Evelyn Nesbit’s youth was rarely in her own hands. She grew up with her mother, impoverished, and only a chance encounter with a customer, where she worked at Wanamaker’s department store, led to a change in her fortunes. In 1900 aged 15 or 16, Nesbit was suddenly a model in demand with New York sculptors and painters. As the picture of ideal beauty, and youth, she was often rendered naked, alluding to ancient Classical sculptures of godesses like Aphrodite.

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But thanks to the coincidental advances of photography and print technology, as well as the help of her patron Stanford White, (we’ll return to him later) Evelyn was becoming a new category of media sensation.

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She was notably featured in the cartoons of Life Magazine’s Illustrator Charles’ Dana Gibson, who garnered fame for his vision of a new kind of young woman, the 'Gibson Girl'.

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“Last night when I had carved the roast - true as fate -

A Gibson girl was smiling through the plate!

The platter showed Priscilla and John Alden true to life-

I must confess I stabbed at them with a carving knife!

The latest fad has struck us bad - it’s everywhere,

Al pyrographed and photographed on pillow and chair-”

(29)​​

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For her ubiquity in advertising and the shocking way her story would end, ‘Gibson Girl’ Evelyn Nesbitt was now a bonfide celebrity, and is seen by many with the benefit of hindsight, as the very first “Super Model”(30).

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In 1932, Lester Gaba was well aware of this connection when he created his line up of “Gaba Girls” for prime luxury department store, Saks, on 5th Avenue (31).

 

As a young artist from small-town Missouri, he had taken his first opportunity to get out of dodge and move to Chicago, where he was relatively free to express his identity in the gay scene under Prohibition(32). From wax, he sculpted Children’s mannequins and quickly developed noteriety as the “Michelangelo of the Bathtub”(33) By the early thirties he had moved to New York and received more acclaim for his Mannequins which were loosely based on real socialites of the day(34), and even had names. By 1937 a mannequin called “Grace” graced the front cover of Life Magazine.

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Lester’s Gaba's vocal appeal to the world of Window Display was clear:

 

“Figures to show clothes in store windows should have youth, and freshness and glamour, and not look as if they were on their way to shake umbrellas at someone who threw old newspapers on the sidewalks” (35)

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In this way, Lester probably saw himself as a moderniser, but he was just one in a continuation of early dummy designers. The big European firms of Pierre Imans and Siegel and Stockman had each left their stamp on what mannequin design should achieve. Gaba wanted to carve out a niche between the more anonymous abstract designs made famous at the Paris Exhibition of 1925, and the more realistic, but stiffer wax creations that had gained popularity in the ‘Gilded Age’.

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“Mr Gaba thought if there was a little more naturalness and a little less Nice Nellyism it would make the windows look- well, more inviting.”(36)

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During this interwar period, women enjoyed new levels of freedom and practical clothing was more popular (37). New York stores were also feeling pressure to innovate, in a constant race against other capitals of couture in Europe, they also had to meet the tastes of affluent customers taking style tips from the stars in Hollywood(38).

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“Cynthia was both a merchandising gimmick and the eternal female”

Richard Rosenthal (39)

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Cynthia the mannequin was that inviting, glamorous figure Gaba had been preaching for. She was part real and unreal. She had that indefinable...something. Or in his own words:

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…an eerie, almost human quality, and unbelievable chic.

Lester Gaba writing in The Art of Window Display (40)

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In a twist on the story of Pygmalion, she was a realisation of Gaba’s idea of beauty and approachability. Through Cynthia’s rising popularity, it becomes clear to Gaba that his Mannequins are actually the key to New York’s highest flyers. Cynthia becomes a regular point of reference in Life magazine, she has jewellery sent to her from Cartier and Tiffany’s she has a radio show (41) and a motion picture deal, starring in a screwball comedy with Jack Benny(42).

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In spite of the novelty of the whole thing, Gaba had had his dream come true through a surrogate of wax. A relatively unconnected, gay man from Missouri used his charisma and Doll superstar as a life-size distraction from his sexuality, and from not being even remotely financially able to be anyone’s, as Life magazine puts it: “benefactor”.

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“A tall, statuesque blonde, Cynthia lives in a Gramwercy Park apartment with Lester Gaba, a manhattan artist whom she has to thank for everything in her life.”

Life magazine 13th December 1937 (43)

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Cynthia was a star, but, more than a namesake, Lester Gaba parodied the “Gibson Girl” story in more ways than he realised.

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With a new century of social change around the corner, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson brought a new woman of essential contradictions to life. In his drawings, his ‘Gibson Girl’ sported beautiful but practical Pompadour hair, she was physically active, smart. Quick witted, but would never laugh. She was liberated but would use her power to find an aristocratic British husband(44), rather than, say, fight for women's suffrage(45). More importantly, she had beauty that would often leave men looking and behaving like idiots, which Gibson used to entertain the readers of Life.

