ancilla Domini, exhibited in 1850, was criticized unfavorably, Rossetti turned to watercolours, which could be sold privately. Although his work subsequently won support from John Ruskin, Rossetti only rarely exhibited thereafter.
In 1850, Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, an important model for the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Over the next decade, she became his muse, his pupil, and his passion. They were married in 1860.
Photograph of Elizabeth Siddal(25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862 )
Photograph of Elizabeth Siddal(25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862 )
Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal(25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862 ) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal(25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862 ) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
For many years, Rossetti worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova (published as The Early Italian Poets in 1861). These and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur inspired his art of the 1850s. He created a method of painting in watercolours, using thick pigments mixed with gum to give rich effects similar to medieval illuminations. He also developed a novel drawing technique in pen-and-ink. His first published illustration was "The Maids of Elfen-Mere" (1855), for a poem by his friend William Allingham,

His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Neither Burne-Jones nor Morris knew Rossetti, but were much influenced by his works, and met him by recruiting him as a contributor to their Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which Morris founded in 1856 to promote his ideas about art and poetry.

That summer Morris and Rossetti visited Oxford and finding the Oxford Union debating-hall under construction, pursued a commission to paint the upper walls with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur and to decorate the roof between the open timbers. Rossetti recruited two sisters, Bessie and Jane Burden, as models for the Oxford Union murals, and Jane became Morris's wife in 1859.

The frescoes, done too soon and too fast, began to fade at once and now are barely decipherable.
​Literature was integrated into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's artistic practice from the beginning (including that of Rossetti), with many paintings making direct literary references. For example, John Everett Millais' early work, Isabella (1849), depicts an episode from John Keats' Isabella, or, the Pot of Basil (1818).

Rossetti was particularly critical of the gaudy ornamentation of Victorian gift books and sought to refine bindings and illustrations to align with the principles of the Aesthetic Movement. Rossetti's key bindings were designed between 1861 and 1871. One of Rossetti's most prominent contributions to illustration was the collaborative book, Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The Pre-Raphaelites’ visualization of Tennyson's poems indicated the range of possibilities in interpreting written works, as did their unique approach to visualizing narrative on the canvas.

Pre-Raphaelite illustrations do not simply refer to the text in which they appear; rather, they are part of a bigger program of art: the book as a whole.  Illustration is not subservient to text and vice versa. Careful and conscientious craftsmanship is practiced in every aspect of production, and each element, though qualifiedly artistic in its own right, contributes to a unified art object (the book).
Illustration to 'The Palace of Art' : St Cecilia / wood engraving by Dalziel after a design by D. G. Rossetti ; published in Moxon's Poems of Alfred Tennyson , London 1857.
Illustration to 'The Palace of Art' : St Cecilia / wood engraving by Dalziel after a design by D. G. Rossetti ; published in Moxon's Poems of Alfred Tennyson , London 1857.
Illustration to 'The Palace of Art': The Weeping Queens / wood engraving by Dalziel after a design by D. G. Rossetti ; published in Moxon's edition of the Poems of Alfred Tennyson, London, 1857.
Illustration to 'The Palace of Art': The Weeping Queens / wood engraving by Dalziel after a design by D. G. Rossetti ; published in Moxon's edition of the Poems of Alfred Tennyson, London, 1857.
​Around 1860, Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces characterised by dense colour. These paintings became a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement.

​In them, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He portrayed his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. "These new works were based not on medievalism, but on the Italian High Renaissance artists of Venice, Titian and Veronese.

LA PIA DE' TOLOMEI(1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
LA PIA DE' TOLOMEI(1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Fanny Cornforth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Fanny Cornforth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Lady Lilith (1867), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, model Fanny Cornforth)
Lady Lilith (1867), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, model Fanny Cornforth)
Jane Burden by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Jane Burden by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Picture
Portrait of Marie Spartali Stillman (1869), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Portrait of Marie Spartali Stillman (1869), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
In 1861, Rossetti became a founding partner in the decorative arts firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Morris, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall. Rossetti contributed designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth, died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862, possibly a suicide, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and on the death of his beloved Lizzie, buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her at Highgate Cemetery, though he later had them dug up. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.
Beata Beatrix (1870) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Beata Beatrix(1870) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
​The savage reaction of critics to Rossetti's first collection of poetry contributed to a mental breakdown in June 1872. The next summer he was much improved, and both Alexa Wilding and Jane Morris sat for him at Kelmscott, where he created a soulful series of dream-like portraits.
In 1874, Morris reorganised his decorative arts firm, cutting Rossetti out of the business, and the polite fiction that both men were in residence with Jane Morris at Kelmscott could not be maintained. Rossetti abruptly left Kelmscott in July 1874 and never returned.

​Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, darkened by his drug addiction to chloral hydrate and increasing mental instability. He spent his last years as a recluse at Cheyne Walk.

Rossetti's incomplete picture Found, begun in 1853 and unfinished at his death, was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted from the street by a country drover who recognises his old sweetheart. 

On Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at the country house of a friend, where he had gone in a vain attempt to recover his health, which had been destroyed by chloral as his wife's had been destroyed by laudanum. He died of Bright's Disease, a disease of the kidneys from which he had been suffering for some time. He had been housebound for some years on account of paralysis of the legs, though his chloral addiction is believed to have been a means of alleviating pain from a botched hydrocele removal. He had been suffering from alcohol psychosis for some time brought on by the excessive amounts of whisky he used to drown out the bitter taste of the chloral hydrate. He is buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), elegancepedia
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Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)

31/7/2021

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Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991) was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist, and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design.

Biography

Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen self portrait
Doris Zinkeisen was born in Clynder House in Rosneath, Argyll, Scotland. her father Victor Zinkeisen was a timber merchant and amateur artist from Glasgo whose family were originally from Bohemia and had been settled in Scotland for two hundred years. She had a younger sister, Anna Zinkeisen, who also became an artist.The family left Scotland and moved to Pinner, near Harrow in 1909. Zinkeisen attended the Harrow School of Art for four years and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in 1917 together with her sister Anna. During World War I Zinkeisen served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment at a hospital in Northwood, Middlesex.
​Zinkeisen shared a studio in London with her sister during the 1920s and 1930s from where she embarked on her career as a painter, commercial artist, and theatrical designer.

Zinkeisen's realist style made her popular as a portraitist and she became a well-known society painter. The subject matter of her paintings, society portraiture, equestrian portraiture, and scenes from the parks of London and Paris reflect the lifestyle of the upper class at the time. An early success was her 1925 portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester.
portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester by Doris Zinkeisen, 1925
portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester by Doris Zinkeisen, 1925
portrait by Doris Zinkeisen
painting of ballerinas by Doris Zinkeisen
Painting PARKLAND RIDE by Doris Zinkeisen
Painting PARKLAND RIDE by Doris Zinkeisen
She also worked widely in other media as an illustrator and commercial artist including producing advertising posters for several British mainline railway companies and murals for the RMS Queen Mary.

Zinkeisen produced a number of posters for London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), Southern Railway (SR), and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in the 1930s which often featured historical themes. 

In 1935, John Brown and Company Shipbuilders of Clydebank commissioned both of the Zinkeisen sisters to paint the murals in the Verandah Grill, a restaurant and night-club on the ocean liner the RMS Queen Mary. The murals, on the theme of entertainment, depicted circus and theatre scenes and can still be seen on the ship, now permanently moored in Long Beach, California. Zinkeisen was also involved in planning the interior decoration which featured a parquet dance floor surrounded by black Wilton carpets, star-studded red velvet curtains and a sweeping illuminated balustrade whose colours changed in time with the music. Writing in Vogue in 1936, Cecil Beaton described the Verandah Grill as 'By far the prettiest room on any ship – becomingly lit, gay in colour and obviously so successful that it would be crowded if twice its present size'. The largest mural was damaged during World War II and restored by Zinkeisen after the war. 

The Zinkeisen sisters also contributed murals to the RMS Queen Elizabeth in 1940.
During World War II, Zinkeisen joined the St John Ambulance Brigade and worked as a nurse in London. She worked in the casualty department in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Zinkeisen worked in the casualty department in the mornings and painted in the afternoons, recording the events of the day.

In 1944, Doris and her sister Anna were commissioned by United Steel Companies (USC) to produce twelve paintings that were reproduced in the trade and technical press in Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The images were subsequently collated in a book, This Present Age, published in 1946.
​

Following the liberation of Europe in 1945, Zinkeisen was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee as a war artist for the North West Europe Commission of the Joint War Organisation of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John (JWO). Based in Brussels at the commission's headquarters she recorded the commission's post-war relief work in north west Europe including the rehabilitation and repatriation of prisoners of war and civilian internees. Zinkeisen traveled by lorry or by air throughout north-west Europe making sketches which she brought back to her studio in the commission's headquarters for further work.

