It’s been almost 50 years since the first black supermodel stormed the fashion world. Donyale Luna achieved the elusive supermodel status after she landed the prestigious cover of British Vogue in 1966. The New York Times described Luna as
It’s been almost 50 years since the first black supermodel stormed the fashion world. Donyale Luna achieved the elusive supermodel status after she landed the prestigious cover of British Vogue in 1966. The New York Times described Luna as “a stunning Negro model whose face had the hauteur and feline grace of Nefertiti,” and her queenliness reigned as the premiere model of her time.
At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Luna was the personification of integration. After being discovered in Detroit by famed photographer David McCabe, Luna began ascending the ranks of the fashion world. Her image was omnipresent in magazines, billboards, movies and catwalks and Luna was considered an achievement for the Civil Rights Movement.
But Luna’s legacy disappeared after her death in 1979 at the age of 33. As Keli Goff, political correspondent for The Root, points out in her ode to the supermodel, “Luna’s name is still a rarity on many ‘black firsts’ lists. And Beverly Johnson is routinely referred to as “the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue,” for her turn on the American edition eight years after Luna’s British cover.”
Goff attributes the erasure of Luna to two factors: Her death and the arrival of the “black is beautiful” movement in the 1970’s. I agree, and will also add that Luna’s ascension was marred with tokenism, so her enduring legacy wasn’t as crucial to the fashion world as her presence.
At the time of fashion’s integration, the advertising industry was struggling to appeal to Black consumers due to segregation. Ebony had emerged, stealing potential consumers from other magazine publications, and the fashion industry’s profits were in decline. Six months after the launch of Ebony, the Johnson Publishing Company approached mainstream advertisers to place adverts within the magazine. In 1952 the head of JPC published an article in the advertising journal.Advertising Age claiming “the Black consumer market—which even in that era of suffocating segregation had $15 billion worth of buying power—was ‘ripe and ready’ for marker exploitation.”
JPC convinced white-owned advertising companies to place supplements in Ebony featuring black models selling products. Advertisers ran parallel advertisements in Ebony and Life magazines, using black models in the former. Segregated advertisements were successful, so agencies began running them in other publications. This caused a sudden demand for black models.
This led to a change in the methods used to target the expanding black consumer market, and was a precursor to the entry of the black woman into the modeling industry as a figure of glamour. The New York Post, in June 1955, reported on the changing image of the black woman from mammy to glamorous model, linking this changing image to the discovery of the lucrative black market. Black consumers didn’t respond positively to products that used racist representations of black people in their advertisements, so advertising agencies knew integration was the sole option.
The United States government also intervened, forcing advertising companies to integrate based on recommendations from the Warner Committee who found only “two integrated ads in the editions of four major magazines, reported last week that 16 companies (including IBM, Northrop, RCA, Equitable Life & Royal McBee) have used Negro models in national media this year while 20 others... have issued firm commitments.”
Jane Hoffman, a model of the 1960s, told Ebony there was a succinct purpose for using Black models in the era of the Civil Rights Movement.
“First there was the Negro that looked white. She soothed the company’s conscience. They’d say, “We used a Negro.” ‘Yeah. Where?’ Then there was the Negro girl you’d think of as something else. She wasn’t even beautiful—just a weird creature, some kind of space thing. She had to be so bizarre that no one could identify with her. I had people turn me down saying “Oh Jane! You’re too beautiful!” Now they’ll say you’re not Negro enough! Such ironies are rather a bitter truth for black models who range in skin color from cafe au lait to very black.”
So, modeling and advertising agencies sought “untraditional” models, or women of color with the same features as white models. It is against this historical background that Luna rose to prominence. Luna appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1964 and her “otherworldly features” including her stilt-like limbs, full lips, oval-shaped face and almond-shaped eyes weren’t considered traditional black aesthetics. This appealed to magazine editors and advertisers.
Luna’s emergence was significant because it represented desegregation. However, in order to maintain the privilege associated with landing these positions, Luna had to distance herself from the Civil Rights Movement. She once said, “The civil-rights movement has my greatest support, but I don’t want to get involved racially (Sims, 1979, p. 28).
Luna also adopted a carefree attit