Abbey Lee Kershaw
Abbey Lee in Diane von Furstenberg's fashion show.
Born	(1987-06-12) 12 June 1987 (age 25) Melbourne, Australia
Height	5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)[1]
Hair color	Platinum Blonde (dyed, she is naturally light ash brown)
Eye color	Blue
Measurements	32-24-35 (US), 82-61-89 (EU)[1]
Dress size	34 (EU), 4 (US)
Manager	Next (London, New York, Paris, Milan) Chic Management (Sydney) 2pm Model Management (Copenhagen) 62Models and Talent (New Zealand)

Abbey Lee Kershaw (born 12 June 1987 in Melbourne, Australia) also known as Abbey Lee, is an Australian fashion model.^[2] Following several years of success leading up to the 2011 fashion seasons, V magazine dubbed Kershaw a supermodel.^[3]

Early life[link]

As a child, Kershaw says she was "always in the hospital." When she was four she suffered from meningitis and had to have two spinal taps. She also had a tumor on the knee, and several broken bones from climbing trees.^[4] She grew up in Kensington and attended St Michael's Catholic Primary school in North Melbourne in which she stated that she "grew up with 42 nationalities" explaining in an interview that her primary school of 150 children was very multicultural. She then attended the Academy of Mary Immaculate in Fitzroy.^{[citation needed]} She later went on to win the Australian 2004 Girlfriend Model Search.^[5] After high school, in 2005, she moved from Melbourne to Sydney to begin modeling. She lived 100 meters from the beach and it was while at the beach where she got scouted by Chic Management's Kathy Ward,^[6] the model scout that also discovered Miranda Kerr and Samantha Harris.^[7] She signed with Chic Management within weeks.^[8]

Career[link]

2007-09[link]

In 2007, Kershaw signed with Next Management and by March had moved to New York City.^[8] On 11 December, Models.com named her the “Next Superstar”.^[9]

Kershaw made her debut in the 2008 New York Fashion Week, managing to walk a total of 29 shows for designers such as Oscar de la Renta, Halston, and notably closing for Rodarte.^[10] For her first time in Milan Fashion Week, she was booked as a Gucci exclusive.^[11] Later that year, in September, she fell in her high heels at the Rodarte show in New York.^[12] Then, a month later in Paris, she fainted at the Alexander McQueen show from wearing a super-tight leather corset.^[13] Regardless of these two incidents, it did not affect her from booking more runways shows.^[12][13] Kershaw was one of new faces to appear on one of the fourteen covers of V magazine's fall issue.^[14] On 15 November 2008, in Miami, she made her international TV appearance at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, modeling in the Pink Planet segment.^[15]

Kershaw has starred in the fragrance ads for Gucci's new "Flora" scent since 2008.^[16]

In November 2009, Fashion TV placed her first in their First Face Countdown for Spring/Summer 2010.^{[citation needed]} Kershaw had to sit out the fall 2009 shows due to a knee injury: she had torn ligaments and could barely walk.^[5] Kershaw was featured in the explicit shoot for the French magazine Purple Fashion published fall/winter 2009.^[17] The infamous spread, shot by photographer Terry Richardson, caused outrage in the blogosphere, where Richardson was accused of cajoling the girls for his own sexual satisfaction. In his defense, Kershaw said, “Terry doesn’t force girls to do anything they don’t want to. He puts you in a G-string in a pile of mud because you want to do it. You touch yourself because you want to. For me, that shoot was the truth about how things were between us both, and I felt good doing it. I’m not ashamed of it — why should I be?”^[4] After skipping the fall 2009 season owing to a knee injury, Kershaw reappeared in Milan Fashion Week, opening D&G to having the first and last looks at Fendi and Versace, prompting New York Magazine to name her "Milan’s Top Model".^[18] On 1 December 2009, for the second time, she participated in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, but this time she had three outfits, modeling in the "Star Trooper," "Pink Planet", and in the "Enchanted Forest" segment.^[19]

2010-present[link]

