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Observing the year in fashion through obituaries confirms the sense that there is a real generational shift. In 2024 we lost so many people—Polly Mellen, Claude Montana, Peggy Moffitt, Mary McFadden, and Roberto Cavalli among them—who created powerful images and designs that have shaped our vision and become a sort of record of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Though ever further from us calendar-wise, we continue to grapple with issues such as equality, voting rights, and women’s autonomy that were also discussed during those decades. Two of the people you’ll read about below lived to be 100; others, like Georgina Cooper and Albertus Swanepoel, died unexpectedly young. We are all so fortunate to have benefited from their creativity, through which their spirit will be carried on.
Dayle Haddon, Model, Actor, and Philanthropist Who Championed Graceful Aging
Forty-eight years after her 1976 Vogue debut, Dayle Haddon had a cameo as “the heiress” in Baz Luhrmann’s “The Heist of the Heart” portfolio in Vogue’s September 2024 issue. Though much time had passed, her regal posture remained unchanged, and the contrast between her dark hair, fair skin, and light blue eyes had as dramatic an impact as ever.
Born in Montreal, the would-be model, actor, and philanthropist was performing with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens by the time she was 13. In 1966, the 18-year-old would be crowned Miss Montreal and signed to Ford Models in New York. Her sultriness was played up on covers for Paris Vogue and in photographs for the American edition of the magazine. Helmut Newton, for example, shot her as a protagonist in a love triangle. For all of her youth, Haddon projected maturity and confident self-possession.
The 1970s were Haddon’s golden age, though she was to have another two decades later. She was living in Paris in 1986 when her husband died, leaving her a single mother with tenuous finances. Returning to the US, she took a job as a receptionist. And not a well-paid one. In a 1999 profile, the National Post reported that discovering “the coyote her employers were using in a commercial was earning more money than she was” spurred her to action. “She started researching the statistics on her fellow baby boomers and found a huge cohort of sisters—42 million women—were going to reach 40 in the next couple of years.”
Haddon reached out to several cosmetics companies, and over time, she made some headway. When Estée Lauder cast Haddon in its 1994 campaign for Resilience, Vogue reported that it was “the first time in Lauder’s history that an older model (43-year-old Dayle Haddon) will be used.” “I became a spokesperson for my age,” Haddon told The New York Times.
Haddon, who authored several books on aging, became a wellness correspondent for CBS in the mid-aughts. She was also named a UNICEF ambassador and founded WomenOne, focused on education. Online tributes attest that Haddon’s beauty was more than skin-deep. “Way beyond beautiful. Full of kindness,” wrote hairstylist Christiaan. Said Veronica Webb: “Dayle was a sweet, spectacular woman. Kindness was her hallmark and class was her calling card.”
Samatha Jones, Model
Would the journalist who described star model Samatha “Sam” Jones as “kooky and captivating” in 1966 have been surprised that she ended up moving to Iowa where she became involved with transcendental meditation and co-authored books on gut health and golf? It’s hard to say; but there’s no denying that Jones was an adventurer.
The Buffalo-born, Ottawa-raised model entered the world as Linda Manhart—she changed her name in order to be able to write uninhibitedly. After moving to Toronto, where she presented herself to a local photographer, Jones went with her cat (a constant companion) to Paris in 1963. From there she’d traverse the globe; Jones co-starred in Vogue’s 27-page travelogue to Udaipur in 1967. Along the way she picked up vintage clothes and a sense of self. “When I first came [to Paris] last summer, I stepped straight into the jet set—you know, every night at the Lido, the Crazy Horse, or Maxim’s, down to a yacht in Cannes,” she told the Canadian newspaper The Province in 1966. “It got boring. So I did the Montmartre bit—everything for art, with attic rooms and cheap food. Finally I decided to be just me, just Sam.”
A sometime student of Lee Strasberg, Jones had a small part in Wait Until Dark, a 1967 film starring Audrey Hepburn. That same year she posed for Avedon in Paco Rabanne looking like a goddess with endless legs. She had some health issues, but bounced back; a 1969 newspaper clipping describes her looking “sleek and glossy like an expensive cat.” Though this was said in reference to a particular shoot, it’s an apt characterization as Jones’s streamlined physique, which was often emphasized by big hair. That said, no amount of Dynel, however copious, could vie with the force of her personality.
Gian Paolo Barbieri, Italian Photographer
Though he worked most consistently with Italian Vogue, the self-taught Milanese photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri was one of the talents who brought Diana Vreeland’s spirited Vogue to life through assignments that captured the fashion and culture in his country in the late ’60s. The vibe there was still more dolce vita than hippie; in 1968 (the year he received the Premio Biancamano in recognition of being the year’s best Italian photographer) he was assigned to document “The New Beauties From Rome.” Barbieri’s work had a cinematic quality, which is likely related both to his acting experience and the fact that he chose to shoot on film, in analog, without retouching, which contributed an element of vérité to his work yet never interfered with the innate elegance of his vision.
