- Camille Clifford
Camilla Antoinette Clifford (
June 29 1885 –June 28 1971 ) was a Belgian-born stage actress and the most famous model for the "Gibson Girl " illustrations. Her towering and hourglass figure defined the Gibson Girl style.Clifford was born in
Antwerp ,Belgium to parents Reynold Clifford and Matilda Ottersen. In the early 1900s she won US$2000 in a magazine contest sponsored by illustratorCharles Dana Gibson to find a living version of hisGibson Girl drawings: his ideal woman. Clifford became an actress, performing in the United States from 1902 and in England from 1904. While only playing , non-speaking roles, Clifford became famous nonetheless: not for her talent, but for herbeauty . Her trademark style was a long, elegant gown wrapped around her tightlycorset ed, eighteen-inchwasp waist .She retired from the stage and married Captain the Honourable Henry Lyndhurst Bruce. They had one child, Margaret, but the child died five days after birth. Her husband was killed during The Great War in 1914.
She made a brief return to the stage. Then in 1917, married Captain John Meredyth Jones Evans. After the war she left the stage for good and later owned a stable of successful racehorses. ["Don Gillan (www.stagebeauty.net)"]
Despite her reputation as "the quintessential
Gibson Girl ", she was by no means the only person to pose for the popular character.Photographs of her taken by
Lizzie Caswall Smith in 1905 often appear in historical fashion books and on websites to illustrate the Edwardian style.References
External links
* [http://www.dgillan.screaming.net/stage/th-frames.html?http&&&www.dgillan.screaming.net/stage/clifford/clifford-c.html Biography]
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