Carmel Snow (1887–1961) was born in Ireland and grew up in New York City. She began her career in journalism at Vogue in 1921. Eleven years later she “switched sides” to join Harper’s Bazaar, a move regarded as so unforgivable that more than two decades later, Vogue’s editor in chief compared Snow to Benedict Arnold.
Independent, sure of her instincts, and strong-willed, Snow regularly stood up to Bazaar’s autocratic publisher, William Randolph Hearst. In Dahl-Wolfe’s words, “she trusted her editors and artists completely, and fought commercial interests to produce a magazine of quality.” Once described as the “Queen Mother of Fashion,” Snow helped launch the careers of designer Cristóbal Balenciaga and photographer Richard Avedon. Upon her retirement, a colleague wrote, “The way that we are, that we dress, that we live in our epoch owes much to the divining taste of Carmel Snow, personnage d’exception.”