Source (Google.com.pk)
Top Fashion Models Biography
Cleveland studied at New York’s High School of Art and Design, where her first love was fashion. By her early teens she was designing and wearing her own creations. Her modelling career began in 1967 when she was spotted on a New York subway by Carrie Donovan, an assistant editor at Vogue. The 14-year-old was on her way to classes at LaGuardia Performing Arts School when, “This assistant followed me,” Cleveland recalled. “My girlfriend said, ‘You better run. There’s a dyke chasing you’. I said, ‘What’s a dyke?’”
Donovan, impressed with Cleveland’s style, invited her to Vogue to show her fashion designs. The magazine published a feature on her as a new young designer. From there she was picked up by Ebony magazine to model for their Fashion Fair national runway tour, and soon, designing was out and modelling was in.
From the start, Cleveland cut a distinctive figure on the Sixties modelling scene. She was tall and slender — a “rag doll, no tits,” she called herself. She was light-skinned, with aquiline features and a splay of free-flowing black wavy hair that she referred to as her “magic carpet”. While on tour with Ebony her European-style beauty meant that she was able to use the white washroom facilities, while her dark-skinned fellow models could not.
But within the biography of her eventful career Cleveland didn’t escape racism herself. She recalled one incident, while on the Ebony tour in Arkansas: “The Ku Klux Klan were coming, and their were throwing things at our bus with flames and fire, trying to kill us,” she told Barbara Summers in Skin Deep. “I’ll never forget that, because they didn’t want to hurt us, they wanted to kill us because of our colour...They tried to rape this one girl.”
After working with Ebony, Cleveland began to attract the attention of the major fashion designers of the day, working first with famous names such as Jacques Tiffeau and Stephen Burrows. Soon she was meeting and working with all of fashion's top playmakers, including Diana Vreeland, Irving Penn and Andy Warhol. But despite her early success Cleveland grew disillusioned with America and its racist attitudes towards black models, moving to Paris in 1970, and vowing never to return until US Vogue printed its first black cover.
Her career took off in Europe. She modelled for designers such as Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler and Christian Dior. Along with Karen Bjornson and Anjelica Huston she became one of Halston’s favoured troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes. She modelled part of the day and partied the rest of the time. While in St Tropez with Karl Lagerfeld she went to lunch on the beach in diamond collars, bracelets, rings, high-heeled shoes and a G-string. In London she partied with the gay crowd and dated Mick Jagger.
But it was on the runway that Cleveland established her fame. She brought her own theatrical style to the business, and her appearances were viewed more like performance art pieces. Cleveland could “tell a story in a dress”, remarked fellow model Rene Hunter. “When she moved, she painted the air around her with the clothes,” said Janice Dickinson. The pinnacle of her runway ostentation took place on November 28, 1973, when she was chosen as one of 30 black models to participate in a special runway event at the Palace of Versailles in Paris. Five famous American fashion designers lined up in a face-off with five of France’s best, in front of eight hundred guests. Fashion had never witnessed black beauty in such concentrated magnitude, all wearing the best designer clothes in the world.
Cleveland returned to United States in 1974 (the year of US Vogue’s first black cover model), and continued modelling into the 1980s. She went into semi-retirement after getting married and giving birth to two children, Anna and Noel. Today she still makes intermittent appearances on television and on the runway.
Top Fashion Models Biography
Cleveland studied at New York’s High School of Art and Design, where her first love was fashion. By her early teens she was designing and wearing her own creations. Her modelling career began in 1967 when she was spotted on a New York subway by Carrie Donovan, an assistant editor at Vogue. The 14-year-old was on her way to classes at LaGuardia Performing Arts School when, “This assistant followed me,” Cleveland recalled. “My girlfriend said, ‘You better run. There’s a dyke chasing you’. I said, ‘What’s a dyke?’”
Donovan, impressed with Cleveland’s style, invited her to Vogue to show her fashion designs. The magazine published a feature on her as a new young designer. From there she was picked up by Ebony magazine to model for their Fashion Fair national runway tour, and soon, designing was out and modelling was in.
From the start, Cleveland cut a distinctive figure on the Sixties modelling scene. She was tall and slender — a “rag doll, no tits,” she called herself. She was light-skinned, with aquiline features and a splay of free-flowing black wavy hair that she referred to as her “magic carpet”. While on tour with Ebony her European-style beauty meant that she was able to use the white washroom facilities, while her dark-skinned fellow models could not.
But within the biography of her eventful career Cleveland didn’t escape racism herself. She recalled one incident, while on the Ebony tour in Arkansas: “The Ku Klux Klan were coming, and their were throwing things at our bus with flames and fire, trying to kill us,” she told Barbara Summers in Skin Deep. “I’ll never forget that, because they didn’t want to hurt us, they wanted to kill us because of our colour...They tried to rape this one girl.”
After working with Ebony, Cleveland began to attract the attention of the major fashion designers of the day, working first with famous names such as Jacques Tiffeau and Stephen Burrows. Soon she was meeting and working with all of fashion's top playmakers, including Diana Vreeland, Irving Penn and Andy Warhol. But despite her early success Cleveland grew disillusioned with America and its racist attitudes towards black models, moving to Paris in 1970, and vowing never to return until US Vogue printed its first black cover.
Her career took off in Europe. She modelled for designers such as Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler and Christian Dior. Along with Karen Bjornson and Anjelica Huston she became one of Halston’s favoured troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes. She modelled part of the day and partied the rest of the time. While in St Tropez with Karl Lagerfeld she went to lunch on the beach in diamond collars, bracelets, rings, high-heeled shoes and a G-string. In London she partied with the gay crowd and dated Mick Jagger.
But it was on the runway that Cleveland established her fame. She brought her own theatrical style to the business, and her appearances were viewed more like performance art pieces. Cleveland could “tell a story in a dress”, remarked fellow model Rene Hunter. “When she moved, she painted the air around her with the clothes,” said Janice Dickinson. The pinnacle of her runway ostentation took place on November 28, 1973, when she was chosen as one of 30 black models to participate in a special runway event at the Palace of Versailles in Paris. Five famous American fashion designers lined up in a face-off with five of France’s best, in front of eight hundred guests. Fashion had never witnessed black beauty in such concentrated magnitude, all wearing the best designer clothes in the world.
Cleveland returned to United States in 1974 (the year of US Vogue’s first black cover model), and continued modelling into the 1980s. She went into semi-retirement after getting married and giving birth to two children, Anna and Noel. Today she still makes intermittent appearances on television and on the runway.
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