Dorian Elizabeth Leigh Parker (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), known professionally as Dorian Leigh, was an American model and one of the earliest modeling icons of the fashion industry. She is considered one of the first supermodels, and was well known in the United States and Europe.
Dorian Leigh Parker was born in San Antonio, Texas, to George and Elizabeth Parker. Her parents married when they were around 17 or 18 years old and Elizabeth promptly gave birth to three daughters in quick succession: Dorian, Florian "Cissie" (1918–2010), and Georgiabell (1921–1988). Thirteen years after the birth of her third daughter, Elizabeth believed she was going through menopause and was shocked to discover that she was pregnant. She gave birth to her fourth daughter, Cecilia (1932–2003), who became known as model and actress Suzy Parker. The family moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, soon after Dorian's birth and later to Metuchen, New Jersey. There, George Parker invented a new form of etching acid, the production of which gave him enough income to retire.
Dorian graduated from Newton High School in Queens, New York, in 1935 and enrolled at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. In her autobiography, Dorian claimed that she was born in 1920, and graduated from high school early in 1935, at the age of 15. She claimed this was because she loved learning, and she took many classes at once since the school was supposedly overcrowded. But this later proved untrue. She also wrote that she was a 17-year-old college sophomore when she first married, when in fact, she was 20. Her first husband was Marshall Powell Hawkins, whom she married on a whim in North Carolina in 1937. They had two children: Thomas Lofton (T.L.) Hawkins (1939–2014) and Marsha Hawkins (born 1940). The couple separated in the 1940s.
After college, Dorian worked as a file clerk at a department store in Manhattan and as a tabulator, keeping track of radio program ratings. Dorian found that she had an aptitude for math, mechanical engineering, and drawing. She began to go to night school at Rutgers and said she learned about mechanical engineering at New York University. According to her autobiography, she enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and received a B.S. in mechanical engineering. This was after an aptitude-testing laboratory (the Johnson O'Connor Foundation) informed her that she had a talent for engineering.
Dorian worked at Bell Laboratories, then during World War II, was a tool designer at Eastern Air Lines (with their Eastern Aircraft division). Dorian assisted in the design of airplane wings, beginning at 65 cents an hour and ending up with an hourly wage of $1.00. After failing to be promoted because she was a woman and because of a wartime freeze on positions, Dorian quit and took a job with Republic Pictures as an apprentice copywriter. While writing ad copy for the B movies Republic created and distributed to movie houses, she was encouraged by a Mrs. Wayburn to try modeling.
Taking Mrs. Wayburn's advice, in 1944 Dorian went to the Harry Conover modeling agency. At 27, Dorian was not only old by modeling standards, but at barely 5'5", she was shorter than the other models at the agency. Conover immediately sent her to see Diana Vreeland, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. Dorian met with Vreeland and fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who were intrigued by her zig-zagged eyebrows. Vreeland warned her, "Do not -- do not do anything to those eyebrows!" Vreeland asked Dorian to return the next day, to be photographed for the cover of the June 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar, her very first modeling assignment. Conover told her to tell them she was 19 years old. Later they were shocked to discover her real age (27), and that she already had two children.
Dorian's parents thought modeling was not respectable, so Dorian used only her first and middle name during her career. When Dorian became an enormous success though, they thought it was acceptable that their youngest daughter Suzy use the Parker last name when she also became a famous model. Their second eldest daughter, Florian, also had modeling photos in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, but quit when she married a man in the military, and was living in Oahu when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.
Dorian quickly became busy with modeling assignments, landing on the covers of major magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, LIFE, and Elle. Because of her schedule, Dorian's two children were sent to live with her parents in Florida, while she was based in New York City and traveling to Europe.
In 1946, Dorian appeared on the cover of six American Vogue magazines. She worked with famous fashion photographers Irving Penn, John Rawlings, Cecil Beaton, and Paul Radkai. She dated Irving Penn, who later married another model, Lisa Fonssagrives. On one assignment, she argued with Paul Radkai's wife Karen, who wanted to be a fashion photographer and to take many extra, and free, photos of Dorian for her portfolio. When Dorian balked at having to pose for Karen without being paid, Karen warned her she would "ruin her." Indeed, Vogue never used Dorian again, and Karen became a Vogue photographer for many years.
Dorian easily transitioned to working with Harper's Bazaar's new, young photographer, Richard Avedon. Avedon would become one of the most famous photographers in history. While living in her apartment in New York, a young author, Truman Capote, visited a friend in an apartment near hers. Capote was fascinated by Dorian's lifestyle of non-stop men, coming and goings, and having a store across the street handle her phone calls, since there were no answering machines back in the early 1950s. He struck up a friendship with Dorian and called her "Happy-go-lucky." Capote's character Holly Golightly in his famous 1958 novel Breakfast at Tiffany's is said to be largely based on Dorian's life, as well as socialite Gloria Vanderbilt's.
Dorian also became well known for her advertising work for Revlon. Revlon began full-page, national, color advertisements around 1944. Dorian's first ad was for "Fatal Apple" and was followed by "Sheer Dynamite," "Ultraviolet", "Fashion Plate", and "Cherries in the Snow." In 1952, when she was 35 years old, Avedon photographed her for Revlon's most famous advertising campaign, Fire and Ice. In this two-page advertisement, Dorian is wearing a very tight, silver sequined gown swathed in a huge red wrap that was copied from a Balenciaga original. The dress had hand-sewn silver sequins on it, and it took so long to create that only the front of the dress was finished in time to be photographed for the ad. The back was non-existent and held in place with safety pins. Dorian also had a silver streak put in her black hair. The original ad had her holding her hand in front of her breast, but the agency considered the photo too risqué, and the photo was re-shot. The ad was accompanied by a provocative quiz written by Kay Daly, and it became an enormous success, winning Advertising Age's "Magazine Advertisement of the Year" award.
Around 1947, Dorian's sister Florian introduced her to Roger Mehle. He was divorced from Aileen Mehle, who later became the very famous gossip columnist known as "Suzy." Florian was married to an army officer and Mehle was the youngest Navy commander and fighter ace during WWII. In August 1948, Dorian was two months pregnant when she married Mehle. Her bridemaids were her teen sister Suzy and Suzy's teen model friend Carmen Dell'Orefice. Dorian's two older children, who were being raised by her parents in Pomona Park, Florida, came to live with the couple in Pennsylvania.
During her marriage to Mehle, Dorian became fed up with Harry Conover's agency. Conover's phones were often busy and it took a very long time for the clients to pay the models for their work. She decided to start her own modeling agency called the Fashion Bureau, and devised a "voucher system" method for paying the models. With this innovative system, the modeling agency would pay the models weekly, instead of the models having to wait to be paid directly by the clients. Often it took companies weeks, months, or even years to pay models for their work.