Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall by Richard Avedon. Place de la Concorde, Paris – August 1956
Suzy Parker (October 28, 1932 – May 3, 2003) was an American fashion model and actress active from 1947 into the early 1960s. The younger sister of model, Dorian Leigh, her modeling career reached its zenith during the 1950s when she appeared on the cover of dozens of magazines, advertisements, and in movie and television roles.
Parker was the face of postwar American glamour and inspired Audrey Hepburn’s character in the 1957 film Funny Face. Her bright insouciance was beloved by Richard Avedon, who called her “my most challenging and complicated of muses.”
She was featured regularly on the cover and inside pages of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Life magazine, and was the face of Chanel and Revlon, in addition to advertisements for many other cosmetic companies, as no model had an exclusive make-up contract until Lauren Hutton (for Revlon) and Karen Graham (Estée Lauder) signed them in the early 1970s. Parker was the first model to earn more than $100 an hour, the first model to earn $100,000 per year and the only fashion model to have a Beatles song named after her, even if an unreleased one.
Read full biography here.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
