2/90. Abbe, James (Jr). Manhattan, 1949.Barbara Mullen was a Cosmo Girl, decades before Helen Gurley
2/90. Abbe, James (Jr). Manhattan, 1949.Barbara Mullen was a Cosmo Girl, decades before Helen Gurley Brown cooked up the idea. In the summer of 1949, the young model would have been an obvious choice for the magazine to feature — a glamorous career woman, with an interesting job and a seen-it-all, well-travelled attitude (on the strength of one road-trip to Los Angeles, and her recent Paris couture shoot with Lillian Bassman). Mullen wrote (or at least, was credited with) a 4-page piece for the magazine, suggesting a capsule girl-on-the-go wardrobe furnished by Peck & Peck, a Fifth Avenue manufacturing house that then had stores all across the US. ‘It’s the most light-minded collection of budgeted fashions I’ve seen …’ she assured readers, ‘And believe me, the man power photographed below (an unlikely fashion advisory panel formed of actors Montgomery Clift and Peter Lawford and Broadway star Ezio Pinza) convinced me it has glamour.’ With its breezy, confidential tone, it’s actually one of the most ‘Cosmo’-feeling pieces in a magazine that at the time was still searching for its spot in a crowded publishing market; elsewhere, the issue veers from racy serials and Louella Parsons-penned gossip to W. Somerset Maugham excerpts and Ethel Merman’s no-nonsense party tips (‘I found out a long time ago that it is still possible for a group of people, thrown into contact with a fair amount of refreshment and with each other, to have good time without the aid of geisha girls, bingo or artificial respiration.’) And, as it’s 1949, there’s terrifying advertising — like Lysol’s cautionary tale; ('Frozen by unsureness, wives may lose love . . through one intimate physical neglect …’) The accompanying pictures were taken by James Abbe Jr, a successful photographer who’d started out by assisting his famous father - a pioneering photojournalist best known for his portraits of Hollywood stars and dictators. Abbe Jr had an easy, uncluttered style, and shot Mullen in relaxed motion - kneeling, swirling her coat, or turned, cigarette in hand, to answer an invisible actor lurking out-of-shot.#BarbaraMullen #TheReplacementGirl#Cosmopolitan #JamesAbbeJr #1949 -- source link