French model Sylvie Hirsch (1928–2011) was barely eighteen when she joined the house of Dior in the summer of 1947. “Sylvie I took on when she was still scarcely more than a child,” the designer wrote. “and throughout the whole of her career as a mannequin she remained the incarnation of the jeune fille.”
Sylvie Hirsch in the 1940s and ’50s
In reality, Hirsch has already been working at Robert Piguet, both as model and vendeuse. But she played her ingenue role to the hilt, and to great success — including touring America in a fashion revue, where she played a street urchin turned couture Cinderella. Two years later, she made it to the cover of Life, fronting a story about how Parisian models had conspired to go on a crash diet (to ensure that their American rivals, for once, wouldn’t be able to fit into the collections).
In 1952, Hirsch made headlines again, when she became engaged to jewellery heir Claude Cartier — but she broke things off at the last minute, to marry the movie star Daniel Gélin. The couple were rarely out of the news in the years that followed, with cameras tracking their every move. They were photographed on honeymoon in Capri; photographed at home, exhausted but giddy with joy as they showed off their baby son; and photographed again, eighteen months later, in the graveyard where they buried that first child — Hirsch’s body sagging, held up by Alla on one side and her weeping husband on the other. She looked more lost, and more child-like herself, than she ever had.
Here below is a set of glamorous photos that shows portraits of French model Sylvie Hirsch in the 1940s and 1950s.
Sylvie Hirsch wears a chignon at one side of her head, and Dior’s tambourin hat on the other, photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1947
Sylvie Hirsch in Dior’s confection of yards of white tulle, wrapped, ruched and pleated, garlands of roses lie on the skirt and a blue ribbon runs under a ruche on the skirt, photo by Richard Avedon, Paris, Harper’s Bazaar, June 1948
Sylvie Hirsch in Pierre Balmain, photo by Mark Kauffman, Paris, 1948
Sylvie Hirsch in voluminous pink tiered tulle ball gown by Christian Dior, photo by Philippe Pottier, 1948
Sylvie Hirsch in elaborate ruffled tulle ball gown strewn with sequins and brilliants by Christian Dior, photo by Philippe Pottier, 1949
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