In 2010, Kershaw was heavily in demand for campaigns, shoots and shows.^[4] Kershaw was featured in the 2010 Pirelli Calendar photographed by Terry Richardson,^[20] and the 2011 Pirelli Calendar photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.^{[citation needed]} In March 2010, it is announced that she will be the face of Chanel's Fall/Winter 2010/2011 ready-to-wear ad campaign. This news comes after she closed the Chanel Spring 2010 couture show, and opened the Chanel Fall/Winter 2010/2011 ready-to-wear show.^[21] In November, for the fourth time, she became the cover model of Australian Vogue (her previous covers of the same publication were in March 2010, March 2009, and September 2008).^[22]

She took her own self-portrait for the new Rag & Bone Do-It-Yourself ad campaign spring 2011 along with models Sasha Pivovarova, Edita Vilkeviciute, and Lily Aldridge.^[23] She earned $100,000 as an exclusive for Chanel, walking for their spring-summer collection in Paris.^[24] She skipped New York Fashion Week for London.^[25] V Magazine's "The Discovery Issue" crowned Abbey Lee Kershaw as the new Supermodel.^[3] The magazine called Kershaw "the biggest fashion export from Down Under since Elle Macpherson joined the ranks of Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington."^[26]

As of May 2012^[update] she ranks 5th on the Top 50 Models Women list by models.com,^[27] and is ranked 21st on the "Top Money Girls" list by models.com.^[28]

Kershaw has been on the May 2011 cover of Numero, photographed by Tom Munro.^[8]

Personal life[link]

She is friends with models Daisy Lowe, Freja Beha Erichsen, Rebecca Seidel, Joan Smalls, and Catherine McNeil.^[5] She has a pet lizard named Annie Hall.^[4] Kershaw has 10 piercings in total: on her nose (her left nostril), on the nipple, a pierced belly button, and seven on her ears. She also has various tattoos, including; a small peace sign on the palm of her hand, an owl on her middle finger, the symbol for Gemini on her ankle, and a tattoo reading "truth", hidden on the inside of her bottom lip. She has recently added two on the side of her stomach done in white ink. Kershaw is also an artist who does abstract painting and uses oil pastels.^[29]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Abbey Lee Kershaw at the Fashion Model Directory
• Abbey Lee on style.com

Pierre Balmain and the actress Ruth Ford, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1947

Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ balmɛ̃], b. Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Savoie, 18 May 1914 – Paris, France, 29 June 1982) was a French fashion designer. Known for sophistication and elegance, he once said that "dressmaking is the architecture of movement."^[1]

Balmain's father, who died when the future designer was seven years old, was the owner of a wholesale drapery business. His mother and her sisters operated a fashion boutique. Balmain studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but did not complete his studies. He spent his time there designing dresses. While attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Balmain went to Molyneux, who promised to give him a trial. Balmain then left his architectural studies to work for the fashion designer Edward Molyneux, for whom he worked from 1934 until 1939. He joined Lucien Lelong after World War II and opened his own fashion house in 1945. The house showcased long bell-shaped skirts with small waists - a line which later became popular as Dior's New Look. In 1951 he opened branches in the United States selling ready-to-wear clothes. During the 1950s, Balmain popularized the stole for day as well as evening wear and created a vogue for sheath dresses beneath jackets. His talent as a designer lay in his ability to make simple, tailored suits as well as grand evening gowns, all with the same aesthetic of slender and elegant lines. Balmain also designed the iconic uniform of the Singapore Airlines Singapore Girl, loosely based on the traditional Indonesian kebaya.

Balmain also created perfumes, including Vent Vert (1947), his first successful scent and one of the best-selling perfumes of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Jolie Madame (1953), Ivoire (1979), and Eau d'Amazonie (2006). His first perfume, launched in 1947, bore his company's Phone Number, Elysées 64-83.

Balmain was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design for Happy New Year (1980). Additional Broadway theatre credits include costumes for Sophia Loren in The Millionairess (1960) and Josephine Baker for her eponymous 1964 revue. He also was a costume designer for 16 films, including the Brigitte Bardot vehicle And God Created Woman, and designed on-screen wardrobes for the actresses Vivien Leigh and Mae West. He made a lot of dresses for Dalida.

Balmain's 1964 autobiography was titled My Years and Seasons.

