...and I Don’t Even Get A Free Subscription
“Meet Mrs. William McManus, nee Jessica Daves, a Vogue fashion editor. She sits on a train, alternating her reading material between a book and a newspaper, in this portrait by Leombruno-Bodi, which appeared the April 15, 1955, Vogue. She wears a long overcoat with piped trim, a small cloche hat, and slightly oversize sunglasses. Punctuating her elegance is an intent expression, making this work not only a historic photograph but also a true study in style.”
This article originally appeared in Fergie & Fife
It’s kind of amazing how things can perpetuate themselves on the internet. One inaccurate citation or reference from an official source, then unofficial sources start citing that, another source will link back and link back and link back. All to something incorrect.
Where I’m going with this is a bit of investigative journalism I did when a google search for my great great aunt, the staunch, all-business Editor in Chief of Vogue Magazine from 1952-1963, yielded numerous photos of her as a kind of Grace Kelly look-alike model. There are very few pictures of Jessica Daves (or Ainee, as she was known in our family, although no one can seem to remember why.*) but I’d seen a few. She looked like my grandmother and great aunt. She looked like my great-grandmother. Genetics… whaddayaknow?
[*After some research, it turned out to be for the very quotidian reason that it was her middle name. But she liked it because it sounded French.]
She was no frills. (Other than that preference for her French-sounding middle name.) She was an editor and business woman, not a style icon.
Which is why I was truly shocked that the above glamorous woman was shown over and over again as my aunt. In reality, Jessica Daves looked more like Coco Chanel than she did Grace Kelly. Don't get me wrong, I would be honored for this gorgeous, well-dressed woman to be my relation...it’s just that she isn’t.
Nevertheless, for many months, I tried to get to the bottom of this. For a moment, I thought perhaps I was the one who was wrong. All the pictures I had ever seen of Ainee were from when she was older. Perhaps, she really had been a dish in her youth. But they kept saying she had married a Mr. McManus. Uncle Robert’s last name was Parker. But... maybe she had been married twice and we just didn’t know it?
So I kept digging and finally found even more photos identifying this woman as Mrs. McManus (nee' Jessica Daves) Editor in Chief of Vogue Magazine. And the culprit of the misinformation was none other than the Conde Nast Photo Archives themselves.
Who was William H. McManus? Certainly not my uncle, Robert. McManus, as it turns out, was one of the co-founders of JC Penney. And this may be his wife, and she may have even actually been named Jessica Daves (surprisingly little biographical info on McManus, actually) and this woman may have even been some kind of fashion editor at Vogue. But she isn't Jessica Hopkins Daves, granddaughter of the founder/first president of Georgia Tech, from Cartersville, GA, and my great great aunt--that’s for sure.
Somehow, Conde Nast, followed by a whole heap of blogs, rewrote history a bit, albeit arguably for the more glamorous. Though, to me, therein lies the rub.
How had such a pioneering woman gotten somehow lost in the vision of the world she herself had helped to create?
Though she built an empire, shored up Vogue’s finances, and did what had to be done without much concern for being fabulous, the truth of who she was was wallpapered over with cool-blonde loveliness, hidden behind enormous shades, and finally overshadowed by her younger protege, Diana Vreeland. Why, in addition to everything else, should a woman also have to be beautiful? Need to be glamorous? Isn’t it enough that she made Vogue Vogue?
I am proud to be her relative, even if she wasn’t a Grace Kelly. It’s a disturbing phenomenon, our need to romanticize our past, our role models-- especially our female role models. And I sure hope all this perpetuating of her as a model role model isn’t some way to re-write history to help her fit into the mold of other editors who hid behind huge sunglasses.
In fact, I feel certain Ainee never hid behind anything in her life. She was the one who always said, “Don't worry about what the dress code for an event is. If you wear a hat, a hat is the dress code. If you are casual, the dress code is casual. What you’re wearing is what everyone else should be wearing.”
Yes, in real life, she was married to novelist Robert Allerton Parker and owned an amazing Park Avenue home that we somehow sold at the worst possible time (the 70's!) much to the chagrin of the millennial wing of my family. She wrote and was editor of several books including the massive The World In Vogue & Ready-Made Miracle. She had no children and she died in 1974. She's buried next to Uncle Robert in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Bartow County, Georgia. Who needs to be Grace Kelly when you can be Jessica Daves?
Mrs. William H. McManus (née Jessica Daves) dances with a gentleman companion in this delightfully romantic photograph. The Vogue editor wears a full-length organdy ball gown, with a pleated skirt and fascia top. She finishes the look with a rhinestone necklace and earrings, and dramatically long gloves. Roger Prigent's photograph appeared in the April 15, 1952, Vogue.
The Real Jessica Daves
Note: Conde Nast and the various blogs who circulated the misleading photos have corrected their errors subsequent to this article. I am very thankful for the dialogues this has sparked and all the writers interested in my aunt’s life who have reached out to me about her. It’s been a great honor to contribute to your work!
Case in point, I’m very happy to be doing a few talk backs with the author for Rebecca C. Tuite’s forthcoming book, 1950s IN VOGUE: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962, a gorgeously illustrated celebration of American Vogue at the midcentury, under the editorship of the oft-overlooked editor-in-chief, Jessica Daves.
One of only seven editors in chief in American Vogue’s history, Jessica Daves has remained one of fashion’s most enigmatic figures. Diana Vreeland’s direct predecessor in the role, it is Daves who first catapulted the magazine into modernity.
A testament to a changing America on every level, Daves’s Vogue was the first to embrace a “high/low” blend of fashion in its pages and to introduce world-renowned artists, literary greats, and cultural icons into every issue, offering the reader a complete vision of how design, interiors, architecture, entertaining, art, literature, and culture all connected and contributed to refining and defining taste and personal style. Daves profiled icons of American style, from John and Jackie Kennedy to Charles and Ray Eames, alongside Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, and Balenciaga creations.