the other night i was talking to my mom about different style icons of the past and she brought up Babe Paley. I had never heard of her so after some googling, I discovered this swan-like, chic woman posing in the most beautiful and classic (also kind of sad) photographs.
though she once worked as a fashion editor at Vogue, Babe Paley is probably most famous for being a socialite and an icon of wealth & style. She married a couple of rich men, had some kids, etc. Kind of a typical socialite story. However, a lot of times these women were so pre-occupied with their image and staging photographs to make their lives look glamorous and perfect. As much as I love Jackie Kennedy, she's totally guilty of staging all of the "Camelot" photographs of her family when she was emotionally deteriorating underneith it all.
A lot of the vintage glamour photos of women we now look back on as these fashionable icons (which believe me, they were and deserve these titles) have a certain facade but these photos of Paley really show emotion. It shows glamour and beauty but emptiness. This idea of being surrounded by abundance of everything you'd probably ever want but feeling lost? Maybe I'm making this up or jumping to conclusions. Maybe she really was having a good time. Maybe she was just one of the first ones to jump on the brooding/serious/sad posing bandwagon we now know very well. I just think these are interesting.
