From her job at a New York beauty salon, Barbara Mullen rose to the top of the classy modeling world in the 1950s, despite her bean-shaped figure and gap-toothed smile that defied the narrow beauty standards of the time. He passed away on September 12th. Her home in Albuquerque. She was 96 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her friend Lori Katz.
Ms. Maren was 5 feet 9 inches tall and had a 20-inch waist, a figure that suited her 1990s tramp style. Her post-war appearance in the 1940s was far from the ideal of a sensual Hollywood star like Rita Hayworth.
In her later years, Maren often said that she never thought she was beautiful. Early on, she seemed like the string-pullers of the fashion world agreed.
Eileen Ford, founder of Ford Model Agency, who met with Mullen and represented her for many years, told her that Mullen’s profile was terrible. Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow deemed her a “big, ugly Irish girl”. She said that when Mullen met photographer Lillian Bassman in 1948, who was filling in for a model who didn’t show up for a shoot, she called her “her replacement girl” and said, “This girl… is a monster,” he added.
But by the early 1950s, beauty standards within the industry began to evolve, and Ms. Mullen became a pioneer in that evolution. “The French tradition of Belle Raide has come to include groups of mannequins” — a term meaning “beautiful and ugly” — former Vogue editor Jessica Daves wrote in 1967. In his history of American fashion, he writes: caused a miracle. ”
“Barbara Mullen was the first of these mannequins to be recognized as a top mannequin,” Ms. Daves added. Her eyes stood out a little too much. Her facial proportions were not classically beautiful. However, her body proportions are tailored to modern clothing. Her small head, long neck and delicately elongated torso were the essence of a new element. ”
Bassmann spent 10 years photographing Ms. Mullen for Harper’s Bazaar, starting with the Paris Haute Couture collection in 1949, and would eventually declare her favorite model.
“She came into the studio with her shoulders slumped, her head bowed, and her coat too long,” said Bassman, who was photographed in conjunction with a 2009 photo exhibition of herself and her husband, Paul Himmel. said in an interview. “And you look at her and you think, ‘Oh my god, this girl will never be a model.’ But you put her under the lights and she just blooms.” “Sho,” Bassman added.
Barbara Elise Mullen was born on June 3, 1927 in Floral Park, Long Island, New York, the youngest of two daughters of Matthew Mullen, a bank clerk, and Yzma (Shirley) Mullen, a switchboard operator and seamstress. was born as.
[In1945attheageof18MsMullenwasworkingasanassistantatahairsaloninQueenswhenshetookajobmodelingatBergdorfGoodmandepartmentstorewhereshecarriedthelatestfashionsforwealthyshoppers[1945年、マレンさんは18歳でクイーンズの美容院でアシスタントとして働いていたが、バーグドルフ・グッドマン百貨店でお金持ちの買い物客向けに最新のファッションを扱うモデルの仕事に就いた。
Two years later, when Vogue magazine called her for a shoot with photographer John Rawlings and asked her to model a pink tulle dress that was cut to fit her slender figure and didn’t look good on other models. She broke out.
At first she was nervous. “I’m not embarrassed now, but At that time — and the camera said nothing back,” she said in a 2013 interview with the British newspaper Observer. Still, she added: “Wearing that amazing haute couture dress takes you out of everyday life. We were just ordinary girls, but you felt elevated.”
The resulting shot of her sitting on a green couch and looking over her shoulder, accompanied by the caption, “New beauty is part of the attitude,” gave her exposure in the fashion bible and quickly led to other works. continued. By the early 1950s, she had become the go-to model for Harper’s Her Bazaar and many other magazines, working with famous photographers such as Richard Avedon, Karen Radkay, and Toni Frissell.
“my favorite model It was Barbara Mullen,” famous photographer William Klein, who worked with her in the late 1950s, said in a 2012 interview with the Financial Times. “She was a tough-talking Irish-American who lived in Brooklyn and had a foul mouth.” (He lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.)
As head of the powerful Ford agency, she began to develop the continental grace in demeanor and speech befitting Michael Gross, who occupied a position near the top of his profession. 1995 book “Models: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,” she said in a phone interview.
Still, Gross says, “She wasn’t the equivalent of a supermodel at the time. She wasn’t Dovima, she wasn’t Jean Patchett, she wasn’t Susie Parker.”
Journalist John Michael O’Sullivan, who is writing a biography of Ms. Mullen, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Mullen’s failure to gain recognition outside the industry was partly due to her “chameleonic qualities.” . She said, “At a time when her models were still doing their own hair and makeup, Barbara proved herself a master of reinvention.”
Nearing the end of her modeling career, Maren moved to Switzerland in 1959 and opened a boutique, Barbara’s Bazaar, in the Alpine ski village of Klosters. She was an early showcase for designers such as Kenzo and Emanuel Ungaro, and attracted patrons such as Greta Garbo, Deborah Kerr and Princess Margaret.
Mr. Mullen has no immediate survivors. Her first husband, James Panderford, died in 1955. Her second husband, Freddie Morrell, whom she married in 1962, died in 2019.
In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Bassman further paid tribute to Ms. Mullen. “There are models like this: Muse, not a model,” she said. “She had everything wonderful: a beautiful neck, grace, the ability to respond to me.”
Maren, interviewed for the same article, recalled: My arms, my legs, it seemed like I could do anything with them. I felt really great when I moved with Lillian. It felt like being free, like being in heaven. ”