“I’m sure that in Paris Milan seeing this amazing person walking around, she was treated like a celebrity.” In a 1966 interview with Time magazine, Luna contrasted how differently she was received in her hometown. “Europeans didn’t have that kind of racial phobia that Americans had,” he says. McCabe, who is British, believes this may have fueled her desire to remain in Europe for much of her career. After the interviewer asked if claiming to be a quarter black during the civil rights era was a bit like someone claiming to be a quarter Jewish in Nazi Germany, Luna replied, “That’s America’s problem.” (In an e-mail to the Cut, Luna’s widower, Luigi Cazzaniga, who photographed her for Playboy, says that Luna identified as “mulatta” and “felt rejected by the black community and the white one.”) During a 1968 interview with the New York Times, she stressed her non-black ancestry, which she claimed consisted of Mexican, Irish, and more. Her self-described ethnic background evolved depending on the audience. Luna’s face, most notably her lips and nose, are also obscured on her British Vogue cover, also somewhat hiding her race. Luna’s first major cover, for Harper’s Bazaar in 1965, was a sketch in which her racial identity remained ambiguous. In Versailles ’73, a documentary about the competition, fashion historian Barbara Summers said the event “caused a major reversal in how the fashion industry looked at black women.” Johnson’s American Vogue cover followed in 1974.īut in the mid-sixties, “the magazine world really wasn’t ready for photographing beautiful black women,” McCabe says. The Americans were praised for employing eight black models out of the eleven who walked the runway - a seminal moment. fashion designers won a fashion face off against their French counterparts. A key turning point was the so-called “Battle of Versailles” in 1973, when U.S. While the “black is beautiful” movement began gaining traction in the late sixties, black models didn’t truly enjoy their coming out until the seventies. But Burrows is probably right in pointing to timing as a reason why Luna’s legacy has been largely overshadowed. Others place greater emphasis on American Vogue than foreign editions. There are some who believe a 1968 Ladies Home Journal cover featuring Naomi Sims was more groundbreaking because of its mainstream American reach. In fashion, defining breakthroughs is also a subjective art. “She didn’t have the time on Earth to have a legacy,” Hardison says, while Burrows agrees that, “she wasn’t around too long.” Perhaps even more crucially, he says, “She was ahead of the black model thing. Part of this has to do with the fact that Luna died young at 33, from a drug overdose while living in Italy. Luna with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in 1968. 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. Luna’s name is still a rarity on many “black firsts” lists. She’s just unbelievable.” Soon Avedon began photographing her, too, eventually signing her to a one year contract.ĭespite all that, Luna’s role as a trailblazer is largely forgotten. “I also called Richard Avedon,” he remembers. In 1964, he got that call, and sent the ensuing photos to various agencies. She stopped to see what was going on.” He told her that he was a photographer for magazines like Mademoiselle and Glamour and that, if she was ever in New York, she should call him. “I was struck by this almost 6-foot-tall beautiful girl – around 14-years-old at the time – wearing her Catholic uniform. “I was on a photo assignment in Detroit, photographing Ford cars there was a school nearby,” he recalled. She was like a really extraordinary species.” Soon, Luna became one of the first black models to attain superstar status in Europe, photographed by the legendary photographer David Bailey, famed for his images of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.ĭavid McCabe, known for photographing celebrities like Twiggy and Andy Warhol, recognized that Luna had something special the first time he saw her in 1963. Luna, as shot by Luigi Cazzaniga, her husband.Īt the height of her career, the New York Times called Luna “a stunning Negro model whose face had the hauteur and feline grace of Nefertiti.” The designer Stephen Burrows recalled that “she was just one of those extraordinary girls.” And in 1966, when Beatrix Miller, the editor of British Vogue, chose her as the first-ever black model for that magazine’s cover, it was because of “her bite and personality.” Bethann Hardison, another ascendant model, remembers that “no one looked like her.
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