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By 1902 the architect of Evelyn Nesbitt’s success, Stanford White, had been grooming her, and also charming her mother for a number of years. As the mind behind landmark building projects in New York which still stand today, he was able to connect the young Evelyn to all kinds of influential New Yorkers, and as an man nearly three times her age(46), I’m sure he would have enjoyed the jealous looks he must have received with the young Evelyn on his arm. in exchange, Stanford White sent Evelyn’s career skywards, making a sought after model and muse. But their relationship was predictably exploitative. He raped Evelyn and kept her controlled(47).

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“A tall, statuesque blonde, Cynthia lives in a Gramwercy Park apartment with Lester Gaba, a manhattan artist whom she has to thank for everything in her life.”

Life magazine 13th December 1937 (48)

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But at Evelyn’s request, he allowed her steps into Musical Theatre as a “Showgirl” singing and dancing with a chorus. While performing at her second production, “The Wild Rose” she was spotted by a much younger man, Harry Thaw(49). He was immediately smitten, and as the heir to a coal and transportation empire, he had similar status to Stanford White - who he happened to deeply dislike.​

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Harry courted Evelyn obsessively, the two would eventually marry, all while Evelyn was still a teenager. After a short time Harry learned of Evelyn’s abuse by White (50), and would shoot him with a rifle at point blank range, in Stanford White’s own theatre at Madison Square Garden(51).

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This explosive saga of the moneyed elite would result in what some called “The Trial of the Century”. Evelyn was compelled to defend her husband in court, and countless Newspapers more info competed to expose Evelyn’s life in extra-fine detail. Harry Thaw would have executed if she hadn’t described her abuse by White for public record.

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“There has been much speculation about the amount of money Evelyn must have been paid in order to testify as she did…Time and again she had to go to Harry in his cell and ask him to intervene on her behalf for basic spending money.”

Paula Uruburu writing in the biography ‘American Eve’

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The trial was a money spinner for the many New York tabloids at the time. In industrial, difficult, heavily class stratified New York, it was a peek into the sordid lives of the wealthy. Evelyn’s stratospheric rise, mixing with the cream of New York had ended in eventual divorce from Shaw. She was left with a newborn baby to take care of, and very little money to even feed herself, she led a quiet life but survived severe depressive episodes.

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Just months before the fateful murder of her ex husband, she was prominently featured in an article in Cosmopolitan headed “Poor Girls who Marry Millions” as surely, the model ‘Gibson Girl’.​​

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Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson appeared reluctant to take credit for the Gibson Girl idea:

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“Dear me! She has always been there, I did nothing more than to introduce her to the public.” (51.5)

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But he was clearly unhappy with what his ‘Gibson girl’ had become associated with. When the theatre producer responsible for Nesbit’s appearance in ‘The Wild Rose’ attempted to launch a musical named “The Gibson Girl”, Charles used his influence at Life magazine to issue a not so subtle threat.

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”Mr Charles Dana Gibson naturally resents the use of his

name in connection with Mr. Lederer’s notions of what is

attractive in femininity... It is possible that the artist might find

some protection under our laws regarding personal rights.”

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It seemed Mr Gibson, the artist, preferred to keep his girls in his drawings. His idea of uncorrupted beauty was more a reflection of him than the women populating inconvenient columns and singing in broadway musicals.

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“...No other way—not indeed seeing the object itself—will achieve his purpose.”

Coomaraswamy, Ananda

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His vision of beauty was incomplete without the role women were supposed to take, and that woman couldn’t be any individual.

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“The ‘Gibson Girl’ does not exist. She has been as the grains of sand in number. I imagine that folks must recognize ‘United States’ in her, and that it’s that which makes them think she’s all, or nearly all, the same. She isn’t really.”​​

In the same article, Gibson goes on to present a vision of the future:

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​“Men are stronger, braver than the savages from which they sprang. Why should they not be handsomer? Why should women not be beautiful increasingly? Why should it not be the fittest in the form and features, as well as in the mind and muscle, which survives? …  Her claims to that distinction will result from a fine combination of the best points of all those many races which have helped to make our population.”​

(52.5)​

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Preview of Pygmannequin: PART 4

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“I started to build these characters and started to get really obsessed with the details, you know, making sure they looked really, really realistic and finally expressing my own views of beauty. You know, I could create anyone, you know, anyone and I could I could decide exactly how I wanted them to look. So for the first time, I could really, really express how I saw beauty.”

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Cameron James Wilson, founder of worlds first virtual modelling agency

"The Diigitals".

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Head on to Part 4

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References