Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was born November 19, 1895, in San Francisco, California, to Norwegian immigrant parents; she was the youngest of three daughters.

Following the death of her mother in a car accident in 1926, from 1927 to 1928, Dahl-Wolfe traveled in Europe and North Africa with photographer Consuelo Kanaga, who furthered her interest in photography.

[4][5] She shared Wolfe's interest in sculptural form and from the 1920s, her photographs demonstrate a concern with architecture, antiquity and negative space.

Notable portraits include: Mae West, Vivien Leigh, Cecil Beaton, Eudora Welty, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Carson McCullers, Edward Hopper, Colette and Josephine Baker.

One of her favourite subjects was the model Mary Jane Russell, who is estimated to have appeared in about thirty percent of Dahl-Wolfe's photographs.

Dahl-Wolfe was considered a pioneer of the 'female gaze' in the fashion industry and credited for creating a new image of strong, independent American women during World War II.

[14] From 1943, Dahl-Wolfe introduced the "New American Look" to fashion photography, which Vicki Goldberg describes as "all clean hair, glowing skin and a figure both lithe and strong".

[1] Dahl-Wolfe was known for taking photographs outdoors, with natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa in what became known as "environmental" fashion photography.

[15] Her photographs brough a new naturalism to fashion photography which had previously been dominated by a stiff and haughty "European" or "Germanic" studio style.

In fact the poses are highly, constructed with an "almost abstract formal perfection" which she credited partly to the influence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

The cover shows a young lady in front of the reception of American Red Cross Blood Donation clinic.

She is styling chicly in an elegant navy suit, white blouse, black gloves, a cloche hat with long waves in her hair and holding a red bag with matching lipstick.

American women in World War II were no longer the delicate creature surrounded by flowers as seen in previous covers, but responsible individuals with the ability to do their bit of help.

The cover is a mirror up to its audience, a reflection of the women, who had entered the workforce for the first time, who became wartime brides when they married their soldier, who take care family and just an occasional letter from a loved one to lament over.