His companion was the Danish designer Erik Mortensen, who worked as a designer at Balmain from 1948 until 1991. Also the later very successful Danish fashion designer Margit Brandt worked as a young designer with Pierre Balmain in the early 1960s.

Balmain was mentioned in Peter Sarstedt's 1969 hit song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)".

Balmain's vintage couture gowns remain chic, sought after and popular among the international jet-set, movie stars and socially prominent women, and have been seen on Angelina Jolie, Penelope Cruz, Alexandra Kerry, Tatiana Sorokko, Kate Moss and Kristin Davis, among others.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

See also[link]

• Balmain (fashion house)

References[link]

External links[link]

• House of Balmain
• Pierre Balmain designer profile at Fashion Model Directory
• Internet Broadway Database listing
• Sewing patterns by Pierre Balmain
• "Pierre Balmain - Dress & Petticoat". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibHighBalmain.php. Retrieved 2007-11-13. 
• "Interactive timeline of couture houses and couturier biographies". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/explore.php. 

Freja Beha Erichsen
Erichsen on the runway at the Herve Leger Summer 2009 show in New York
Born	(1987-10-18) 18 October 1987 (age 24) Roskilde, Denmark
Height	1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)[1]
Hair color	Brown
Eye color	Brown
Measurements	79-60-86 (EU) 31-24-34 (US)[1]
Dress size	34 (EU), 2 (US)
Shoe size	39 (EU), 8 (US)[1]
Manager	IMG (London, Milan, New York, Paris) Dominique Models (Brussels) Unique Models (Denmark)

Freja Beha Erichsen (born 18 October 1987 in Roskilde, Denmark) also known as Freja Beha, is a Danish model.

Career[link]

Discovered on the streets of her native Denmark by a modeling agent passing by in a taxi,^[2] Erichsen made her debut as a model in 2005 at the fall Paris and Milan shows of Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Miu Miu (which she opened). She continues to walk the runways of New York, Paris, Milan and also London, both in the Ready-to-wear and Haute Couture seasons. Erichsen has walked for Shiatzy Chen, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Burberry, Alexander Wang, Prada, Balmain, Balenciaga, Christian Lacroix, Zac Posen, Sonia Rykiel, Lanvin and Versace among many others.

She has appeared in advertising campaigns for brands such as Balenciaga, Jil Sander, Gucci, Harry Winston, Inc., Georg Jensen, Hugo Boss, H&M, CK by Calvin Klein, Hermès, Isabel Marant, Chanel, Gianfranco Ferré, Pringle of Scotland, Emporio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Chloé, Karl Lagerfeld, MaxMara, Valentino, Pollini, Jaeger, GAP, and Tom Ford eyeswear. She is one of the faces of the fragrance Gucci by Gucci along side Natasha Poly and Raquel Zimmermann, and starred in the television advertisement directed by David Lynch. She was also the face of the Calvin Klein fragrance IN2U. In 2011, she became the face of the fragrance Valentina by Valentino.

Erichsen, September 2007

She has appeared in editorials for many fashion magazines, including the American, French, Italian, German, British, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian editions of Vogue, Interview Magazine, W Magazine, American and Russian Harper's Bazaar, French and Korean Numéro, i-D, V and Purple. She has also appeared on the cover of British Vogue, Vogue Italia, Purple, Vogue Paris, French and Korean Numéro, i-D, V, W Magazine and the Chinese, Portuguese, South Korean and Japanese editions of Vogue.^[3] In 2008, casting agent James Scully, said of Erichsen:

Erichsen has had a number of fashion items named after her, including the Jill Stuart Freja handbag,^[5] the Chloé Freja clutch, and the Alexander Wang Freja Lace-Up Stiletto Boot with Zip Detail.

