Her name is familiar to many; Carmen Dell’Orefice is possibly one of the greatest and certainly one of the most enduring fashion models of all time. Born in New York in June 1931, her father was an Italian violinist and her mother a Hungarian dancer, and the young Carmen grew up in a poor tenement.
Dell’Orefice started modelling at a tender age, even by today’s standards. Her first pictures were taken by Erwin Blumenfeld in 1945, when she was just 14. “He took me by the hand in my staid brown and white Oxfords,” she recalls, “and my chest was so flat it was almost concave!” Perceived flaws aside, the images captured by Blumenfeld led to a contract with American Vogue, where she went on to appear on an unprecedented six front covers, the first of which was published when she was 15. “I was a coat hanger by design,” laughs the statuesque model over lunch at The Peninsula New York. Ordering a vodka soda with a slice of orange in a stemmed glass (her drink of choice), Dell’Orefice hasn’t lost a trace of her early glamor and recalls the days when she was introduced to Eileen Ford, the founder of possibly the most dominant force in the world of modelling, Ford Models. “Eileen had just opened Ford and World War II had just ended. Blumenfeld took me to her and pronounced confidently that I was going to be a big star.”
Dell’Orefice was soon sitting for iconic photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Horst P Horst, Irving Penn and John Rawlings. Although she didn’t have much schooling, she felt that Vogue gave her the best education imaginable. She earned US$60 for her first cover shoot for the magazine in 1946, which was enough for her to pay two months’ rent. The young Dell’Orefice also had the responsibility of supporting her parents. “We were incredibly poor. It was The Depression and neither of my parents could make a living. I went to 13 different public schools because every time we moved, we couldn’t pay the rent, so we had to move again. So I started to pay the rent from the money that I earned from modelling. I even managed to pay for my mother to eventually go to college.”
Dell’Orefice’s catwalk career began in 1950 when she first took to the runway for Neiman Marcus. “I took to it like a duck to water,” she says with a smile that seems to come from fond memories. “I didn’t have the typical model frame, not like those thin French girls.” Undeterred, the striking model with highly chiselled cheekbones, continued to walk down the runway for decades, and still does.
As the years passed, Dell’Orefice became a veteran model, appearing six times on the cover of Vogue. In 1949, when she was 18, she won the Fan Ball judged by Cecil Beaton. At the age of 21, she married William Miles, during which she had a son and a daughter. She later divorced Miles and two more husbands followed - photographer Richard Heimann and then Richard Kaplan – neither of whom lasted.
In between marriages and following a brief period of retirement, Dell’Orefice returned to the modeling industry in 1966 for an unprecedented second phase. She worked with famed photographers such as Richard Avedon and Norman Parkinson, as well as a whole new generation of lensmen that included Nick Knight and Helmut Newton. But the industry had changed by then; models were no longer just “coathangers”, but celebrities in their own right. However, Dell’Orefice adapted, writing a bestselling book, ‘Staying Beautiful’, in 1984. and taking on cameo roles in films such as Woody Allen’s ‘The Curse of the Jade Scorpion’ and Martin Scorcese’s ‘The Age of Innocence’.
Carmen Dell’Orefice is one undoubtedly of the greatest models of the 20th and 21st Centuries and her career continues today. She is still as strikingly beautiful in the flesh now as when she was young.
As we finish lunch and she drains what is left in her stemmed glass, she seems content and happy. Dashing off into the New York afternoon sunlight, she leaves me with one parting statement. “I want to let people know that I’ve lived a life. If you don’t have fun on rainy days, then what’s the point?”