By the time Zinkeisen had become a war artist her palette had already darkened from the colours of her society paintings. Her war paintings use muted greys, browns, and ochres like contemporaries such as Eric Ravilious and Stanley Spencer.
Despite her success as a painter and commercial artist she was best known as a theatrical designer. And Zinkeisen was a successful stage and costume designer for plays and films.

She started to work in stage design as soon as she completed her studies at the Royal Academy. Her first job was working for the actor-manager Nigel Playfair.  Playfair wanted Zinkeisen to sing in the productions, but Zinkeisen insisted on remaining behind the scenes. One of the first plays she worked on was Clifford Bax and Playfair's 1923 adaptation of The Insect Play. Claude Rains who played three roles in the play described Zinkeisen as "a stunning women".

​In 1922, while working with Nigel Playfair, Zinkeisen met James Whale. The two were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. The couple was reportedly engaged in 1924 but by 1925 the engagement was off.

Zinkeisen married Edward Grahame Johnstone, a naval officer in 1927, and they had twin daughters in June 1928 Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, who would become children's book illustrators,  and a son Murray Johnstone who would become a fine horsewoman and won the Moscow Cup at the International Horse Show in 1934.

Zinkeisen became the chief stage and costume designer for Charles B. Cochran's popular London revues. Cochran described her work in an article published in The Studio magazine in 1927.

Miss Doris Zinkeisen seems to me to follow the best traditions of English theatrical decoration... She can now create costumes for all moods and times, and capture with equal facility the acid fervour of puritanism or the sweet lyricism of a faun... this young decorator, at her early age is, in my opinion, in the front rank of British designers.

— Charles B. Cochran, The Studio (1927)

​
In 1928, Zinkeisen designed the costumes for This Year of Grace by Noël Coward  at the London Pavilion. In 1933, Zinkeison designed the decor and costumes for Cochran's production of Cole Porter's musical Nymph Errant at the Adelphi Theatre in London. The décolletage formed by the low cut design of one of the costumes resulted in a strike by the chorus against the perceived indecency of the costume. During the Second World War, she designed costumes and sets for the Old Vic Company productions of Arms and the Man and Richard III  at the New Theatre.
Doris Zinkeisen with her brushes (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen with her brushes (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen: New Idea portrait with patterned background (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen: New Idea portrait with patterned background (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Zinkeisen was a costume designer on a number of Herbert Wilcox films, including the film version of Noël Coward's operetta Bitter Sweet (1933), The Little Damozel, which included a nearly transparent dress. Wilcox's 1932 film The Blue Danube was based on a short story by Zinkeisen. British-born director James Whale specifically requested Zinkeisen to design the costumes for the only American film she ever worked on, the 1936 screen version of the musical Show Boat. It remains today the most popular and highly regarded film that Zinkeisen worked on.

In 1938 she wrote Designing for the Stage, a book regarded by Sue Harper, Professor of Film History, as an "influential innovation". ​
After the war, Zinkeisen continued to work in London as a theatrical designer and held occasional exhibitions of her paintings. She designed the cover of a special edition of Everybody's Magazine to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. In 1954, Zinkeisen designed the scenery and costumes for Noël Coward's musical, After the Ball, based on Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan.

​
In 1955, Zinkeisen created Laurence Olivier's make-up for the film version of Richard III.
After the death of her husband Grahame Johnstone in 1946, Zinkeisen's twin girls Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone lived with their mother. Zinkeisen outlived her daughter Janet who died in an accident in 1979.
​
Doris Zinkeisen died on 3 January 1991, in Badingham, Suffolk, aged 92.
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  Doris Zinkeisen  by Madame Yevonde Vivex colour print, January 1936, national portrait gallery
Doris Zinkeisen by Madame Yevonde Vivex colour print, January 1936

Further interest

Books
  • Zinkeisen, Doris (1938). Designing for the Stage. The Studio.
  • Priestley, J. B.; Doris Zinkeisen (1948). The high toby: a play for the toy theatre (with scenery and characters by Doris Zinkeisen). Penguin Books.
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Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008)

23/4/2021

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Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in Balenciaga dress

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​Dorian Elizabeth Leigh Parker (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), known professionally as Dorian Leigh, was an American model and one of the earliest modeling icons of the fashion industry. She is considered one of the first supermodels, and was well known in the United States and Europe.
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel

Biography

​Dorian Leigh Parker was born in San Antonio, Texas, to George and Elizabeth Parker. Her parents married when they were very young and Elizabeth promptly gave birth to three daughters in quick succession: Dorian, Florian "Cissie" (1918–2010), and Georgiabell (1921–1988). Thirteen years after the birth of her third daughter, Elizabeth believed she was going through menopause and was shocked to discover that she was pregnant. She gave birth to her fourth daughter, Cecilia (1932–2003), who became known as model and actress Suzy Parker. The family moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, soon after Dorian's birth and later to Metuchen, New Jersey where George Parker invented a new form of etching acid, the production of which gave him enough income to retire.

