100 years of unseen fashion photos from ‘the morgue’ | CNN

Model and actress Anjelica Huston lights a cigarette in front of a large mirror in 1972. This is one of more than 30,000 unseen photos released by Conde Nast, the magazine house behind Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair.

Bob Stone/Conde Nast via Getty Images

A model wears a bulbous hat and a plaid, boatneck dress as she stands on a city street in 1962. Conde Nast teamed up with Getty Images to release the archival photos. "We'd been after their content for some time. It's beautiful," said Bob Ahern, Getty's archive director. "Fashion is cyclical, it draws so readily on inspiration of the past. To have these images available is amazing."

Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images

Actresses Beth and Betty Dodge wear matching stage costumes as they take a publicity portrait in 1929. The twins wore sequined caps, tops and bloomers to go with ostrich-feather skirts and fans.

George Hoyningen-Huenel/Conde Nast via Getty Images

Entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. laughs as model Jean Shrimpton, left, leans on his shoulder in 1965. The image of Maggi Eckardt, right, was later pasted onto the same shot. Ahern said it is "fascinating to see firsthand the techniques that preceded the digital era. This image of Sammy Davis Jr. and model Jean Shrimpton became something else entirely with a skillful and literal cut-and-paste job."

Bert Stern/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

Model Chantal Dumont walks across the Pont Alexandre III, a Paris bridge, in 1969.

Ewa Rudling/Conde Nast via Getty Images

First lady Nancy Reagan poses in the White House's Red Room in 1981. "In 1945, Horst P. Horst photographed Harry S. Truman and struck up a friendship which was to give him unprecedented access to the White House," Ahern said. Horst photographed every first lady in the postwar period.

Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images

A model holds a parasol in her hands as she leans against a wall in 1953.

Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images

Fashion designer Coco Chanel reclines on a sofa in her home in 1960. "Horst first met Coco Chanel in New York in 1937 and would go on to shoot her along with her fashions for some 30 years," Ahern said. "This frame, discovered in a box that had not been touched for decades, reflects a longstanding friendship --- an informal portrait of the grand dame of fashion at home and at perfect ease."

Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

From left, dancers Hinton Battle, Gregory Hines and Gregg Burge promote their Broadway musical "Sophisticated Ladies" in 1981.

Patrick Demarchelier/Conde Nast via Getty Images

In 1967, artist Georgia O'Keeffe examines an animal skull with a black feather in one of its eye sockets.

Cecil Beaton/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

A model poses in a snakeskin hood in 1965.

Bert Stern/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

Models stand beneath a theater marquee in 1954. "This frame, from a fashion shoot by photographer Sy Kattelson, never ended up running in Glamour magazine as originally intended," Ahern said. "Back in the day, the editors opted for a much more formulaic take with models fully posed and looking to the camera. But with a turn of a head and with a split-second of informality, this frame transgresses the fashion shoot and gives us an alternate moment of chic street-style elegance."

Sy Kattelson/Conde Nast via Getty Images

100 years of unseen fashion photos

Story highlights

The magazine house behind Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair has released archival photos

The unseen collection features work by Horst, Steichen and Beaton

CNN —

For every carefully chosen image in a fashion editorial, how many stunning alternatives are relegated to an archive, never to be seen again?

Answer: A lot. In Conde Nast’s case, more than 1.5 million, expertly cataloged and preserved in a New York storage otherwise known as “the morgue.”

Protected in a cold room, elegantly boxed and meticulously filed, the imaginings of photographic heroes such as Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst have lain dormant and unappreciated – until now.

The magazine house behind Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair has teamed up with Getty Images to release a collection of more than 30,000 unique shots, some available for prints and licensing.

For Getty’s archive director, Bob Ahern, it was a collaboration he had long been courting.

“Frankly we’d been after their content for some time. It’s beautiful,” he said. “Fashion is cyclical, it draws so readily on inspiration of the past. To have these images available is amazing.”

Ahern said that while visiting Conde Nast’s collection he was “like a kid in a sweet shop.”

“Quite often archives are relegated to the basement, but in this instance it’s a state-of-the-art facility. You have vintage prints going back to the 1920s, all

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gorgeously boxed. They have an amazing cold-storage facility where you have to put hats and gloves on. You don’t often see that.”

The images date to the 1920s, documenting almost 100 years of style history through the eyes of the most celebrated photographers. They include prints from Edward Steichen, who is known as the “father” of fashion photography.

“When you actually get your hands on a vintage print, the way they were printed with different papers and different chemicals that we don’t use today, it’s amazing,” Ahern said.

“You get that richness of black, richness in the shadows. The whole tone turns it into not just a beautiful image, but a historical item.”

As captivating as the photographers’ visions are their star-studded subjects – from Nancy Reagan to Coco Chanel.

“Conde Nast got great access,” Ahern said. “You’ve got the gamut of supermodels from way back in the ’30s to what we might call the heyday – the Kate Mosses, the Christy Turlingtons.

“You also have writers and actors like Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin. You name it, those guys opened the doors for Conde Nast.”

Finally released from their chamber of secrets, now all that remains is for the photos to be seen.