Mrs. Penn is above all a face. Doe eyes surrounded by black, a turned-up nose, eyebrows arched in a circumflex accent, a haughty head carriage, a slender and graceful silhouette enveloped in an elegant mermaid dress signed Rochas or Lanvin. An aristocratic look with an overall patrician distance which allowed her to parade for the greatest couturiers of her time, to be the first icon of the catwalks to make the front page of Time, to pose in front of the objective of the most fashionable artists of her time and to seduce the man who would become her husband: Irving Penn, the star photographer of fashion magazines.

Well before the Supermodels of the 90s, Christian Dior's favorite model was able to boast another title in the aftermath of the Second World War, that of the highest paid and most applauded top model in all of haute couture. With nearly 150 prints made from the years 1935 to 1955 by masters of the darkroom such as Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld and Richard Avedon, the exhibition resurrects a golden age of fashion photography where Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn played a leading role and quite simply became the most famous face of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines.

Did you know?
Considered the first super model in history, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn collected more than 200 fashion magazine covers and in 1949, at the age of 38, became the first model to grace the front page of Time magazine.