In honour of Black History Month, my beauty icon is the first notable African-American supermodel and first black cover girl,
Donyale Luna. I hadn't heard of Donyale until recently when reading about Andy Warhol who she had done a couple of
screen tests for. When the media talks about past supermodels of colour you usually only hear about Beverly Johnson, Iman, or Naomi Campbell. It was interesting reading about her once glamourous life that later turned tragic. Starting her modeling career at the age of 20 in the mid '60's, her thin 6'2 frame, exquisite larger-than-life eyes and care-free personality took over the fashion world by storm. She broke down many barriers in the high fashion modeling industry being the first black model to grace the covers of Harper's Bazaar and British Vogue. During her years as a model and after, she also appeared in a few films including the lead role in
Salome. As with most bright shining stars of that time, drugs always played a role in their demise. The beauty that was Donyale, ended tragically of a drug overdose in '79. Although she is gone, her beauty and the role she played in opening doors for women of colour in the fashion industry lives on. The strange thing is that in 2008 we're still not seeing enough women of colour on the runways! Colour is beautiful don't you think?
To read more about Donyale Luna visit click
here and
here.
In honour of Black History Month, my beauty icon is the first notable African-American supermodel and first black cover girl, Donyale Luna. I hadn't heard of Donyale until recently when reading about Andy Warhol who she had done a couple of screen tests for. When the media talks about past supermodels of colour you usually only hear about Beverly Johnson, Iman, or Naomi Campbell. It was interesting reading about her once glamourous life that later turned tragic. Starting her modeling career at the age of 20 in the mid '60's, her thin 6'2 frame, exquisite larger-than-life eyes and care-free personality took over the fashion world by storm. She broke down many barriers in the high fashion modeling industry being the first black model to grace the covers of Harper's Bazaar and British Vogue. During her years as a model and after, she also appeared in a few films including the lead role in Salome. As with most bright shining stars of that time, drugs always played a role in their demise. The beauty that was Donyale, ended tragically of a drug overdose in '79. Although she is gone, her beauty and the role she played in opening doors for women of colour in the fashion industry lives on. The strange thing is that in 2008 we're still not seeing enough women of colour on the runways! Colour is beautiful don't you think?
To read more about Donyale Luna visit click here and here.
5 comments:
Great post Joy. I had never heard of Donyale either.
Prada cast a single black girl this season, I almost had a heart attack. Too bad the collection isn't that great.
Thanks Anita! I was really glad to come across Donyale because I didn't want to feature a model we always here about.
Yah, I couldn't believe there was a black model for Prada! I agree - collection was not my favourite.
I never heard of her. She's lovely!
How did you find out about her.
wow thanks for posting that. i've never heard of her i don't think. i look forward to learning more about her. i never even here tyra, iman or others talk about her as one of the pioneers!
I found out about her while reading an article on Andy Warhol. It's so strange because I've never heard other models talk about her either. It's probably because her career was so short lived and ended way before she died. Who knows but she was such a beauty!
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