Ernestine Carter

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Ernestine Carter OBE (10 October 1906 - 1 August 1983) was a museum curator, journalist, and writer on fashion.

Early history

Ernestine Marie Fantl was born on 10 October 1906 in Savannah, Georgia, where she was brought up.[1] She studied modern and contemporary art and design at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1927.[1] She started out as a curatorial assistant at the newly formed Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, where,between 1933 and 1937 she was Curator of Architecture and Industrial Art.[1][2] In 1936 she married a British antiquarian book dealer, John Waynflete Carter (1905-1975), and the Carters eventually moved permanently to London.[1]

Wartime (1939-1945)

During the Second World War Carter was employed by the British Ministry of Information.[2] She worked on exhibitions and edited a book of photographs by Lee Miller titled Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire (published London, 1941).[3] The book, which included a foreword by Edward R. Murrow, went into five printings. Later in the war, Carter went to work for the American office of war information in London.[1]

Post-War (1946-1955)

Carter worked on the important design exhibition Britain Can Make It, organised by the Council of Industrial Design and held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1946.[1] That same year she became fashion editor for Harper's Bazaar.[4] Her first trip to Paris for the magazine was to report on Christian Dior's landmark New Look collection, launched 12 February 1947.[5][1]

From 1952 to 1954 Carter wrote her first newspaper column, a cookery section for The Observer, during which time she published a cookbook called Flash In The Pan (1953).[1]

Later career (1955-1972)

In 1955, Carter began editing the women's page of The Sunday Times.[4] She became well known for the high standard of her journalism and writing, and eventually became associate editor of the paper in 1968.[1] She encouraged the emergence of London as a major centre of fashion in the 1960s.[1] Her intelligent prose and high standards led to her being recognised as an authoritative figure in the world of fashion.[1] At a time when widespread intellectual snobbery led to the dismissal of fashion as a subject not worthy of serious consideration, Carter argued that fashion was "surely no more frivolous than architecture, to which it is closely related".[6][1]

She was appointed an OBE in 1964.[7]

In 1966, she was the first individual fashion journalist to be invited to select an outfit for the Dress Of The Year, for which she chose a futuristic PVC and linen ensemble by Michèle Rosier, Young Jaeger and Simone Mirman.[8]

Retirement and death

After her retirement in 1972, Ernestine Carter wrote several books on fashion history (see Bibliography section). She died on 1 August 1983 at her home in Chelsea, London.[1]

Legacy

The Fashion Museum, Bath holds an important archive of 2000 fashion photographs from The Sunday Times during Ernestine Carter's tenure there.[9] This is known both as the Ernestine Carter Collection and as The Sunday Times Fashion Archive.[10] The Fashion Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum both own garments from Carter's wardrobe.[1][11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Barbara Burman, ‘Carter , Ernestine Marie (1906–1983)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 30 May 2012
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Department of Circulating Exhibitions Records in The Museum of Modern Art Archives. Accessed 30 May 2012
  3. ↑ Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. The Women Who Wrote the War: The Riveting Saga of World War II's Daredevil Women Correspondents, page 195. Arcade Publishing, 1999. ISBN 9781559704939
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Evening dress worn by Ernestine Carter in the V&A Museum. Accessed 30 May 2012
  5. ↑ Benoit, Marie. Christian Dior: Couturier and perfumer. The Malta Independent Online. 4 December 2010, accessed 30 May 2012
  6. ↑ Carter, Ernestine, With Tongue in Chic (London, 1974) ISBN 978-0-7181-1298-1
  7. ↑ Supplement to the London Gazette, 13th June 1964, page 4948. Accessed 30 May 2012
  8. ↑ Dress of the Year, 1966 Accessed 30 May 2012.
  9. ↑ Bath's Fashion Museum to host 1960s display this March, BBC News. Accessed 30 May 2012
  10. ↑ Fashion Museum – Fashion photographs. Accessed 30 May 2012
  11. ↑ Garments worn by Ernestine Carter in the V&A collection. Accessed 30 May 2012

Bibliography

Cookery

  • Flash In The Pan (1953)

Fashion history

  • 20th Century Fashion: a Scrapbook (1975)
  • The Changing World of Fashion (1977)
  • Magic Names of Fashion (1980)

Autobiography

  • With Tongue in Chic (1974)
Authority control
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