Snow

Carmel (1888-1961). American journalist. She was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved as a young emigrant to the US where her mother opened a dressmaker’s. She started working for Vogue in 1921 where, thanks to her excellent ability to predict fashion, she soon rose to vertiginous heights. After 10 years she moved to Harper’s Bazaar, turning it into a magazine that seriously rivalled Vogue. Condé Nast, the owners of Vogue, and Edna Woolman Chase, editor-in-chief, considered her a traitor for the rest of her life. At the fashion shows in Paris and Florence (she was one of the first to appreciate the birth of Italian fashion), she seemed barely to follow the models on the runway; at times, it appeared that she had even fallen asleep. But this was only a guise because her intuition led her always to choose the best of every collection for the photographs. She commissioned Dalì and Chagall to illustrate Harper’s Bazaar and, with Alexey Brodovitch, the magazine’s artistic director, she was one of the main supporters of the photographic talent of Dahl-Wolfe, Horst, Munkacsi, Penn and Avedon.