June Dally-Watkins: Australian model and entrepreneur who tried to bring etiquette to the masses

She became a national institution through her schools, though she drew criticism for attitudes that seemed to endorse and enforce patriarchy

To the manners born: Dally-Watkins at her modeling school circa 1952 (Alamy)

Becoming Australia’s first supermodel in the 1940s convinced June Dally-Watkins of the impact that grace and charm could have on a person’s career. Armed with this belief and a tenacious entrepreneurial attitude, she funded the eponymous etiquette schools, and she became perhaps the country’s most prominent advocate of what she regarded as good manners.

The model and entrepreneur, who has died aged 92, came from humble rural beginnings and went on to make millions through deportment and modelling schools – in the past seven decades more than 300,000 people have signed up.

She became a public institution, although she drew criticism that she perpetuated patriarchal standards through the policing of women’s behaviour. She regarded her role as merely being to persuading people to be “kind and thoughtful and courteous to each other”. Though a stern goalkeeper of social conventions, she insisted the aim of her schools was to empower women. She said: “Not only do I want to transform the way they look but the way they think, the way they dream.”

June Marie Skewes was born in 1927 in Sydney. Her mother, Caroline Mary Skewes – a woman who suffered from the social stigma of being an unmarried mother in the 1930s – decided to raise June at her parent’s sheep farm in Watsons Creek, a small, sparsely populated locality in New South Wales.

Dally-Watkins’ mother instilled a sense of propriety in her daughter from a young age. “She was always telling me what to do and what not to do. She was strict with me because she loved me,” said Dally-Watkins in an interview. “If I was not sitting properly or I was not standing up straight or speaking correctly, my mother would hit me on my arm and say, ‘Junie, if you speak Australian, no one is going to accept you.’”

In 1940, June and her mother moved to Sydney. Her mother Caroline had married David Dally-Watkins, an army captain and wine salesman, who adopted June and passed on to her his last name despite what would be a short-lived marriage.

Although Dally-Watkins and her mother would return to the farm after this separation, they were back in Sydney in 1944, both working in a dress shop. A short time after, aged 15, she began her career by modelling hats at a department store for meagre pay.

Behind the smile: at the launch of her revealing autobiography in 2002 (Getty)

This soon led to modelling garments in designer catalogues and on runways, and in just a few years she became the most photographed model in the country. In 1949 she was named Australian model of the year.

This success inspired her to travel to the US and Europe for six months where she rubbed shoulders with Hollywood A-listers. During her stop in Rome, she had an affair Gregory Peck, then one of the most popular film stars.

Upon her return she founded a personal development school on her belief that “good manners will open doors that the best education cannot”. And one year after that, in 1951, she funded her own modelling agency. “You see, when you grow up with nothing, I knew I had to succeed, to achieve or I knew I’d always have nothing,” she recalled in an interview.

She married John Clifford, a navy lieutenant, in 1953 (they later divorced), and the couple had four children. Dally-Watkins was criticised in this period for being a working mother.

In her 2002 autobiography, The Secrets Behind My Smile, she said: “The hush-hush surrounding my father and my identity became deafening and continued to echo throughout my life ... So I masked my shame and buried my self-consciousness with a smile – something I’ve done all my life, on and off the catwalk.”

Dally-Watkins continued to expand her brand and teach etiquette all through her life. She opened a branch in China in 2013, where she brought her ideas to a burgeoning middle class.

She is survived by her four children.

June Dally-Watkins, model and entrepreneur, born 13 June 1927, died 22 February 2020