I’m going for 105, then I’ll see if I want to change professions,” says Carmen Dell’Orefice, who, at 84, is not only one of the past century’s most-celebrated muses but also the oldest working model. Championed by Bazaar editors Diana Vreeland and Carmel Snow, Dell’Orefice struggled with an unstable home life and embraced the fashion world of the ’40s and ’50s as her adoptive family. “I would never have become the person I am without my surrogate fathers, Erwin Blumenfeld, Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn, and Cecil Beaton; my surrogate brothers, Gleb Derujinsky, Richard Avedon, Francesco Scavullo, and Victor Skrebneski; and my Dutch uncle, Norman Parkinson.” Of Derujinsky, who shot this cover of her for Bazaar’s May 1959 issue, Dell’Orefice says, “He saw the world in a big way, and…
