Paris has not only long been the global capital of style, but it’s also the most beautiful backdrop against which to photograph fashion. And here are twenty images that prove it …
Jacques Henri Lartigue, At the Races, circa 1910
The Parisian photographer, who was one of the first to use the Kodak Brownie camera for his snaps, originally made a name for himself shooting sports events, along with the players and glamorous spectators. This image, taken at the Auteuil drag races, was one of his earliest iconic shots, made even more legendary when it inspired Audrey Hepburn’s costume for the Ascot scene of 1964’s My Fair Lady.
Maurice-Louis Branger, Women Having a Drink on a Café Terrace, 1926
As Lartigue was shooting the beau monde at play in Paris, the nascent street-style photography industry was starting to boom. Newspapers were increasingly clamouring for photos of well-dressed Parisiennes, and with cameras becoming ever-more portable, photographers such as the Séeberger brothers and Maurice-Louis Branger, who set up his reportage agency on Rue Cambon in 1905, made names for themselves for their ability to find the city’s most fashionable street looks. Designers often dressed models and paid photographers to shoot them out and about, as a way to drum up publicity, and this might well be the story behind this now-famous image, for it was part of a series. It’s not known who commissioned Branger to photograph these women (in winter clothes, despite it being mid-summer of 1926), but the mysterious café has now been identified; click here to read more.
Erwin Blumenfeld, Lisa Fonssagrives on the Eiffel Tower, 1939
This is an outtake from a shoot published in the May 1939 edition of French Vogue, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower. Lisa, wearing Lucien Lelong, was not yet the supermodel she would become in New York. She fled to America later that year as war clouds were darkening. Blumenfeld, who was German, was placed in internment camps on the outbreak of war, but managed to escape and find passage to the States, too, where he also became one of the biggest names in fashion. At a time when most fashion photography was highly stylised in a studio, this shoot must have seemed like a breath of fresh (and high-altitude) Parisian air.
Lee Miller, Bruyère’s Quilted Windbreaker, 1944
Model turned fashion photographer turned war reporter Lee Miller was one of the first to shoot in the newly liberated City of Light; as well as documenting the ecstatic street scenes, she was tasked by Vogue with covering the first post-war couture collections and helping to revive the industry. This photograph appeared in the November 1944 edition of British Vogue. Lee was upset by New York-based editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase’s criticism of the shoot, writing to the British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, ‘these snapshots have been taken under the most difficult and depressing conditions … Edna should be told there is a war on.’ Paris, though physically intact, was indeed scarred from its four-plus years of brutal occupation, but while the war was still raging eastwards, the city could at least celebrate its freedom, and the fact that retribution against the Nazis was underway — as seen in the poignant way in which Lee framed this photo in front of the Ministry of Justice.
Willy Maywald, The Bar Suit, 1947
The French post-war couture industry finally blossomed back into full-blown life with Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ collection of 1947. With luscious curves inspired by the forms of flowers, its signature ‘Bar Suit’ was cleverly photographed against Paris’s winter-stripped trees of early 1947; Maywald seems to have been making a statement about Parisiennes, too, coming back into bloom.
Robert Capa, Dior by the Seine, 1948
Capa was, like Lee Miller, a celebrated war photographer who captured unforgettable images of Paris’s liberation from Nazi rule. After the war, the Budapest-born Capa moved to his beloved Paris, where he established the Magnum Photos agency with several other photographers. He increasingly photographed in colour, and while he was not a fashion photographer, this 1948 shot of a pink Dior dress set against a murky-brown Parisian backdrop celebrates — like the Maywald photo above — a Paris that is coming back to life, from monotone dullness to vibrant saturated colour (prefacing the string of Technicolor Paris-based movies of the 1950s; more on which below).
Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, Bettina, La Plus Belle, 1953
With this one image — of France’s first supermodel Bettina Graziani admiring the Place Vendôme window of Van Cleef & Arpels — photojournalist Charbonnier seemed to sum up the beauty and style aspirations of the 1950s: winged eyeliner, red lipstick, elegant accessories, and a haughtily refined air.
Richard Avedon, Paris Report, 1956
Following the war, Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow — who coined the term ‘New Look’ to describe Dior’s breakthrough 1947 collection — was on a mission to resuscitate the French fashion industry, and this included sending up-and-coming superstar photographer Richard Avedon to Paris to cover the Collections . He, under Snow’s influence, became a fervent Francophile, and his 1950s Paris images — of the decade’s most glamorous women (Dovima, Suzy Parker, Carmen Dell’Orifece) jumping joyfully in the streets or partying in the city’s bars and nightclubs (Maxim’s, Moulin Rouge …) — helped to recrown Paris as the global capital of style. This photograph was part of the ‘Paris Report’ in the September 1956 edition of Harper’s Bazaar.
Richard Avedon, Audrey in Red Gown, 1957
The 1950s also saw a slew of Paris-based movies that further infused the post-war city with a vivid dose of glamour — most notably the Technicolor-drenched fashion film Funny Face. Richard Avedon not only inspired the photographer character played by Fred Astaire, but he also signed on as Special Visual Consultant, and his colour-soaked photos of Audrey Hepburn, modelling Givenchy gowns in some of the city’s most stunning locations, are iconic and influential to this day.
