In the fashion world of 1960s Paris, one face appeared on the cover of Elle magazine more than any other. That face belonged to Nicole de Lamargé, born in 1938, a model whose career burned brightly for little more than a decade before her death in 1969. Her name is barely known outside France today, but during her lifetime she was the standard by which a generation of models measured themselves.
De Lamargé was discovered in the late 1950s by Catherine Harlé, who ran one of Paris’s most respected modeling agencies. She became the first major star to emerge from Harlé’s roster. Her earliest assignments came from Jardin des Modes and Vogue, but it was Elle where she truly made her mark, appearing on its cover 25 times. That figure alone set her apart from nearly every model working in France at the time.
Her relationship with Elle went deeper than the cover shoots. Her boyfriend, Peter Knapp, served as the magazine’s art director throughout much of the 1960s. The two worked closely together, and the images they produced captured something specific about that decade — a self-assured ease that felt modern without trying too hard. Karl Lagerfeld later described de Lamargé as the “Elle girl par excellence,” a phrase that neatly summarized what made her so right for the magazine.
What set de Lamargé apart from her peers was her approach to her own appearance. She treated her face as material to work with rather than a fixed asset to protect. “I use my face as a canvas,” she said. She changed her look constantly and explained her thinking plainly: “I keep changing my look, you see. I get very bored… I don’t think about my face anymore. It’s just instinct.” This restlessness made her endlessly adaptable and kept her relevant as trends shifted around her.
By the mid-1960s, her work had expanded well beyond France. She collaborated with some of London’s most sought-after photographers, including Norman Parkinson, David Bailey, Brian Duffy, and Toni Frissell. Each brought a different style to her image, and she met each one with the same self-possessed confidence. Young models paid close attention. Grace Coddington, who would later become one of the most influential figures in fashion, named de Lamargé as an idol.
The year 1965 was among her most active. She appeared in shoots for a wide range of designers and publications, wearing everything from Mary Quant’s sharp mod cuts to delicate floral organza. The variety of her work that year reflects just how broadly she was in demand.
Into 1966 and 1967, de Lamargé continued working with the biggest names in European fashion. Pierre Cardin dressed her repeatedly, and her appearances in French Elle remained a fixture. Shoots for Jean Patou, Nina Ricci, André Courrèges, and Chanel placed her at the center of the decade’s most ambitious design work.
David Bailey photographed her in 1967 for what would become one of his most discussed projects. His book Goodbye Baby and Amen, published as a tribute to the Swinging Sixties, featured de Lamargé alongside Andy Warhol and the Beatles. In the photograph, she wears bouffant curls, sticks out her tongue, and holds a cigarette. In the book’s index, next to her name, Bailey placed a single word: “deceased.”
De Lamargé died in a car crash in Morocco in 1969 while on holiday with her second husband. She was 30 years old. The crash happened just months before Bailey’s book was published. Her final documented shoot, wearing a striped Courrèges dress, was from that same year.
Nicole de Lamargé worked at the exact intersection of French editorial precision and the looser, more energetic style coming out of London. She moved between both worlds without losing her particular quality — a confidence in front of the camera that photographers across two cities recognized and returned to again and again. Twenty-five Elle covers, years of work with the most significant designers of her time, and a place in Bailey’s definitive record of the decade: her decade-long career left a clear and documented mark on the history of fashion.
