Early life Karen Graham was born in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1945. Career After college, Graham moved to New York City to pursue a career as a French-language high school teacher. In 1969, Graham met model agency owner Eileen Ford while shopping at Bonwit Teller in Manhattan. Ford suggested that she become a model and shared her business card. This interaction launched Graham’s modelling career. Graham's early work included a photo shoot for Irving Penn. Penn saw potential in Graham and wanted to include her in a shoot for Vogue. The photographer insisted that the model be featured in the fashion spread, despite resistance from Vogue’s editor-in-chief at the time, Diana Vreeland, due to Graham’s small stature. Following this, Graham was featured on the cover of Vogue magazine 20 times between 1970 and 1975. The "Estee Lauder Woman" (1970-1985) Graham's first notable modelling job was an Estee Lauder advertising campaign. The company began employing her intermittently during 1970 and 1971 to appear in their print ads. She worked with Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski. By 1973, she had become Estee Lauder's exclusive spokesmodel. It was a job she would do for the rest of the decade, appearing in print and television ads that presented her in tasteful, elegant, generously appointed tableaux - a parlor, a drawing room, a veranda - to represent the image the Estee Lauder company created for itself. In these ads, Graham was never identified by name, which Estee Lauder herself frankly admitted was deliberate. Mrs. Lauder did not want to dilute attention on the product by focusing more attention on the model in the ads. Many people, unfamiliar with the fashion and modeling world, thought Graham was, in fact, Mrs. Lauder. Ironically, the ads were a reflection of Mrs. Lauder's own idea of a woman of taste and sophistication. Skrebneski was happy to oblige, decorating his sets with Chinese vases, Pablo Picasso ceramics, and well-stocked bookshelves. Because the Lauder company aimed its products at upper-income women, at expensive prices, the ads had to project luxury. Various props were used - dolls, horses, and, curiously, a framed photograph of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, in a 1981 ad. The ad campaigns were meant to project traditional, Old-World elegance. An exception was an ad campaign for the Lauder company's "Swiss age-controlling skincare program," in which Skrebneski photographed Graham standing among edged cylinders in a futuristic tableau and wearing