Reminiscing in her meticulously decorated Arlington home, petite and outspoken Evon Tynan brings out the blue sunbonnet she wore as a child to pick peanuts and cotton on her parents’ Florida farm. The 11th of 12 children, Tynan was 6 years old when her father died of typhoid, and her family struggled to survive during the ravaging Depression era.
“I grew up in poverty on a farm; it was tough,” says the widow and mother of two. “I knew what it was to be very poor.”
During the Great Depression, because of the large number of mouths to feed in her family, Tynan’s overwhelmed mother farmed out her children to various employers to help support the family. In her teens, Tynan worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Quincy, Florida, providing curb service to patrons for $4.50 a week. Her life changed drastically while she was serving sandwiches there in 1940.
“This gentleman came from New York, and he said, ‘What’s a pretty girl like you doing working here?’” she says. “He said, ‘You go to New York; I’m gonna give you my girlfriend’s telephone number. You call her and she’ll meet you.’ And then I took the train to New York.”
She modestly points out that she never saw herself as a beauty queen.
“I was not glamorous,” Tynan says. “I never, ever considered myself beautiful.”
Nonetheless, Tynan was promised a job as a dress model when she got to the city, so she paid $25 for her train ticket and traveled from Florida to New York. At age 20, far away from her family, she rented a room on the Upper West Side at 425 West End Ave., one block from the Hudson River. She paid $4 a week for rent.
Up until that point, she had never been in an elevator or owned a telephone. Now, she lived in an apartment building filled with young, single women, and she learned modeling tricks of the trade from her neighbors.
“The girls taught me how to model by making me put books on top of my head and walk up and down the stairs in the building where we lived,” says Tynan, who modeled under her maiden name, Evon Barrow.
Her first job was as a dress model with a company in the garment district called Junior Vogue, which created four dress lines each year.
“The designers made the dresses off of you,” says Tynan, who stood 5 feet, 6 inches tall. “They’d drape the fabric right on your body.”
Modeling was exhausting work, Tynan admits: Standing patiently for hours at a time like a human mannequin as designers hovered over you was tiring. Once the designs were complete, eight dressmakers sewed the new creations.
At that time, dress models also worked in the showroom where all of the store buyers from across the country would come, according to her daughter, Tracy.
“Dress models would come out and show the dress and then buyers would order how many of each dress they wanted — that’s how it was done,” Tracy says.
In an era of white gloves, tight girdles, and stiff corsets, somehow she thrived. For her, Junior Vogue was a good starting point.
“The clothes were not expensive, but nice,” Tynan says. “I wanted to get to the more expensive line — which I did — by sheer hard work.”
Meeting Anne Klein
Tynan went to model for Varden Petites, a company that catered to women 5 feet, 5 inches and shorter. That’s where she met a new, 5-foot-3-inch designer coming up the ranks: Anne Klein.
Klein is credited with redesigning the firm’s clothing line and pioneering a new market: clothing that was sophisticated, ready-to-wear, and fashioned for younger, smaller women. Tynan was Klein’s muse.
“It’s not that I was just her model, we became the best of friends,” she says. “I worked together with Anne until she went into her own business, which was Junior Sophisticates — that was the name of her line.”
In 1949, at the age of 29, she married Walter Tynan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York. Klein designed her wedding dress.
“It was so simple, because Anne’s clothes were simple,” she says.
The chic, tea-length dress is captured in her well-preserved, black-and-white wedding photos.
“Her dress was very tailored; it had a covered belt in the same satin fabric and it had covered buttons the whole way up the front,” Tracy says.
Tynan still has a Harper’s Bazaar magazine from November 1993 with a profile about Anne Klein. Beside the story, photos from Klein’s career cover a page, including one black-and-white shot of Klein with Tynan and a group of models during downtime at a buyer fashion show.
While the norm was to be a homemaker after marriage, Tynan worked as a model well into the 1950s. She even modeled after she gave birth to her son, Timothy, and then her daughter, Tracy. Tynan and Klein kept in touch over the years, long past her modeling career. Though she and her family eventually moved to Arlington, every so often she would take the train up to New York to visit her old friend and others from the fashion industry.
Klein, whose brand of timeless fashions and shoes is still sold today, died of breast cancer in 1974 at the age of 50. Tynan keeps a decayed, dog-eared newspaper clipping of Klein’s obituary.
Brushes with Fame
During Tynan’s 13-year modeling career, she ran with New York’s movers and shakers. There was the romantic relationship with Robert Evans, who went on to be a hit Hollywood producer and studio executive, known for his work on Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, and The Godfather. (He eventually married seven women, among them actresses Ali MacGraw and Phyllis George.) Tynan even dated British acclaimed actor and “Rat Pack” member Peter Lawford.
“He was so handsome but I couldn’t stand him,” she says.
Tynan met her husband, Walter, when a mutual friend played matchmaker and invited them both over for dinner. The couple’s first actual date was when Walter helped her babysit her visiting sister Vernon’s small children. A city slicker, golf club champ, and Georgetown University grad, Walter brought his future bride a bouquet of pink roses and lilacs on their first date. They were married for 49 years, until his death in 1999.
Tynan says her favorite part about her modeling career was being surrounded by such beautiful fashions. At the end of every season, the models were given the opportunity to purchase the dress samples at a drastically discounted wholesale price.
“They always gave us the clothes much cheaper because they liked us wearing their clothes on the street,” she says, adding that while she made a good living, the money was nothing compared to what models can earn today.
Independent as Ever
Now 103, Tynan lives alone in her comfortable Arlington home. She does her own house cleaning, cooking, and gardening; enjoys reading; and spends time with her children and friends during their frequent visits.
“I love raking my yard — nobody believes it,” she says, adding that her next project is to paint her outdoor furniture. “I work all the time, but let me tell you something — it keeps you going.”
At an age where she has outlived her spouse and most of her friends, keeping busy and maintaining a good attitude keep her motivated. And all these years after experiencing abject poverty — and glamorous success — Evon Tynan is going strong.
“My mom has the most upbeat, positive attitude about everything, and I think that is the key to her longevity,” says Tracy. “My mother is amazing — she is very much an inspiration.”
Feature image courtesy Evon Tynan
This story originally ran in our September issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
