Cheruit Gown (Marion Morehouse - Mrs. e.e. cummings), New York, Photographed for Vogue

In the spring of 1923 Edward Steichen became Chief Photographer for Condé Nast Publications, a position he held until 1938. His work for Vogue and Vanity Fair became legendary, establishing an elegance and glamour unseen before. In A Life in Photography, his illustrated autobiography, Steichen wrote: "After my first year with fashion photographs, a friend of Nast's wrote him a letter which said, "Your Baron de Meyer made every woman look like a cutie, but Steichen makes even a cutie look like a woman." I felt that when a great dressmaker created a gown, it was entitled to a presentation as dignified as the gown itself, and I selected models with that in view....The greatest fashion model I ever photographed was Marion Morehouse. Miss Morehouse was no more interested in fashion as fashion than I was. But when she put on the clothes that were to be photographed, she transformed herself into a woman who really would wear that gown or that riding habit or whatever the outfit was." (op. cit., p. 8).