Fashion model Esmé Marshall

Esmé Marshall was destined to be a top model in the 1980s.  You might say it was a "Marshall plan." :-)

The daughter of a photographer and a Chanel model, Esmé (who went by just her first name during her career) had an unorthodox upbringing.  She lived on a farm with her mother and lived in a commune with her father (her parents parted when she was little), and she helped her mother at one point with stuffing envelopes for an anti-war group.  She graduated from an alternative-education high school at 16, all the while being warned by her mom not to follow her into the modeling profession.

But once she was discovered in a department store, destiny called.

Esmé appeared on every magazine cover and in every fashion editorial that mattered, her striking brunette looks capturing the attention of photographers such as Rico Puhlmann, Stan Shaffer, and Arthur Elgort.

And, more recently, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

  

This is Esmé Marshall today, photographed as part of the About Face documentary project Mr. Greenfield-Sanders did on legendary models, which included the 2012 movie of that name.

And, if you ask me, she's still got it. :-)   

Fun fact: Esmé Marshall was named for the title character in J.D. Salinger's short story "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor."