Ernestine Carter

Ernestine Marie Carter OBE (née Fantl; 10 October 1906 – 1 August 1983) was an American-born British museum curator, journalist, and fashion writer. She became hugely influential in her roles as women's editor, and later associate editor of The Sunday Times.

Her obituary described her as not only influencing British taste, but also putting her authority behind emerging fashion talent, becoming: "not only the acknowledged leader among women's fashion writers but also created a reputation for British fashion at a time when this country was considered a desert". In particular, she was instrumental in adding her authority to bolster the growing reputation of designers such as Mary Quant, Jean Muir, Gina Fratini and John Bates.

Ernestine Marie Fantl was born on 10 October 1906 in Savannah, Georgia, where she was brought up. She studied modern and contemporary art and design at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1927. She started out as a curatorial assistant at the newly formed Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, where,between 1933 and 1937 she was Curator of Architecture and Industrial Art. In 1936 she married a British antiquarian book dealer, John Waynflete Carter (1905-1975), and the Carters eventually moved to London.

During the Second World War Carter was employed by the British Ministry of Information. She worked on exhibitions and edited a book of photographs by Lee Miller titled Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire (published London, 1941). The book, which included a foreword by Edward R. Murrow, went into five printings. Later in the war, Carter went to work for the U.S. office of war information in London.

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