Dorian graduated from Newton High School in Queens, New York, in 1935 and enrolled at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. At college, she met her first husband, Marshall Powell Hawkins, whom she married on a whim in North Carolina in 1937. They had two children: Thomas Lofton ("TL") Hawkins (1939–2014) and Marsha Hawkins (born 1940). The couple separated in the 1940s.

Dorian worked as a file clerk at a department store in Manhattan and as a tabulator, where she found that she had an aptitude for math, mechanical engineering, and drawing.

Dorian then worked at Bell Laboratories, and was a tool designer during World War II at Eastern Air Lines (with their Eastern Aircraft division) where she assisted in the design of airplane wings. While working Republic Pictures as an apprentice copywriter, she was encouraged by a Mrs. Wayburn to try modeling.
​In 1944 Dorian went to the Harry Conover modeling agency. At 27, Dorian was not only old by modeling standards, but at barely 5'5", she was shorter than the other models at the agency. Conover immediately sent her to see Diana Vreeland, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. Dorian met with Vreeland and fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who were intrigued by her zig-zagged eyebrows. Dorian was photographed for the cover of the June 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar, her very first modeling assignment. Later the magazine was shocked to discover her real age was 27(not 19 as she said), and that she already had two children.

Dorian's parents thought modeling was not respectable, so Dorian used only her first and middle name during her career. When Dorian became an enormous success though, they thought it was acceptable that their youngest daughter Suzy use the Parker last name when she also became a famous model. Their other daughter, Florian, also had modeling photos in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, but quit when she married a man in the military.

Dorian instantly became busy with modeling assignments, landing on the covers of major magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, LIFE, and Elle. Because of her schedule, Dorian's two children were sent to live with her parents in Florida, while she was based in New York City and traveling to Europe.

In 1946, Dorian appeared on the cover of six American Vogue magazines. She worked with famous fashion photographers Irving Penn, John Rawlings, Cecil Beaton, and Paul Radkai. She dated Irving Penn, who later married another model Lisa Fonssagrives.
Dorian Leigh on the cover of Vogue, June 1946
Dorian Leigh on the cover of Vogue, June 1946
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), first American supermodel
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, November 1946
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, 1946
Dorian Leigh in white sleeveless with high wing collar blouse by Adelaar, photo by Clifford Coffin
Dorian Leigh in white sleeveless with high wing collar blouse by Adelaar, photo by Clifford Coffin
Dorian Leigh in Bernath suede suit, photo by Horst. P. Horst
Dorian Leigh in Bernath suede suit, photo by Horst. P. Horst
On one assignment of Vogue, Dorian argued with photographer Paul Radkai's wife Karen, who wanted to be a fashion photographer and wanted to take many free extra photos of Dorian for her portfolio. When Dorian refused, Karen warned Dorian she would "ruin her." Indeed, Vogue never used Dorian again, and Karen became a Vogue photographer for many years.

Dorian easily transitioned to working with Harper's Bazaar's new, young photographer, Richard Avedon(who would become one of the most famous photographers in history).
Dorian Leigh, Harper's Bazzar, September 1952, photo by Richard Avedon
Dorian Leigh, Harper's Bazzar, September 1952, photo by Richard Avedon
While living in her apartment in New York, Dorian struck up a friendship with a young author, Truman Capote who was fascinated by Dorian's lifestyle of non-stop men, coming-and-goings, and having a store across the street handle her phone calls, and called her "Happy-go-lucky." Capote's character Holly Golightly in his famous 1958 novel Breakfast at Tiffany's is said to be largely based on Dorian's life, as well as socialite Gloria Vanderbilt's.
Dorian Leigh photo by William Helburn
Dorian Leigh by William Helburn
After being fed up with Harry Conover's agency, Dorian decided to start her own modeling agency called the "Fashion Bureau". She came up with the idea of the "voucher system." With this innovative system, the modeling agency would pay the models weekly, instead of the models' having to wait to be paid directly by the clients. Often it took companies weeks, months, or even years to pay models for their work.

