Skating into fashion history

A stately British doctor taps a couple on the shoulder this morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. The couple is strolling the exhibition "Avedon Fashion, 1944 - 2000" examining one of fashion photographer Richard Avedon's most iconic 1957 portraits of model Suzy Parker rolling skating in a Dior coat with a handsome male model, Robin Tattersall, at her side.
The doctor points to the name on the wall by the photograph. "I'm Robin Tattersall," he tells the gobsmacked couple. This 80-year-old surgeon, who splits his time between Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and Essex, Mass., was at the MFA on Friday visiting the Avedon exhibition and pointing himself out in many of the famous fashion photographs. Tattersall had no ambitions to become a male model in the 1950s. But when he needed to make money to put himself through medical school, he started making the rounds at Paris agencies. He stopped by the offices of Harper's Bazaar, and later that day, Avedon was putting Tattersall in one of fashion's most influential portraits.

"Out came this young lad," Tattersall says of his first meeting with Avedon. "I thought he was an assistant. I thought he was a young lad because he looked like he was about 20, . He dragged out this long-legged, red-headed beauty. He said 'This is Suzy Parker, take her in your arms.'"
The only drawback to the shoot was that Tattersall was required to roller skate with Parker, and he had no experience on skates. After clumsily falling down several times, Avedon sent Tattersall off on the streets of Paris to learn, where children made fun of him for falling. He came back, no better on skates, so the picture was taken as a still, with cables pulling at the couple's clothes to create the illusion of wind and motion.