The Beauty of Retrospect: Elisabeth Moss

I wasn't happy with the picture of actress Elisabeth Moss that I showed here when I first featured her in September 2009.  Here's a much better one.

This photo, from People magazine, beautifully captures her wholesome, gentle look, adding just a touch of innocence. 

The former "The West Wing" actress rose to greater fame as Peggy Olsen in the 1960s period drama "Mad Men."  As of this writing, there are only seven unaired "Mad Men" episodes left, to be shown in the spring of 2015.  We've seen Peggy grow from a young, inexperienced ad girl into a shrewd, sharp, creative businesswoman who can handle any assignment she's given. That's one of the show's many virtues - that women could thrive in a then-male-dominated business such as advertising.

Another A-Z round of new subjects begins soon. :-) 

The Beauty of Retrospect: A Different Side of Margrit Ramme

Her left side, actually. :-)

The above photo of German model Margrit Ramme peeking out from behind a carnival mask is possibly one of the most provocative photos in modeling history, and for one of the most mundane products in the beauty business.  The picture is from an ad for Revlon's Moon Drops facial "masques," and if it startled you into getting your attention, well, that was the idea, apparently.  With her softly pursed lips and her mischievously playful expression, Margrit Ramme is doing what all great models do so well - making love to the camera.

The color photo of Margrit Ramme also focuses on the left side of her lovely face . . . by showing her in profile. No props, no playful provocations, just  a very elegant, straightforward pose.  With her stately expression, Margrit Ramme easily resembles a heroine from a Wagner opera.

Sexy, serious . . . There's no image that Margrit Ramme couldn't present during her long and varied modeling career.  And, given that these photos concentrate on just her left side, imagine what she could project with her full face.  :-)       

The Beauty of Retrospect: Karen Graham . . . and Karen Graham

Here's Karen Graham appreciating her own work . . . admiring one of her ads for Estée Lauder's "Resilience Lift" face creme.

Those ads ran in the late 1990s and early two thousand zeroes.  As always, Victor Skrebneski was the photographer. 

The Beauty of Retrospect: Karen Graham, 1972

The last time I showed photos of modeling legend Karen Graham on this blog, they were in black and white.  Here are three of them in color . . . all from the October 1, 1972 issue of the U.S. edition of Vogue.  (Vogue was published twice a month back then.)  

Karen Graham, then 27, was just beginning to build her reputation as a model, doing occasional ads for the Estée Lauder cosmetics company.  By the following year, she would become their full-time spokesmodel.

And as glamorous as she looks in the two pictures above, she looks just plain gorgeous in the makeup tutorial photo below.   

Karen Graham now lives in Tryon, North Carolina, in the heart of that state's horse farm country.    

The Latest Numbers and Statistics

I have now posted pictures of 835 different women since I began this blog in September 2006.  And I have one change to report on my statistics for the ten most popular posts.

Nothing has changed in positions one through nine - those posts are the same as before, with my July 2011 post of NBC and MSNBC newswoman Kristen Welker, as always, on top.  But my March 2011 post of British actress Lesley-Anne Down has displaced my April 2011 post of German model Margrit Ramme for number ten.  This change means that an actress primarily known for movies is represented in the top ten once again, but it leaves Sheila Johnson - my September 2009 post of whom is still at number two - the only woman primarily known for modeling who is represented here.  But who knows? My other posts paying tribute to Margrit Ramme could work their way up to this chart, and I have more pictures of her to come going forward. :-)

Another statistic I'd like to throw out:  As I noted earlier, I posted two blog entries in March 2014 that proved to be very popular, one of Italian fashion model Alda Balestra, the other of American on-camera meteorologist Stef Davis, who appears online on AccuWeather.com.  Who do you think would be more popular?  I would have guessed Alda Balestra for her iconic Christian Dior ads alone.  But Stef Davis continues to be much more popular with viewers.  In fact, her post has, as of today, gotten more than triple the number of pageviews that my first post devoted to Alda Balestra (I added two more after that) has gotten - 936 to 305. Which only goes to show you, again, that you never know who's going to click with your audience - you only think you know.  Also, while I can control who appears on this blog, I can't control who's more popular.

Right.  I have a few retrospectives I plan to close out the month with, then a new A-Z round begins in September.  I'll be back soon. :-)  

The Beauty of Anonymity: Adrien Arpel Model

Makeup mogul Adrien Arpel is known for her makeover regimens, and her company has made them a cornerstone of its advertisements.  This model is from one such "makeover" ad, taken from a newspaper ad for Adrien Arpel's department store counters.

This, of course, would be the "after-makeover" picture. :-D

Adrien Arpel's company has promised that women only need thirty minutes to "put on a great new face," and whether or not it takes that long, this model's face certainly proves the latter claim. :-)

This woman's striking beauty is the sort that burns into your memory; you could never forget a face like hers.  The only trouble is, I don't know the identity of this model, and I have no way of finding out.  I include her here because she looks both striking and softly sexy at the same time.  

The Arpel ad this particular photo was taken from was from the late seventies.  If anyone can identify this gorgeous model, please do so by leaving a comment on this post.  Naturally, because this photo is so obscure, I don't expect any replies.     

Model Kriss Ziemer

Recognize this ad?

It's an ad for Bain de Soleil (French "for sun bath"), a suntan lotion promising the type of tan all the women of St.-Tropez on the French Riviera have.  The deeply tanned, exotic "Frenchwoman" in the ad is actually Kriss Ziemer, an American model.  Below is a black-and-white photo showing her . . . not so tanned.

  

Kriss Ziemer was an enthusiastic Bain de Soleil spokeswoman, as this 1988 article from the Chicago Tribune attests, but she was hardly a foolish sunbather. She made it a point to keep her skin healthy and her tanning in moderation.