Polly Mellen, One-of-a-Kind Fashion Editor
Polly Mellen, who styled the most expensive shoot ever, Vogue’s 1967 “Great Fur Caravan,” died in December at 100. Opinionated, high-spirited, and effusive, Mellen was like the proverbial “kick in Champagne.” The bob-haired editor maintained old-school mannerisms of speech and gesture throughout her career, yet her hunger for the new was legendary, as was her enthusiasm, which was often expressed at fashion shows by overhead claps or tears. Some designers were known to ask if Mellen had cried during their presentations, considering it a complimentary mark of success.
Georgina Cooper, Gap-Toothed Model
Georgina Cooper, one of the cool Brits of the late-’90s and early-’00s fashion scene who walked for Helmut Lang, Hussein Chalayan, and Tom Ford at Gucci, died at 48 from complications from COVID. She was known for her signature gap-toothed smile and positive can-do attitude.
See a 1999 Vogue editorial featuring Georgina Cooper.
Shirley Hex, Milliner and Mentor
Shirley Hex, writes Kristin Auble, was “a master of her craft but one of the unsung heroes of fashion” who fostered a generation of star hatmakers, including Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones, Misa Harada, Noel Stewart, and Ian Bennett. Hex worked as milliner in London; while employed at Frederick Fox, she designed hats for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Hex also taught all throughout England, sharing her skills and encouraging those in others.
Monique Knowlton, Model and Gallerist
The luscious blonde who sips wine with actor Walter Chiari in Bert Stern’s famous 1962 photo for Vogue is Monique Knowlton (also known as a Monique LeFebre and Monique Chevalier). A six-time Vogue cover girl, she was also named Glamour’s 1962 Model of the Year. Born in Germany and educated in Europe, the fair-haired Knowlton represented the elegant beauty ideal of the early ’60s. Yet, as The New York Times reports, her daring as a gallerist revealed a more freewheeling side to her personality.
Isabelle de Borchgrave, Paper Artist
Isabelle de Borchgrave was a self-taught Belgian artist noted for her painted paper dresses. Truly objects to marvel at, they were exhibited all over the world. “It’s very important to have knowledge about the history of fashion,” she told Vogue in 2019. “We need to know the past to better understand the present. Everything exists but is recycled with some evolution and another view.”
Mary McFadden, “High Priestess of Fashion,” Onetime Vogue Editor, and CFDA President
Mary McFadden had a signature style: ink-black bob, pleated gowns, fantastic jewelry. She also wore many proverbial hats, being a member of the jet set, an adventurer, a noted entertainer and collector, a onetime Vogue editor, and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. As a designer, McFadden was a world-builder before the marketing term existed; she also built a brand around herself. It’s not just that her clothes reflected her style and interests; they were an extension of how she existed. “The idea was to combine textures, graphic design, art of many cultures,” she told Vogue in relation to the decor of her house. She used the same approach when designing clothes.
Read Mary McFadden’s obituary.
Betty Halbreich, Personal Shopper Extraordinaire
Before there were Bergdorf Blondes, there was Betty Halbreich, the industry’s most famous personal shopper. The trim, white-haired, and always well-accessorized Halbreich, whom Vogue once described as “a clear-eyed fashion pro,” was something of a New York institution, especially after she published her memoir, I’ll Drink to That. For more than four decades, Halbreich was the head of Bergdorf Goodman’s Solutions, a department she started in 1976.
Peggy Moffit, Mod Model and Muse
Peggy Moffitt was a model who became a symbol of ’60s freedom. The elements of her distinctive look included a jet black asymmetrical bowl-cut hairstyle, dubbed the Five Point and cut by Vidal Sassoon, and distinctive eye makeup, which was inspired by Japanese Kabuki theater. Moffitt, married to photographer William Claxton, became a muse to the California dancer turned designer Rudi Gernreich, who was famous for designing the (in)famous monokini, which Moffitt modeled.
Albertus Swanepoel, Milliner and Mensch
Albertus Quartus Swanepoel was a South Africa–born milliner and recipient of the 2008 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund runner-up award. A hands-on maker, he established his namesake company in 2006. Swanepoel’s hats sold widely, including at Ikram in Chicago. “Albertus made hats that were perfectly and technically designed but that had style and humor and elegance, which speaks to the kind of human he was,” said Ikram Goldman.
