Comical.

Dovima (Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba) was the model for which the term ’supermodel’ was coined. Not only that, she perpetuated that the notion of vacuous blondes. In Egypt, someone asked her what she thought of Africa. To which she replied, “Africa? Who said anything about Africa? This is Egypt.” When they explained that Egypt was in Africa, Dovima replied, “I should have charged double rate!” On the same shoot, she brought along a large trunk that the photographer Richard Avedon assumed was filled with clothes. When he asked Dovima about the trunk, she told him they were her books. He felt he couldn’t separate the girl from her books so they lugged them across the desert only to find out they were her comic books.

Yet, Avedon admired her as “the last of the great elegant, aristocratic beauties… the most remarkable and unconventional beauty of her time”. For him, she posed in many photographs that came to be the most iconic fashion images of the century. The above picture,”Dovima with the Elephants” was taken by Avedon at the Cirque d’hiver, Paris, in August 1955. The dress was the first evening dress designed for Christian Dior by his new assistant, Yves Saint-Laurent.

The symmetry between two elephants and Dovima framed the image that contrasted the dirty elephants and the clean, elegant model, the rough elephant skin and the smooth fabric of the dress, as well as the clear-cut black and white of the dress and gray sprightly elephants. This two contrasting studies of Dovima was published by Harper’s Bazaar. The photograph of Dovima in black was reprinted many times but the image of Dovima in white was printed only once and the negative no longer exists. “It disappeared mysteriously,” Avedon said.