Jean Shrimpton: The Model who made the 60s Modern

Hello dolls, 🌼 and welcome to Vlogmas Day 1: Jean Shrimpton: The Model who made the 60s Modern! Jean Shrimpton was born in 1942 in Buckinghamshire and grew up on a quiet English farm, far removed from the fashion world she would later transform. At sixteen she moved to London to attend a secretarial college, but a chance encounter with a film director led her to Lucie Clayton’s School of Modelling. She didn’t think she fit in, she wore no makeup and felt awkward, yet she quickly began booking small catalogue jobs thanks to her natural, unaffected look. In 1960, she met photographer David Bailey during a test shoot. Their partnership changed everything. Bailey brought her into Vogue, and together they helped define the emerging look of the 1960s: straight hair, bare lashes, simple clothes, and a modern, unpolished beauty. Their 1962 Vogue shoot in New York became one of the decade’s most influential fashion moments and established Jean as one of the most photographed women in the world. By 1965, she was being called the first supermodel. That same year, Jean attended Melbourne’s Derby Day wearing a simple white shift dress that ended above the knee - no hat, no gloves, no stockings. The dress, made short due to a fabric shortage, caused international headlines and symbolised the arrival of the miniskirt. The scandal positioned Jean at the centre of a global fashion shift, even though she herself found the reaction bewildering. "It was just a dress," she said. Despite her s