Clare Boothe Luce

In 1923 Edward Steichen—once a pioneering champion of photography-as-art—was appointed chief photographer at Condé Nast publications, embarking on a nearly 15-year career in editorial and advertising photography. Steichen contributed iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits to Vogue and Vanity Fair, including some of the first color photographs ever published in these magazines (Steichen shot Vogue’s first color cover photograph in 1932). The success of these images lead Condé Nast to invest heavily in color printing technology. At the time this photograph was taken, Clare Boothe was a caption writer at Vogue. She later became managing editor of Vanity Fair and, after marrying publisher Henry R. Luce in 1935, worked as a foreign correspondent for Luce’s Life magazine. In 1953 she was appointed ambassador to Italy, becoming the first American woman to hold a major diplomatic post abroad.