Carmen Dell’Orefice: The longest model career in the history

Bio: Carmen Dell’Orefice was born June 3, 1931. She is an American supermodel and actress. She is known within the fashion industry for being the world’s oldest working model. At the age of 13, while riding a bus to ballet class, she was approached to model by the wife of photographer Herman Landschoff. Her test photos, taken at Jones Beach, were a “flop“ according to Dell’Orefice. In 1946, her godfather introduced her to Vogue and the 15-year-old signed a modeling contract for $ an hour. She became a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld who shot her first Vogue cover in 1946. She appears in the December 15, 1946 issue of US Vogue. She appeared on the October 1947 cover of Vogue at age 16, one of the youngest Vogue cover models. She worked with the most famous fashion photographers of the era, including Irving Penn, Gleb Derujinsky, Francesco Scavullo, Norman Parkinson, and Richard Avedon. Dell’Orefice was photographed by Melvin Sokolsky for Harper’s Bazaar