Her modelling agency inspired a young fashion stylist named Eileen Ford, who, along with her husband Gerard W. Ford, started what would become one of the most prestigious modeling agencies in the world, Ford Models.

Around 1947, Dorian's sister Cissy introduced her to Roger Mehle who was divorced from Aileen Mehle(who later became the very famous gossip columnist known as "Suzy"). Cissy was married to an army officer and Mehle was the youngest Navy commander and fighter ace during WWII.

In August 1948, Dorian was two months pregnant when she married Mehle. Dorian's bridemaids were her teen sister Suzy Parker and Suzy's teen model friend Carmen Dell'Orefice. Dorian's two older children, who were being raised by her parents in Florida, came to live with the couple in Pennsylvania.
Dorian closed her agency when she married. She then telephoned Eileen Ford and told her that she would join the Ford Agency if they also signed her 15-year-old sister, Suzy Parker, sight-unseen. Suzy, 15 years younger than Dorian, had already been working for the Huntington Hartford agency making $25 per hour. Dorian told Ford she believed Suzy should be making $40 per hour. The Fords' agency was only two years old so they were anxious to represent a famous model like Dorian. The Fords were shocked during their initial meeting to see that Suzy was completely different from her sister Dorian who was thin, had an extremely small waist, and had black hair and bright blue eyes. Suzy was almost six inches taller than Dorian, had a very large frame, and had bright red hair, freckles, and green eyes. (In the 1950s, Suzy would become even more famous than Dorian, and would go on to be a movie and television actress.
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker, 1953
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker, 1953
Dorian gave birth to her daughter, Young Eve Mehle, on March 27, 1949. The couple had a house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania but rarely saw each other. Roger Mehle's naval career stationed him in Atlantic City, and Dorian commuted to New York City and Paris for modeling work. ​
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in Balenciaga evening dress, 1950
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, 1950
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, photo by Richard Avedon, 1951
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, photo by Richard Avedon, 1951
In 1952, when she was 35 years old, Richard Avedon photographed her for Revlon's most famous advertising campaign, Fire and Ice. In this two-page advertisement, Dorian is wearing a very tight, silver sequined gown wrapped in a huge red wrap that was copied from a Balenciaga original. The dress had hand-sewn silver sequins on it, and it took so long to create that only the front of the dress was finished in time to be photographed for the ad. The back was non-existent and held in place with safety pins. Dorian also had a silver streak put in her black hair. The original ad had Dorian holding her hand in front of her breast. The agency considered the photo too risqué, and the ad was re-shot. This ad was accompanied by a provocative quiz written by Kay Daly. The ad became an enormous success, winning Advertising Age's "Magazine Advertisement of the Year" award.
Dorian Leigh, Fire and Ice Campaign for Revlon
That same year, Dorian also played the part of a model in the play The Fifth Season. Her job as model, mother, and actress was featured in Look magazine's June 2, 1953, cover story. By then, Dorian had appeared on the covers of more than 50 magazines. On the Look cover, Dorian is quoted as saying, "I would rather have a baby than a mink coat.".
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in black dress with cap sleeves, 1954
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in black dress with three quarter sleeves, 1954
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in red coat, 1954, photo by Georges Dambier, Normandy, France
In the 50s, Dorian  began to work more often in Europe with Richard Avedon.

While in Paris, Dorian met the married Spanish athlete Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca, Marquis of Portago (Alfonso de Portago)nicknamed Fon, who was 11 years younger than her,  was married with a three-year-old daughter. Dorian and Fon were both reluctant to divorce their spouses, but carried on an affair all summer in Paris and Biarritz. Dorian became pregnant by him, but chose to have an abortion because she feared Roger Mehle would divorce her and take full-custody of their daughter Young Eve. Only weeks later, at the end of the summer, Fon told Dorian that his wife Carroll was pregnant with their second child. Dorian returned to the United States and divorced Roger Mehle on November 24, 1954, in Mexico. Fon then married Dorian in Mexico right away, but since de Portago was not divorced, the marriage was not legal.

Coco Chanel, great friend of her sister Suzy, warned Dorian against the affair, but Dorian continued it with Fon even though his wife Carroll gave birth to their son Anthony de Portago around 1954. When she got pregnant by de Portago again, Dorian left her three other children with her parents in Florida, fled to Paris and Switzerland, and gave birth to her son Kim Blas Parker on September 27, 1955 in Switzerland.
​After the birth of her baby son Kim, Dorian began the first legal modeling agency in France to support her son. She also had lent about $15,000 to the financially irresponsible de Portago , with whom she continued an on-and-off relationship in 1956 and 1957.

