Horst

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Horst: Photographer of Style

Noël Coward, Paris, 1933

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Horst: Photographer of Style

Carmen, Face Massage, 1946

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Fashion FashionininColour Colour

Carmen, Face Massage (unpublished variant), 1946

a dress by Jean Dessès or Hattie Carnegie, stone still, in an attitude – and try not to blink for 30, sometimes 60, seconds. ‘I would just listen to what he said in the first place. He was wonderful and gentle and sweet. He kept telling me I was a good girl and that I was so beautiful, even though in my early career I had braces and bands on every tooth, with the result that I never smiled. Horst made me feel beautiful. We remained friends and many decades later, he said to me – I think I was married by then and had my daughter – “Why are the corners of your mouth always turned down?” In any smiling picture anyone ever sees of me, I am smiling at Horst because he gave me permission to let go of my old image. ‘That was my banner year – 1946. Of course, as a young teenager, I didn’t really know what I was representing in a fashion picture. Horst would say, “You understand you are not to move, I’ll tell you when to move, is that alright?” “Yes,” I’d reply, but I didn’t always understand. Scully Montgomery was, I believe, the fashion editor for this sitting, an image from which appeared in British Vogue in June 1946. I had hair almost down to my waist then, and I thought that was the only good thing about me. When she carefully pulled my hair back, and put a white band on me, I felt very ugly. I knew I was a skinny marink! I was 5ft 9in and weighed maybe 90lbs because I had suffered from rheumatic fever and was only just up and walking after many months in bed.

person and the communication of acceptance, doing a silent dance and making something happen. Horst taught me how to listen. He was very much a part of my early education in observing, listening and extrapolating the truth from a situation. He really understood children, although he had none of his own. He was a great educator, and enormously patient when he had to be, a taskmaster for detail. I learned so much from how he communicated with his assistants and with the fashion editors. That was my school, the school of life – I have a PhD in living and Horst was one of my teachers. ‘Of course, there were no such things as stylists in those days. Instead there were fashion editors, who wore the couture clothes in their private lives. They knew how to put together the look that Horst wanted, they respected his professionalism and his artistic eye, and they knew how to punctuate the message he was documenting. ‘Look at the sensuality of his pictures; people became graceful. What is missing today is class.

‘Look at the beauty of the modelling, the lighting. The lighting is what it was all about. Horst understood how light falls on an object and he had in his mind the sculptural quality of the picture he wanted to create. It was really because of Horst I started painting as a hobby. He made me think about light on the body, and the idea of being outside my body, looking at myself and at the surrounding environment. Now, think about what that meant to me as a young ‘Horst would explain what we were doing, that I was to pretend girl: if I was in a difficult situation I could imagine that I was outside to be a grown up lady, “which you will be one dayLeonard CarmenMcCombe, …”. I had Carmen ofand my Horst body. for HeLIFE taught me so many little lessons. I didn’t even know I [month]1947 no idea about time, or age. It was always just the vibration ofMagazine, the was absorbing them, that’s the beauty of it. I learned to look at myself

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