1951 Harper's Bazaar Magazine with Susan Abraham

This issue of Harper's Bazaar was published in 1951 and features the model Susan Abraham. It is a magazine of wide range: fiction and fashion, make-up and jewellery, a piece on Dublin, Truman Capote among its subjects, a knitting pattern and a guide to hairstyles for different occasions. Harper's Bazaar had been founded in New York in 1867 and was, with Vogue, one of the two great fashion magazines of the period, and a British edition had been published since 1929.

In the early 1950s fashion models were becoming recognised personalities rather than anonymous figures. Photographers worked repeatedly with particular women, and their faces became associated with the magazines and the look of the moment. Susan Abraham was one of them. Born in 1930 in Burma, she grew up in Dublin and Connecticut before moving to London to model, and she was one of Norman Parkinson's frequent subjects in the early 1950s, appearing on the covers of British Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Shortly after a February 1955 Vogue cover, she married and retired from modelling.

Fashion magazines of this period were also literary magazines. Harper's Bazaar in particular published fiction and essays alongside its fashion pages, and Truman Capote was among the writers associated with it in these years. The mix reflected a view of the reader as cultivated as well as fashionable, interested in books, travel and ideas. Practical features, such as knitting patterns and hairstyle guides, sat beside them, a reminder that in the early 1950s many readers still made or adapted their own clothes and managed their appearance with care and economy.

The issue's structure shows how a fashion magazine of 1951 addressed its reader. Fashion and jewellery pages present what was new; make-up and hairstyle features explain how to achieve a look; fiction and essays offer something to read; and a knitting pattern invites the reader to make something herself. The piece on Dublin connects to the travel interests of the period. Each section asks for a different kind of attention, and together they form a complete monthly companion, preserving the period's mix of aspiration and practicality.

Susan Abraham's modelling career was brief, ending with her marriage in the mid-1950s, and the magazines in which she appeared are the main record of it. Issues from these years are sought by collectors of fashion photography and of the early 1950s look. This copy keeps a sound spine and a pristine interior, with some fading and a crease to the cover consistent with its age.