A tribute for the indomitable fashion editor Polly Mellen, who died Dec. 12, is being planned for this summer in Kent, Conn.
Mellen, the longtime sittings and fashion editor at Vogue, passed away at age 100 at the assisted living facility Noble Horizons in Salisbury, Conn. She is being laid to rest in Kent beside her second husband Henry Wigglesworth Mellen, according to Mellen’s daughter Leslie Bell.
In addition to Bell, Mellen is survived by her son Louis Baker Bell Jr., and two stepchildren, Lucinda Mellen and Henry Mellen. Polly Mellen and her first husband Louis Baker Bell divorced in 1960 after an eight-year union. Five years later she married Henry Mellen.
Direct and energetic, the former Vogue editor left her mark working with famed photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Helmut Newton. Her first shoot at Vogue was a five-week trip to Asia with Avedon (who described her as the most creative sittings editor that he had ever worked with). The assignment was said to be the most expensive fashion shoot ever. The final edit included shots of Veruschka head-to-toe in white fur walking through the snowy mountains of Hokkaido. Another shot featured the model topless in the lotus position as a Japanese fortune teller looks down at her erotically. “There is a word that comes with being a strong editor. That word is responsibility,” Mellen said in 2002.
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Her wanderlust for fashion and new locations never waned. In fact, Mellen’s husband Henry once told her, “Five trips a year, or I’m shopping elsewhere,” Leslie Bell recalled Monday with a laugh. “He said that because she probably would have been on trips most of the year, traveling constantly. That’s why she never wanted to be editor in chief.”
By her own account, Mellen told WWD in 1999, “What’s hard is that you keep your eyes open and there can be no laziness. It’s not a matter of who you are or what you are. It’s not a matter of seniority — it’s a matter of performance.“
A troubadour in the field of fashion, Mellen proved herself time and again in the trenches and upper echelons with her expressive statements. Fittingly, she had worked as a nurse’s aide in a soldiers’ hospital during World War II. After an early post at Lord & Taylor, Mellen went on to leave her mark at Harper’s Bazaar, American Vogue and Allure. Her steely work ethic was of a first-to-arrive and last-to-leave ethos. After an early job at Harper’s Bazaar under Diana Vreeland, Mellen had a 28-year run at Vogue before moving on to Allure.
Allure’s founding editor in chief Linda Wells, who is now editor of Air Mail’s beauty platform “Look,” said Mellen had been “itching for a new adventure,” when she hired her from Vogue. “Allure was nowhere when she arrived. I was sitting in row G at the shows. Polly swept in — she always swept in — and put us on the map and in the front row. ‘Basta,’ as she would say,” Wells said.
Mellen’s fashion sense may be carried on via Bell’s daughter, who is studying fashion design at the Savannah College of Art & Design. Having taken a year off, due partially to her grandmother’s cancer diagnosis last summer, the undergrad has been working for Costco — a decision that hints at Mellen’s no-nonsense pragmatism.