After all, she needed to tone it down a bit for photos like this:

She didn't need a bronzing tan to look like a goddess. :-) 

Oh yes, her agency history.  Kriss Ziemer was associated with the Zoli modeling agency in New York and the Atlanta-Miami agency L'Agence before moving to Wilhelmina in the mid-eighties . . . with a brief intermezzo at the Reinhard agency in Philadelphia.

No Paris agencies, though . . . 

Actress Olivia Wilde

Wilde about Olivia? :-)

Olivia Wilde became a breakout sensation on American television when starred in the hit medical drama "House."  She played Dr. Remy Hadley, a member of the diagnostics team of Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) at a New Jersey teaching hospital.  She joined the series in 2007 and stayed for the final five of the show's eight seasons.

Though she's done a few movies, television remains the medium she's associated most with.  She played a bisexual character, Alex Kelly, on the second season of the Orange County, California-based drama "The O.C.," and she played Jenny Reilly in the short-lived series "The Black Donnellys," about Irish-American gangsters.

Oh, and I understand that she did a very interesting photo shoot for Glamour!

Fun fact: Olivia Wilde's real last name is Cockburn. She got her celebrated surname from writer Oscar Wilde.

Model Ava Taylor

Ava Taylor is a model from the late eighties.

She was represented by the Laraine Ashton agency in London.

R.I.P. Lauren Bacall

It is with great regret that I acknowledge the death of actress Lauren Bacall, an earlier subject on this blog, at the age of 89.  She was a great actress and an intelligent, well-rounded human being, and my my post of Ms. Bacall on this blog celebrating her beauty, life, and work hopelessly attempted to make clear.  But then, I don't think I could have done justice to her life and legacy any better than I did.

My entry honoring of Lauren Bacall, having been posted in January 2010 when she was very much alive, will remain on this blog, but, in accordance with my rules that I don't feature here women whom I know are deceased, I will not post any more pictures of Lauren Bacall going forward.    

Danish model Renée Simonsen

Something is beautiful in the state of Denmark.

Of all the fashion and beauty models who made the depressing eighties bearable enough to get through, Renée Simonsen was probably the most stunning.  She was certainly one of the most prolific models of the time; she appeared on so many different magazine covers and in so many fashion and beauty editorials and ads that to list them here would take too long.  Just to give you an idea of how prolific she was, a Tumblr page devoted to her work has fifty-eight pages of images.  Fifty-eight.

She was discovered at the age of sixteen by a Danish local fashion editor, and the work she got in her homeland led her to enter a contest sponsored by the prestigious Ford modeling agency for a big-time modeling contract.

Naturally, she won.

After a few years of causing a generation of young men to sigh and swoon, Renée Simonsen raised a lot of eyebrows when she got engaged to John Taylor, the bass player for the insubstantial pretty-boy pop-rock group Duran Duran. She caused among her many male fans several broken hearts and the impulse to call her taste in music into question.  Eventually, the couple broke up.  One of them was turned off by the other's interest in fashion and style and preferred more intellectual pursuits.

It was Taylor who was the fashion/style maven. HA! :-D

You can call Renée Simonsen Dr. Simonsen now, thank you very much.  She obtained a degree in psychology - what would you expect from a woman from the country that gave the world Søren Kierkegaard?  - and though she has modeled periodically since the eighties came to an end (which happened when Nirvana consigned Duran Duran and their New Romantic pop ilk to the dustbin of history), she has worked primarily a writer of both novels and children's books.

And she still looks great in middle age. :-) 

Renée Simonsen is married to Danish rock musician Thomas Helmig and has a son by him along with two children from a previous relationship. 

Model Beth Rogers

Beth Rogers is a model from the 1980s.

She's appeared in ads and on magazine covers, including Seventeen.  Biographical data on her is scant.

Actress Ellen Pompeo

Ellen Pompeo is famous for playing the central character of the TV series "Grey's Anatomy."

She plays Dr. Meredith Grey, a young doctor who joins the staff of a Seattle hospital as a surgical intern, eventually becoming a resident, then an attending, surgeon. Her life is complicated by the fact that her father is Ellis Grey, a famous surgeon who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and by a one-night stand she had with a man just before she joined the staff of what is now Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (at first called Seattle Grace) who turns out to be an attending neurosurgeon at the hospital.  The surgeon, Derek Shepherd (played by Patrick Dempsey), pursues Dr. Grey romantically; she eventually relents and marries him.  All the while, Dr. Grey deals with her work and motherhood and gets involved with her friends and colleagues.

All heady stuff, and the show is, as of this writing, still going strong.

Ellen Pompeo had also played one-shot character on TV shows such as "Law and Order" and "Friends," and she's had roles in movies such as Catch Me If You Can and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.        

Actress Gail O'Grady

Gail O'Grady is an actress many TV viewers remember from the nineties and two thousand zeroes.

She played New York Police Department civilian aide Donna Abandando on the ABC series "NYPD Blue" for three years, 1993 to 1996, reprising her role briefly in 1999.  Later, in the new century, she played suburban Philadelphia mom Helen Pryor in the 1960s drama "American Dreams," set around the Philadelphia-based airing of Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," before that show moved to Los Angeles.   

Gail O'Grady has had recurring roles in other television shows, and she also played U.S. Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin in the TV movie She Stood Alone: The Tailhook scandal, about Lieutenant Coughlin, a naval aviator, and how she blew the whistle on how that 83 servicewomen and seven servicemen had been sexually assaulted at a 1991 meeting of the Tailhook Association, a naval aviation fraternity.  Lieutenant Coughlin herself was victimized.  Over a hundred naval aviators and Marines were involved.