Tobie Giddio, Fashion Illustrator
A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New Jersey–born Tobie Giddio arrived on the scene in the ’80s, drawing ads for Bergdorf Goodman. Though working for an uptown concern, Giddio was enmeshed in downtown New York’s art and club scenes, and the gestural quality of her work might relate to her love of dance. Over time, her sketches became more abstract and expressive, as she explains in her artist’s statement. “In the beginning it was the hyper elegance of Old Hollywood and the movies and magazines I loved as a child and teenager that inspired my work. Over time I moved away from drawing faces and a detailed articulation of clothing. I felt compelled to express from the inner realms that encompassed the emotional and the ethereal. Expressing the invisible became a means to evolve artistically and a way to express universally.”
Renauld White, Actor and First African American Model to Cover GQ
Before six-foot-three Renauld White appeared as William Reynolds on Guiding Light, he played himself for GQ. In November 1979 he became the first African American model to appear on the cover of the magazine. “Modeling is very similar to theater. It’s making something difficult look easy,” he said in 1983. Born in Newark, New Jersey, White was known for his elegance. Bernadine Morris, reporting on a show of Black designers’ work in 1980 for The New York Times, wrote: “In the Jeffrey Banks segment, Renauld White, modeling evening clothes, removed his fur-lined raincoat and dropped it to the floor in an expression of throwaway elegance that rivaled Fred Astaire—and brought the house down.”
Roberto Cavalli, Exuberant, Glamour-Loving Designer
Roberto Cavalli, the Italian designer who infused the print-led boho look with sex appeal, built an empire almost by accident. In 1970, he tried to impress a woman he met at a party by telling her that he did prints on leather. The host, designer Mario Valentino, asked to see them. Cavalli rose to the challenge by applying his printing technique to the thinnest glove leather. Valentino wasn’t the only one impressed; Hermès wanted to acquire the exclusive rights to the technique. “I was flying back from Paris, and in that airplane I was thinking. I thought, Maybe now, if I design one collection, I could meet a lot of models! That was always a principle of my life!” the designer told journalist Luke Leitch. Thirty years into his career, Cavalli had another breakthrough in 1993 when he elasticized denim for a second-skin fit. More, more, more! That is the exuberant Cavalli ethos, which has been carried on by the house founder’s successors, including Peter Dundas and the current creative lead, Fausto Puglisi. “Roberto was a lion; his life was larger than life,” says the latter. “He definitely wrote a beautiful chapter in fashion; Cavalli was the epitome of the bold, the beautiful, the print—freedom.” Adds Dundas: “Roberto’s fashion was exactly how he lived his life: colorfully, joyously, and usually [in a way] impossible to ignore.”
Read Roberto Cavalli’s obituary.
Iris Apfel, Design Doyenne Who Put Mature Style on the Map
The Costume Institute’s 2005 exhibition, “Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” opened a new chapter in the life of textile veteran and uptown doyenne Iris Apfel, one that continued well into her late 90s, when she signed a modeling contract with IMG. “I like big and bold and a lot of pizzazz,” said the style maven in the Emmy Award–nominated documentary Iris by the late Albert Maysles—and she encouraged others to indulge in the glory of excess too.
Claude Montana, French Designer Whose Big-Shoulder Silhouettes Defined the 1980s
In 1979, with line, proportion, and gesture, Claude Montana set the template for the greed decade when he opened his own ready-to-wear business. In June of that year, Vogue proclaimed his dramatic silhouette the “most-talked-about look in Paris—for the shape, the shoulders. The surprise: This look is done without heavy padding, without stiffness; it’s all in the fabric...the design.” In some ways Montana’s new look was the inverse of Christian Dior’s, with the width at the top, narrowing at the bottom, with a waist emphasis—but their starting points were worlds apart. Flowers and a soft femininity were not a lure for Montana, who, unlike the older Frenchman, was openly homosexual and whose tastes leaned more toward the hard-edged and transgressive aesthetic of Tom of Finland. When he launched menswear in 1981, Montana often applied haberdashery elements to his ready-to-wear, and the result was to imbue his designs with power. Detractors said the results were cartoonish, but the confidence and purity of his vision were undeniable and suggested other ways of existing in the world and/or dominating it.
Hans Feurer, Adventurous Photographer
In the 1980s and early ’90s, Swiss photographer Hans Feurer created powerful imagery for Vogue. “As a photographer,” the magazine wrote, “Feurer is a perfectionist. ‘I want to know everything beforehand—models, clothes—so that I can imagine it and make sketches. I shoot almost as if I’m producing a film.’ But, he added, ‘I don’t like manipulation. I want to catch the essence, not something forced.’” For the magazine, Feurer created destination shoots in which the models, usually in motion, projected strength and sexuality. In 1990, for example, Feurer and stylist Grace Coddington shot skiwear on Karen Mulder and Kirsten Owen in Iceland; the next year, in Panama, they captured an unforgettable image of Yasmine Ghauri in pleated micro-length Azzedine Alaïa and carrying a green parrot with the nonchalance one would hold a cigarette.
