Moyra Swan: Why Fashion Forgot This 1960s Model

Moyra Swan was one of the distinctive fashion models of the 1960s, photographed during an extraordinary period when London, Paris and New York were transforming the image of the modern woman. Yet unlike Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton or Veruschka, her name has largely disappeared from popular fashion history. Why? In this fashion history video, we rediscover Moyra Swan and the visual world of 1960s fashion through her work with some of the era’s most important photographers and designers. Her poised, elongated appearance offered something different from the youthful energy usually associated with the Swinging Sixties. Photographed by figures including Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, David Bailey and Helmut Newton, Moyra Swan belonged to a generation of models who helped transform fashion photography itself. Her image could move between couture elegance, modern minimalism and the increasingly experimental visual language of the 1960s. This was the decade of Mary Quant, Yves Saint Laurent, the miniskirt, London youth culture and dramatic changes in fashion photography. Yet the history of the period is much larger than the handful of models whose names survived. Moyra Swan offers another way of seeing the 1960s: quieter, more controlled, but no less modern. Chapters: 00:00 Moyra Swan and 1960s Fashion 00:48 Moyra Swan: The Forgotten 1960s Fashion Model 01:57 Swinging Sixties Fashion: Minimalism and Maximalism 02:30 Moyra Swan, Bert Stern and Yves Saint Laurent 03:08 David Bailey, Richa