In early 1957, De Portago, still married,  was also openly dating actress Linda Christian, the ex-wife of actor Tyrone Power.

On April 23, 1957, Dorian's 40th birthday, de Portago told Dorian that he was supposedly finally divorcing Carroll so they could be legally married. He told her that he was entering the famous Mille Miglia car race in Italy on May 8, 1957 and Carroll was supposed to sign their divorce papers on May 9.

Instead, on May 8, de Portago was seen at the site of car race with Linda Christian who kissed him famously before his race. The same day, Dorian received a phone call from de Portago's mother Olga, informing Dorian that Fon's tire on his Ferrari race car had blown up because he did not stop in time for a tire change. He was killed with his co-driver as well as nine spectators, including five children. This catastrophe ended the Mille Miglia forever.

A few days after Alfonso de Portago was killed, Dorian's sister Suzy, making a movie with Cary Grant, told famous gossip columnist Louella Parsons that Dorian had a son with de Portago and she was estranged from her sister because of it. Dorian was shocked that Suzy leaked this secret, Dorian's parents were furious and told Dorian that she would never have custody of her children. They also refused to accept Kim.

In 1957, Dorian returned to Florida and visited her daughter Young at her parents’ home. Dorian then took Young and fled to Paris where she remained mostly for the next twenty-one years. The next year In 1958 she became pregnant by another man, had an abortion and married Bordat days later.

Although Dorian already had four children by three different men, she wanted another baby. When her husband Bordat claimed he was too young, Dorian moved out of their apartment, but they remained legally married.

Dorian was so busy with her Paris modeling agency that she now had branches in Hamburg, Germany, and London to which she often traveled.

During a solo ski vacation to Klosters, Switzerland over Christmas 1960, 43-year-old Dorian craved a baby and slept with four men in one week. In September 1961, Dorian gave birth to her fifth child, Miranda, in France. Dorian thought that a young ski instructor at Klosters was the father. Dorian then divorced Bordat but she did not tell her daughter Miranda that Dr. Bordat was not her father until she was a teenager, and despite never meeting her biological father, Miranda kept his last name.

In 1964, 47-year-old Dorian met 23-year-old Israeli writer Iddo Ben-Gurion and they were married. But after she discovered Iddo was a drug-addict embezzling money from her modeling agencies, she divorced him in 1966. But she eventually had to close her agencies because so much money was stolen by Iddo. Most of her modeling fortune had been spent recklessly or stolen.

Living in Paris, Dorian studied at Le Cordon Bleu and opened her own restaurant, Chez Leigh, from 1973 to 1975. She tried to get cooking jobs in Corsica and Orleans as well. By 1976, Dorian was broke.
​
In 1977, Dorian received a phone call from the New York City modeling agency Stewart Cowley asking her to work as his office manager. Dorian agreed to return to New York where her son Kim was living. Kim's half-brother Anthony de Portago also lived in New York City and the two actually had become good friends. Dorian soon discovered that her 21-year-old son Kim was a serious drug addict, and sent him to live with her sister Suzy in California briefly. Only six months after Dorian re-settled and reunited with Kim in New York, he jumped 33 floors from his apartment window to his death, leaving a suicide note behind.

After Kim's death, Dorian lived in Pound Ridge, New York, where she made pâtés for delicatessens and specialty food shops, according to a profile in The New York Times by Enid Nemy. She also worked with Martha Stewart in the early 1980s.

Dorian wrote two cookbooks, Pancakes: From Flapjacks to Crepes (1987) and Doughnuts: Over 3 Dozen Crullers, Fritters and Other Treats (1994) at the age of 77.
​
In 1980, Dorian published an autobiography, The Girl Who Had Everything.

According to Dorian, she wrote her autobiography for her late son: "I really wrote it for Kim, who will never read it. But perhaps other Kims and their parents may learn from my unhappy experiences".
Dorian Leigh, photo by Lillian Bassman, 1948
Dorian died in a Falls Church, Virginia nursing home from Alzheimer's disease at the age of 91 on July 7th in 2008. In her obituary, her first son, T.L. Hawkins, reminisced about his mother's famous "Fire and Ice" photograph.

Her only remaining sister Florian Parker died at the age of 92 in 2010.
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel
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