1. Lisa Fonssagrives is widely credited with having been the first supermodel.
10 Facts About Lisa Fonssagrives
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Lisa Fonssagrives was born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone on 17 May 1911 in Sweden Uddevalla.
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Lisa Fonssagrives went to Mary Wigman's school in Berlin and studied art and dance.
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Lisa Fonssagrives moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet and worked as a private dance teacher with Fernand Fonssagrives, which then led to a modeling career.
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Lisa Fonssagrives was reported to be "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business".
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Lisa Fonssagrives worked with many noted fashion photographers, including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia.
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Lisa Fonssagrives married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced in 1949.
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Lisa Fonssagrives married American photographer Irving Penn in 1950 and became his muse.
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Lisa Fonssagrives went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.
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Lisa Fonssagrives died, aged 80, in New York, survived by her second husband, Irving Penn, and her two children: her daughter Mia Lisa Fonssagrives-Solow, a fashion and jewelry designer and sculptor who was married to real estate developer and art collector Sheldon Solow, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.