Barbara Mullen, 96; rose to heights of modeling world

Barbara Mullen, who vaulted from a job at a New York beauty parlor to the pinnacle of the genteel modeling world of the 1950s, despite a beanpole figure and a gap-toothed smile that defied the narrow beauty standards of the day, died Sept. 12 at her home in Albuquerque. She was 96.

Her death was confirmed by a friend, Lori Katz.

Ms. Mullen was 5 feet 9 inches tall and had a 20-inch waist — a figure that would have fit better with the waif look of the 1990s. Emerging in the postwar 1940s, she was a far cry from the ideal set by voluptuous Hollywood stars like Rita Hayworth.

In her later years, Ms. Mullen often said she never thought of herself as beautiful. Early on, fashion’s string-pullers seemed to agree.

Upon meeting her, Eileen Ford, founder of the Ford modeling agency, which would represent Ms. Mullen for years, informed her that she had a terrible profile. Carmel Snow, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, deemed her “a big, ugly Irish girl.” When Ms. Mullen met photographer Lillian Bassman in 1948, serving as a stand-in for a model who did not show up for a shoot, she called her “the replacement girl,” adding, “This girl is a monster.”

By the early 1950s, however, beauty standards within the industry had started to evolve, and Ms. Mullen was at the vanguard of that evolution.

“There came to be a group of mannequins in the French tradition of the belle laide” — a term that translates to “beautiful ugly” — Jessica Daves, a former editor of Vogue, wrote in her 1967 history of American fashion, “Ready-Made Miracle.’’

“Barbara Mullen,” Daves added, “was the first of these to be accepted as a top mannequin. Her eyes were slightly too prominent; the proportions of her face were not those of classic beauty. But the proportions of her body were made for modern clothes. Her tiny head, long neck and delicately elongated torso were the essence of the new elements.”

Eventually, Bassman, who spent a decade shooting Ms. Mullen for Harper’s Bazaar, starting with the Paris couture collections of 1949, would declare her her favorite model.

“She came into the studio with her shoulders down, and her head down and her coat too long,” Bassman said in an interview done in conjunction with a 2009 exhibition of the photography of her and her husband, Paul Himmel, “and you looked at her and thought, ‘Oh, my god, this girl could never be a model.’” But, Bassman added, “Put her under the lights and she would just bloom.”

Barbara Elise Mullen was born on June 3, 1927, in Floral Park, N.Y., on Long Island, the youngest of two daughters of Matthew Mullen, a bank clerk, and Izma (Shirley) Mullen, a switchboard operator and seamstress.

Ms. Mullen was 18 and working as an assistant at a beauty salon in Queens in 1945 when she took a job modeling the latest fashions for moneyed shoppers at Bergdorf Goodman.

She got her break two years later, when Vogue called her in for a shoot with John Rawlings to model a pink tulle dress that had been cut for her wispy figure and did not fit other models.

Ms. Mullen leaves no immediate survivors. Her first husband, James Punderford, died in 1955. Her second husband, Fredi Morel, whom she married in 1962, died in 2019.