At the height of her career she was ranked 2nd on the Top 50 Models Women List by models.com, along with Natasha Poly, but as of May 2012 is ranked 4th alongside Sasha Pivovarova.^[6] Vogue Paris declared her one of the top 30 models of the 2000s.^[7]

Erichsen is featured in the 2011 edition of the Pirelli Calendar, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.^[8] Erichsen is part of history, in what marks the magazine's first multi-cover in the publication's 95-years, landing one of the three May Vogue UK covers in celebration of the most anticipated wedding of the year - the Royal wedding.^[9]

Personal life[link]

Erichsen was educated at Frederiksberg Gymnasium (high school). She is good friends with fellow models Abbey Lee Kershaw, Irina Lazareanu, Christian Brylle, Julia Nobis, Lily Donaldson, Karmen Pedaru and Agyness Deyn. She enjoys listening to the music of PJ Harvey, the Danish group Kira and the Kindred Spirits,^[10] Janis Joplin and Jeff Buckley.^[11] and she currently lives in New York City.^[12]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Freja Beha Erichsen

• Freja Beha Erichsen at the Fashion Model Directory
• Freja Beha Erichsen's Unique Modelling Agency profile
• Freja Beha Erichsen's profile on IMG models webpage
• Freja Beha Erichsen on style.com
• Freja Beha Erichsen profile on New York Magazine
• Freja Beha Erichsen profile on Models.com

Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977) was an American photographer. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, she was a successful fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris where she became an established fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

Early life[link]

Lee Miller was born on April 23, 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her parents were Theodore and Florence Miller (née MacDonald). Her father was of German descent, and her mother a Canadian of Scottish and Irish descent. She had a younger brother named Erik, and older brother named John. Theodore always favored Lee, and he often used her as a model for his amateur photography. When she was eight years old, she was raped while staying with a family friend in Brooklyn. Soon after, it was realized that Lee had contracted gonorrhea.^{[1][page needed]} The rape (which she almost never discussed), had a life-long traumatizing effect upon her.

Career[link]

Modeling[link]

Her father, Theodore Miller, an engineer, inventor and businessman, introduced Lee and her brothers John and Erik to photography from an early age. She was his model — with many stereoscopic photographs taken of a teenage Lee in the nude — and he also showed her technical aspects of the art.^[2] At age 19, she was stopped from walking in front of a car on a Manhattan street by the founder of Vogue, Condé Nast, thus launching her modeling career when she appeared on the cover of the March 15, 1927 edition in an illustration by George Lepape. For the next two years, she was one of the most sought after models in New York, photographed by the likes of Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, and Nickolas Murray. A photograph of Lee by Steichen was used to advertise Kotex, a female hygienic product, causing a scandal^[3] and effectively ending her career as a fashion model.

Photography[link]

In 1929, Lee Miller traveled to Paris with the intention of apprenticing herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Although, at first, he insisted that he did not take students, Miller soon became his photographic assistant, as well as his lover and muse. While she was in Paris, she began her own photographic studio, often taking over Man Ray's fashion assignments to enable him to concentrate on his painting. In fact, many of the photographs taken during this period and credited to Man Ray were actually taken by Lee. Together with Man Ray, she rediscovered the photographic technique of solarisation. She was an active participant in the surrealist movement, with her witty and humorous images. Amongst her circle of friends were Pablo Picasso, Paul Éluard, and Jean Cocteau. She even appeared as a statue that comes to life in Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1930).

After leaving Man Ray and Paris in 1932, she returned to New York and established a portrait and commercial photography studio with her brother Erik as her darkroom assistant. During this year she was included in the Modern European Photography exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. In 1933 Levy gave Miller the only solo exhibition of her life.^[4] Among her portrait clients were the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell, actresses Lilian Harvey and Gertrude Lawrence, and the African-American cast of the Virgil Thomson–Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1934).

In 1934, she abandoned her studio to marry Egyptian businessman, Aziz Eloui Bey, who had come to New York to buy equipment for the Egyptian Railways. Although she did not work as a professional photographer during this period, the photographs she took while living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, are regarded as some of her most striking surrealist images. By 1937, Lee had grown bored with her life in Cairo and she returned to Paris, where she met the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose, who she would later marry. Her photographs were not included in another exhibition until 1955, when her work was displayed with The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.^[5]

World War II[link]

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Miller was living in Hampstead, London with Roland Penrose when the bombing of the city began. Ignoring pleas from friends and family to return to the US, Miller embarked on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue documenting the Blitz. Lee was accredited into the U.S. Army as a war correspondent for Condé Nast Publications from December 1942. She teamed up with the American photographer David E. Scherman, a LIFE correspondent on many assignments. Miller traveled to France less than a month after D-Day and recorded the first use of napalm at the siege of St. Malo, the liberation of Paris, the battle for Alsace, and the horror of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. One photograph by Scherman of Miller in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler's apartment in Munich is one of the most iconic images from the Miller-Scherman partnership.

