Five models wearing fashionable dress suits at a race track betting window, at Roosevelt Raceway. (Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection)
NINA LEEN
To this day, the LIFE magazine archives serve as one of the greatest visual records of America in the 20th century. From the V-Day kiss taken by Alred Eisenstaedt to the Marlboro man, LIFE has captured American iconography like no other.
This Summer, New York City’s Spring Studios is displaying more than 50 fashion photographs from the 1940s to 1970s from Time Inc.’s extensive LIFE photo archives that provide a rare peek into the history of the Big Apple. Featuring work from three of the four original LIFE photographers—Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Peter Stackpole—the exhibition also curates images from other seminal photographers such as Yale Joel, Nina Leen, and Gordon Parks. The photographs feature iconic fashion as well as the genre’s icons like Audrey Hepburn, Earth Kitt, Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe.
Women in traditional clothing walking in Chinese parade. (Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
“We want to celebrate fashion in New York, especially from the time when New York started to set the pace for international fashion, through the images of a New York institution such as LIFE,” says Eleonora Flammini, the director of Silverlake Photography, who with Javier Sirvent, has curated the exhibition.
“This year marks the 80th anniversary of LIFE, and we’re delighted to share a glimpse of our archives with Spring Studios. To see the fashion photography of Gordon Parks, Nina Leen, and Gjon Mili presented together at this scale is unprecedented,” said Jill Golden, manager of the LIFE Photo Archives.
The exhibition, entitled “The Gallery@Spring,” is open until August 30th at Springs Studios, located at 6 St. John’s Lane in Manhattan.
Model wearing nursemaid’s kerchief which has a stiff coronet and strings that go under hair to tie through a loop at its back. (Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Milliner Sally Victor designing a hat for actress Kyle MacDonnell. (George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Jeweled Stay Put cocktail hat at reckless angle. Hat is ‘Chanda’ and the feather comb that holds it invented by Art Director Andrew Smith. (Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection)
NINA LEEN
Singer Paul Anka, 19, balancing a white bow tie on his bare collarbone while gazing into mirror before opening at the Copacabana. (Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Portrait of actress Katharine Hepburn sitting on arm of chair, smoking. (Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
French actor Jacques Tati standing on a street courner. (Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
A woman modeling a ‘bag’ dress. (Yale Joel/LIFE Picture Collection)
YALE JOEL
Italian film actress and sex symbol Sophia Loren eats in a cafe, New York, New York, June 1958. (Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Actress Audrey Hepburn looking up at billboards in middle of Times Square, recently in town for run of Broadway show ‘Gigi,’ in which she is starring. (The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Singer Eartha Kitt riding her bicycle down the street. (Gordon Parks/LIFE Picture Collection)
GORDON PARKS
Rape scene between Jessica Tandy acting as ‘Blanche DuBois’ and Marlon Brando as ‘Stanley’ in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ (Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection)
Accompanied by a pair of men in tuxedos, a trio of unidentified fashion models pose in brocade, velvet, and lame ‘theater suits’ in the entryway of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, New York, New York, 1958. (Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
The LIFE Picture Collection
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