Just look at all those paragons of young womanhood hovering over their cereal bowls. Use a black marker to draw a wimple on each head and—ta-da—instant nunnery. Part of it has to do with the long, narrow wooden tables, but mostly it’s the way Lillian captured the sun beaming through those high roominghouse windows, bathing all those bright-eyed girls in churchly light. The one who became her roommate in her first New York apartment is fourth from the bottom right.

PATRICIA STOKES: I’d not been at Katharine House more than a week when Lilly showed up, and immediately I said to myself: this one is worth getting to know. It was easy to see she was the most interesting hat on the stand. While the rest of us were busy reinventing ourselves—which mostly meant a lot of talk and nail lacquer and twisting and pinning our hair overnight to turn us all into Elizabeth Taylor—there was Lilly perched at the other end of the room, wearing a man’s shirt, with just a few barrettes to keep her hair out of her face and a camera practically attached to the end of her arm like a second hand. At breakfast she’d set it right beside her prunes and oatmeal like it was the morning paper. She was nice enough if you tried to chat her up, but mostly she just took pictures.

It didn’t take long for the rumors to fly. One girl insisted Lilly was a spy for the Reds, another that she was a scout for the Ford Modeling Agency. Well, that got all the aspiring Suzy Parkers in a lather. Suddenly there was a lot of languorous posing on the divans. At that point I didn’t know who or what Lilly was, just that she was the only girl besides me not hawking head shots or shorthand.

When I told her about the rumors, I got treated to her laugh. Lilly laughed like a bicycle pump. Her face turned red and her mouth opened up and you’d brace yourself for something loud, but instead this positively delicate hss-hss sound would come from between those prim lips of hers; it was the funniest thing. Then it turned out that all those times in the parlor, she hadn’t even been taking our pictures! Like every other girl too poor to stay at the Barbizon, Lilly was on a strict budget, so she saved most of her film for walking around. Since she was too shy to actually talk to anyone, she mooned about downstairs taking what she called “practice snaps” with her empty camera just to avoid being alone. I kept that juicy tidbit to myself: I was having too much fun watching the fashion plates flash their profiles every time Lilly walked into a room.