During this time, Miller photographed dying children in a Vienna Hospital, peasant life in post-war Hungary and finally the execution of Prime Minister László Bárdossy. After the war she continued to work for Vogue for a further two years, covering fashion and celebrities.

England[link]

After returning to Britain from eastern Europe, Lee started to suffer from severe episodes of clinical depression and what later became known as post-traumatic stress syndrome. She began to drink heavily, and became uncertain about her future. In 1946, she traveled with Roland to the United States where she visited Man Ray in California. After she discovered she was pregnant with her only son, Antony, she divorced Bey and, on May 3, 1947 married Roland. Antony was born in September 1947. In 1949, they bought Farley Farm House in Sussex. During the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort of artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst. While Miller continued to do the occasional photo shoot for Vogue, she soon discarded the darkroom for the kitchen becoming a successful gourmet cook. She also photographed for biographies Roland wrote about Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. However, images from the war, especially the concentration camps, continued to haunt her and she started on what Antony describes as a "downward spiral". Her depression may have been accelerated by her husband's long affair with the trapeze artist Diane Deriaz.^[2] Lee rarely talked about her war experiences but it inevitably had harsh effects on her health and her relationship with her family.

Miller died from cancer at Farley Farm House in Chiddingly, East Sussex in 1977, aged 70. She was cremated, and her ashes spread through her herb garden at Farley Farm House. Her son Antony Penrose, known as Tony, owns the house and offers tours of the work of Miller and of Roland Penrose. The garden exhibits art items such as Fallen Giant, Sea Creature, and Kneeling Woman, and the house is home to the private collections of Miller-Penrose, their own work and some of their favourite pieces of art. In the dining room, the fireplace was decorated in vivid colours by Roland Penrose.

Legacy[link]

Throughout her life, Miller did very little to promote her own photographic work. That Miller's work is known today is mainly due to the efforts of her son, Antony Penrose, who has been studying, conserving, and promoting his mother's work since the early 1980s. Her pictures are accessible at the Lee Miller Archive.^[6]

In 1985, the first biography of Miller entitled The Lives of Lee Miller was written by Antony Penrose. Since then, a number of books, mostly accompanying exhibitions of Miller's photographs, have been written by art historians and writers such as Jane Livingstone, Richard Calvocoressi, and Mark Haworth-Booth. In 2005 her life story was turned into a musical Six Pictures Of Lee Miller with music and lyrics by British composer Jason Carr. It premiered at The Chichester Festival Theatre (also in Sussex). Also in 2005 Carolyn Burke's substantial biography, Lee Miller, A Life, was published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf and in the U.K. by Bloomsbury. In 2007, Traces of Lee Miller: Echoes from St Malo, an interactive CD and DVD about Miller's war photography in St Malo was released with the support of Hand Productions and Sussex University. A 1946 radio interview with Lee Miller can also be heard on the audiobook Surrealism Reviewed, published in 2002.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lee Miller Archive official site
• Farley Farm House official site
• News story about how she was put under surveillance by MI5, BBC, 2009
• News story about a 2002 Lee Miller exhibition, BBC
• Composer-lyricist Jason Carr's website's section about the musical Six Pictures Of Lee Miller
• Borzoi Reader on Carolyn Burke's Lee Miller, A Life
• Bloomsbury on Carolyn Burke's Lee Miller
• Looking Down on Lee Miller: Carolyn Burke’s Lee Miller: A Life by Henry Edward Hardy on Scanlyze
• Smith, Ali (2007-09-08). "The look of the moment". The Guardian. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/artsandentertainment/story/0,,2164491,00.html. Retrieved 2007-09-08. 
• "The Art of Lee Miller". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1631_lee_miller//introduction.php. Retrieved 2007-09-13. 
• Model Focus - Remembering Lee Miller by Emma Juhasz for bmi Voyager, October 2007
• Lee Miller at Find a Grave
• Surrealism Reviewed audiobook featuring Lee Miller