Coinciding, and in some ways overlapping, with the Met show is a superb exhibition of Richard Avedon’s fashion photographs, “Avedon Fashion,’’ at the nearby International Center for Photography. The earliest works are from the 1940s and ’50s, the period generally known as the Golden Age of Haute Couture, and they remind us that the creativity of great photographers like Avedon, Irving Penn, and - later - William Klein, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, and Steven Meisel played as important a role in establishing the phenomenon of the iconic model as the models themselves.

Robin Tattersall and Suzy Parker in Paris (1956) for Dior in the Richard Avedon photo exhibit.