14 Facts About Ernestine Carter

Ernestine Marie Carter OBE was an American-born British museum curator, journalist, and fashion writer.

Ernestine Carter became hugely influential in her roles as women's editor, and later associate editor of The Sunday Times.

Ernestine Carter's obituary described her as not only influencing British taste, but putting her authority behind emerging fashion talent, becoming: "not only the acknowledged leader among women's fashion writers but created a reputation for British fashion at a time when this country was considered a desert".

Ernestine Carter studied modern and contemporary art and design at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1927.

Ernestine Carter started out as a curatorial assistant at the newly formed Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1932, and held the title Curator between 1935 and 1937.

Ernestine Carter worked on exhibitions and edited a book of photographs by Lee Miller titled Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire.

Later in the war, Ernestine Carter went to work for the US office of war information in London.

Ernestine Carter worked on the important design exhibition Britain Can Make It, organised by the Council of Industrial Design and held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1946.

In 1955, Ernestine Carter began editing the women's page of The Sunday Times.

Ernestine Carter became well known for the high standard of her journalism and writing, and eventually became associate editor of the paper in 1968.

Ernestine Carter encouraged the emergence of London as a major centre of fashion in the 1960s.

At a time when widespread intellectual snobbery led to the dismissal of fashion as a subject not worthy of serious consideration, Ernestine Carter argued that fashion was "surely no more frivolous than architecture, to which it is closely related".

In 1962, Ernestine Carter was appointed to the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design, a post awarded by the Minister of Education.

Ernestine Carter died on 1 August 1983 at her home in Chelsea, London.