Dolores Hawkins Phelps, a Vogue cover model, died last week, aged 90, in Independence, Texas, where she had raised three sons, bred horses, and, with Stuart Lee Phelps, her husband of 55 years, run a real-estate business from an old converted schoolhouse.
There’s a wonderful circularity about Hawkins Phelps ending up in a town with a name that described a characteristic she possessed in abundance. “When I first started in this business, a top photographer told me I’d never make it, but he’s eaten his words since,” said the model in a 1966 interview. “If you tell [Dolores] she can’t do it, believe me she’ll do it,” said her daughter-in-law Cori Phelps on a call.
Hawkins was born in bucolic Huguenot, New York, in 1931, where she developed a passion for horses and, it seems, cars. In response to a story about the model published on the blog AllWays in Fashion, a commenter who Hawkins had taught to drive remembered her as “generous and kind and not the least full of herself;” qualities corroborated by Sondra Peterson, fellow model and friend of many decades, who says that on her first assignment she was taken under the wing of the already successful Hawkins, who recommended the new model to her photographer friends.
Following high school, Hawkins followed a friend to New York City and worked at Lord & Taylor. When dining at Longchamps restaurant she was discovered. Slender, with long dark hair, Hawkins projected cheer and youthfulness, and her second assignment (according to some reports) was a cover for Mademoiselle. Hawkins signed to Ford and over time “graduated” to Vogue.
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