Nancy Holmes: A Glamorous, Remarkable Life

While doing some background on this Balmain newsletter a few weeks ago, I fell deep down the rabbit hole researching the life story of Nancy Holmes, the model for Pierre Balmain who decades later recalled her time with him in the article I reprinted. I had hoped to send this out Sunday but it took me more time than expected to sort through all the research and make sense of it; what I did discover is utterly fascinating.

Thanks to Ancestry.com, I discovered that she was born in Washington D.C. in 1921 as Nancy Hartung; her father was a real estate broker and her mother a housewife—this is the home she lived in as of the 1930 census. As a teen, she competed in equestrian competitions before signing with the John Powers modeling agency at age 18 in 1939. It appears she attended the Punahou School in Honolulu, a private college prep school, before studying a year or two at the University of Hawaii (then just a territory). By the time the United States entered the war, Nancy was working as a code clerk for the US Army in Miami while continuing to model—newspapers published photos of her and other Powers models visiting army and marine bases to cheer up soldiers. On one of these visits, she likely met her first husband, Lieutenant Alden George Thompson, Army Air Corps. They married on April 13, 1942. Over the next few years, they had two children, Peter and Brooke. Nancy appears to have continued to model a bit on the side while raising her kids and doing charity work until fate intervened.

Nancy is second from right. Elmira Star-Gazette, July 3, 1941.

New York Herald Tribune, April 18, 1942.

As I wrote previously, the “young American model Nancy Thompson (later Holmes) met Balmain when he came to Washington D.C. in early 1948 to show his collection at Julius Garfinckel & Co., a prominent department store… he visited Garfinckel’s on April 26 as part of a tour of stores initially organized by Boston’s Filene’s to celebrate Air France’s first non-stop flight between Boston and Paris. Balmain and his mannequin Jeanne Gara arrived in Boston on the 20th, sprinting from department store to department store along the Eastern seaboard until Gara, unfortunately, developed a fever—leading Thompson to be brought in as a replacement.” As Nancy remembered, “Pierre's model, Jeanne Gara, feverishly abed with the flu, was exactly my size. The clothes that had been made on her fit as if they had been made on me. I had fallen into a tub of Balmain butter.” Not only did the couture pieces fit perfectly, but Thompson wore them with an elan that Balmain appreciated. He recognized that having an American model would also be good press and so he invited her to Paris, making her the first American model in Paris after the war. Many American newspapers documented her trip—an American beauty being feted by Parisian high fashion was big news—and Thompson and her husband were even featured in a newspaper ad. 

Nancy (second from right) modeling new fashions in the Washington Post, September 14, 1947.