Mark Shaw, Grey Dior Outside Louvre Metro, 1957
Freelance photographer Mark Shaw also did his bit, at Life magazine, to sell Paris as the epicentre of the fashion world. Famous for his photographs of celebrities and politicians, Shaw had started his professional career at Harper’s Bazaar, and his trained fashion eye secured him the coveted gig of covering the Paris Collections, and shooting key pieces on location, which he did throughout the 1950s. This photograph was taken for a September 1957 article called ‘A Bright Young Look in Paris.’
Frank Horvat, Le Chien Qui Fume, 1957
Staying in 1957, the most glamorous of Parisian years … Horvat was an Italian photojournalist who settled in Paris in 1955. He would become fashion-famous in the 1960s with his work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, but he hit his stride in late 1950s, when commissioned to shoot fashion for the magazine Jardin des Modes. A signature feature of his style was his inspired locations, and one of his most famous images was shot in the Les Halles brasserie Au Chien Qui Fume (which still operates today). It showcases a movie-star-gorgeous couple stopping by for a restorative French Onion Soup after a glitzy night out on the town, and seems to be the utter epitome of mid-century Parisian glamour.
Gleb Derunjinsky, Griffe Gown, circa 1957
One more image that proves that 1957 was the year in which Paris got its groove back … A freelance photographer retained by Harper’s Bazaar, Derunjinsky helped the magazine cover the Paris collections from 1953-1963. He was particularly adept at conveying the heady glamour of Paris at night.
William Klein, Dorothy & Boulangerie, 1961
The American photographer made France his home upon being discharged from the US army after World War II. He settled in his adored Paris, where he studied art, and began making a name for himself as a painter and sculptor. It was a meeting with Vogue’s artistic director Alexander Liberman that led him in a new professional direction. Klein is known as the pioneer of street photography for the way he loved to use the city and its people in his photos.
Melvin Sokolsky, Bubble on Seine Kick, 1963
Also American, Sokolsky is best known for the ‘bubble series’ that ran in the March 1963 edition of Harper’s Bazaar. With this coverage of the spring Paris Collections, Sokolsky blew fashion into the new era, prevising the futuristic trend to come. He also hinted at a new world of special effects and illusory photography — although the drama of this particular shoot was achieved with the old-fashioned help of a crane rather than the-yet-to-be-dreamt-up Photoshop.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brasserie Lipp, 1969
One of the most acclaimed photojournalists of the twentieth century, Cartier-Bresson documented the world with his sharp eye, and even sharper mind. The super-talented photographer (he was as intellectual as he was artistic) rarely covered fashion per se, but this iconic image of a mini-skirted Parisienne and her unimpressed neighbour perfectly captured the generational break that rocked Paris in the late 1960s. (As did Bresson’s highlight of the women’s reading material: the more conservative Le Figaro for Madame, the liberal-leaning Le Monde for Mademoiselle.)
Helmut Newton, Rue Aubriot, 1975
If there’s one image that encapsulates the fashion mood of Paris in the seventies, this would surely be it. Helmut Newton — who lived on this Marais street at the time — was inspired by the after-dark 1920s photos of Brassaï, with their atmospheric, erotic glow, when he decided on a night-time shoot. It also, of course, suited the seductive aura of Yves Saint Laurent’s sleek feminine tuxedo, Le Smoking, which slick-haired model Vibeke Knudsen gave an androgynous edge. Shot for the September 1975 edition of French Vogue, the photo also seems to nod at the coming feminist movement.
Arthur Elgort, Christy Turlington in Lacroix, 1990
Elgort, shooting for US Vogue, brilliantly used the grey backdrop of Paris rooftops to make this colourful Lacroix jumpsuit pop all the more. And as for Christy literally leaping: it was perhaps a nod to parkour — the athletic practice of traversing obstacles in a manmade environment — which had begun to develop in France in the late 1980s.
Arthur Elgort, Audrey Marnay in Dior, 1999
Elgort regularly photographed the Paris collection for US Vogue. To play up the old-fashioned sweetness of this Dior dress, he framed French model Audrey Marnay in the doorway of the beautiful (but sadly closed) patisserie Cador. (Fun fact: this is where Carrie had afternoon tea, next to a dog, in the finale of Sex & the City.)
Stephen Meisel, Christy Turlington in Chanel, 1992
For the February 1992 issue of Italian Vogue, Meisel photographed Turlington, wearing pretty pastel pieces from the spring Chanel collection, all around Paris, including by the bouquiniste stalls of the Seine. They make for such a whimsical backdrop that you have to wonder why photographers don’t shoot along here more often.
Ellen Von Unwerth, Bye Bye Paris, 2007
Also shot for Italian Vogue, this image was part of a story inspired by the 1956 movie, The Red Balloon. Other photographers who have used balloons to gorgeous effect in Paris are Richard Avedon (think Audrey in Funny Face) and Sofia Coppola for the Miss Dior Chérie campaign.