Lisa Fonssagrives (May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992), born Lisa Bernstone in Sweden, was a fashion model credited by some as the first supermodel.
Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, from Town & Country, Life, and the original Vanity Fair. She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet. Fonssagrives once described herself as a "good clothes hanger".
She worked with fashion photographers includin...
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Lisa Fonssagrives (May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992), born Lisa Bernstone in Sweden, was a fashion model credited by some as the first supermodel.
Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, from Town & Country, Life, and the original Vanity Fair. She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet. Fonssagrives once described herself as a "good clothes hanger".
She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950.
Fonssagrives died at the age of 80, survived by her second husband and her two children: daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a costume designer, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.
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