Della Oake: The Enchanting 1950s Model

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Della Oake (1929-2022) was a British model who started her career as a supporting artiste for the movies. She was discovered backstage at Shepperton Studios by Cecil Beaton, who describes her in his customarily unkind fashion: “I noticed a picture of misery sitting on a packing case. She was wearing tawdry finery supplied by wardrobe and a tired cotton camellia on her partly dyed head. I realized that this extra had something extra.” He went on to recall that Della “gave a refinement and delicacy to everything she wore, until she was claimed in marriage by an American tycoon.” He was exceedingly proud of his discovery and she was one of his very favorite models.

Della Oake in the 1950s

Della Oake is immortalized in hundreds of dramatic photographs taken by the best in the business: Cecil Beaton has her in dramatic butterfly sleeved Schiaparelli in 1951, and the same year Norman Parkinson snapped her clutching her ballgown outside a stately home, looking like Cinderella pausing while running from the ball. Lee Miller showed her haloed in steam and immaculately glamorous at a train station for a story about fashion for traveling for Vogue.

These photographs are in the collection of the National Gallery, amongst others. Della, who was the first British model to be featured on the cover of American Vogue, is the quintessential porcelain skinned beauty of the 1950s, fine boned with blonde hair and large, icy blue eyes and as poised as a princess.

Della Oake in bloused, belted jacket in black-and-white rayon basket weave pattern with huge sleeves over black wool dress by Hardy Amies, black wide brimmed hat by Erik, photo by Richard Dormer, Harper’s Bazaar UK, March 1950