Vintage Photos of Elegant Millinery by Madame Agnès

Madame Agnes (late 1800s-1949) was France’s most popular milliner. She designed hats that were popular from the late 1920s until the 1940s. She was famous for cutting the brims of her hats while they were worn by her customers. Her shop was located on the Rue Saint-Honoré.

She associated with people in the art circles of Paris and styled hats that were both abstract and unique. She preferred wearing only black fashions, fx. in 1929 she wore black satin frocks designed by Vionnet. Her clothes were embellished with bright jewelry like red coral, jade or lapis lazuli.

Madame Agnes

Madame Agnes in her shop in Paris, 1935

Edward Steichen, Dorothy Smart, hat by Madame Agnès, 1926

Madame Jean Lassalle hat by Madame Agnès, Madame d’Ora, 1929

Portrait of the milliner Agnès by Madame d’Ora, Paris, 1928-1931

Model in hat of bird of paradise feathers by Madame Agnès, spangled jacket by Maggy Rouff, photo by George Hoyningen-Huene, Harper’s Bazaar, 1935

Vintage Photos Featuring Arletty by Madame d’Ora

Arletty (1898 – 1992) was a French actress, singer, and fashion model. Born to a working-class family, she left home and pursued a modeling career, after her father’s death. She took the stage name “Arlette” based on the heroine of a story by Maupassant.

Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years before her film debut in 1930. Her career took off around 1936, when she appeared as the leading lady in the stage plays Les Joies du Capitole and Fric-Frac, in which she starred opposite Michel Simon. She later starred as Blanche in the French version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

She was imprisoned in 1945 for her wartime liaison with a German Luftwaffe officer, Hans-Jürgen Soehring, during the occupation of France. For her crimes she received a sentence of eighteen months imprisonment, most of which was served in a private chateau.

In 1995, the government of France issued a series of limited edition coins to commemorate the centenary of film that included a 100 Franc coin bearing her image.

Arletty by Madame d’Ora, Paris, 1920 via

Arletty by Madame d’Ora, 1929 via

Arletty by Madame d’Ora, Paris, 1920 via

Arletty by Madame d’Ora, Paris, 1920 via

Arletty by Madame d’Ora, Paris, 1920 via

Vintage Photos of the First “Supermodel” Marion Morehouse (1920s)

Marion Morehouse (1906-1969), was a fashion model who rose to prominance in the late 20s and early 30s, sitting for Vanity Fair and Vogue photographer Edward Steichen. The pair created some strikingly modernist photographs. According to Steichen Morehouse was:

The greatest fashion model I ever photographed …. When she put on the clothes that were to be photographed, she transformed herself into a woman who really would wear that gown … whatever the outfit was.

She was also a favorite of Cecil Beaton and French Vogue‘s Baron George Hoyningen-Huene. Morehouse was of Choctaw Indian ancestry, with brown eyes and an angular frame  After her modeling career ended, she took up photography herself.

Later she became the third wife of author and painter E.E Cummings. When Cummings met Marion Morehouse in 1932, he was in the middle of a painful split from his second wife, Anne Barton. Although it is not clear whether the two were ever formally married, Morehouse lived with Cummings in a common-law marriage until his death in 1962. Morehouse died on May 18, 1969, while living at 4 Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, New York City, where Cummings had resided since September 8, 1924

Marion Morehouse in a Chanel ‘mermaid’ dress, 1929,

by Edward Steichen

Marion Morehouse, in the apartment of Conde Nast, wearing a beaded

white chiffon dress by Chanel, and ankle-strap shoes by Delman, 1927,

photo by Edward Steichen

ca. 1926, Marion Morehouse in back view, wearing a moire gown

with a plunging back and a huge bow; designed by Louiseboulanger

Image by © Condé Nast Archive/CORBIS

Lee Miller; Marion Morehouse, bromide print, 1929

by Cecil Beaton © Condé Nast via  National Portrait Gallery

Edward Steichen, Marion Morehouse wearing Cheruit, 1928

© Condé Nast Archive/Corbis.

Edward Steichen, Marion Morehouse, wearing sequined dress by Cheruit, 1927

© Condé Nast Archive/Corbis.

Collection of Vintage Celebrity Portraits by Baron Adolph de Meyer

Baron Adolph de Meyer (1868 – 1946) was a photographer famed for his elegant photographic portraits in the early 20th century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V of the United Kingdom, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913.

Today, few of his prints survive, most were destroyed during World War II

Billie Burke by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

 Ruth St. Denis in The Revelation of the Goddess from Omika by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

Lillian Gish by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

Irene Castle 1921 by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

Mary Pickford Wedding Portrait by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

 

Portrait of Marchesa Luisa Casati by Baron Adolph de Meyer via

The First The Great Gatsby Film (1926)

This is a 1 min. trailer of the first filmed version of the novel, no copies of the actual film are known to have survived. The book and film famously narrate the life of self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby who lacks only one thing in life: the love of the beautiful, impulsive Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby’s carefully laid scheme to announce his intentions to take Daisy away from her cloddish husband Tom Buchanan goes horribly awry, setting the stage for the inexorable tragedies that follow. The film was first a stage play on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. Fitzgerald received $45,000 for the rights to his 1925 classic.

The film was entrusted to a contract Paramount director, Herbert Brenon who designed the film as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby’s mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements. This might have been a big mistake.

Both Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald walked out of the movie when they saw it. Later Zelda wrote in a letter:

“We saw ‘The Great Gatsby’ in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left”.

However, the 1926 Great Gatsby was actually filmed during the historical period it depicts.

Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, made extensive but unsuccessful attempts to find a surviving print. Dixon noted that there were rumors that a copy survived in an unknown archive in Moscow but dismissed these rumors as unfounded

Some stills from the trailer:

The Great Gatsby, 1926

The Great Gatsby, 1926

The Great Gatsby, 1926

The Great Gatsby, 1926

The Great Gatsby Movie Trailer from 1926

A Collection of Vintage Photos Feat. the Glamorous Fashion & Style of the 192Os

Clara Bow

Gloria Swanson in the Queen Kelly, 1929

 

Josephine baker´s Eton crop haircut

Louise Brooks short bobbed flapper hair

Marion Morehouse in Chanel. Photo by Edward Steichen, Vogue, 1926

Norma Shearer giving thanks for her amazing wardrobe collection in A Slave to Fashion, 1925

Bebe Daniels with an exotic animal, 1927

1920s icon Gilda Gray looking very glamorous

1920s girl with monocle

1920s style