Black Look in Beauty

In No Strings, Richard Rodgers' otherwise forgettable Broadway musical of seven seasons ago, Diahann Carroll was cast as a Negro girl from Harlem who struck it rich as a high-fashion model in Paris. For plausibility's sake, it had to be Paris. Nobody would have believed the story if it had been set in Manhattan, least of all Diahann herself.

Actress Carroll had tried to make a go of modeling in the 1950s, but failed miserably. Fashion-magazine editors shied away from using Negro models for fear of offending readers and advertisers. When Diahann was able to find work, it was usually for such Negro publications as Ebony or Jet, and she was paid only $10 to $15 an hour v. the $35 to $50 an hour earned by white models. "I finally decided there was no future for a Negro in modeling," she says.

Spindly Siren. Today, of course, Diahann is the star of her own highly successful TV series, Julia. Black faces abound in ads and TV commercials; TV advertisers seem to have made it a rule of thumb that if three models in an ad are white, the fourth must be black. The breakthrough in fashion modeling has been more remarkable and, at the same time, less dutiful. Three years ago, a spindly siren from Detroit named Donyale Luna stalked onto the fashion scene and became an overnight success: In one whirlwind year she posed for Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, Queen and the American, British and French editons of Vogue. Donyale since has gone on to bigger things: a movie role for Otto Preminger, now one for Federico Fellini. But she left behind a fashion industry that has started thinking black.

In recent months, for the first time in their history, Mademoiselle and Ladies' Home Journal have taken to using Negro as well as white models on their covers; black mannequins have appeared in almost every issue of Vogue and Bazaar for the past year. Of the 100-odd girls employed by the Ford model agency, New York's biggest and best known, a dozen now are black. Other formerly all-white agencies have similarly integrated their rosters, and in the past three months two new agencies have opened in Manhattan to handle black models.

Eleanor Lambert, the fashion publicist known as "the voice" of Seventh Avenue, feels that "this is the moment for the Negro girl. She has long legs, is apt to be very thin and wiry. That is the look of now." It is also the look of Naomi Sims, 21, a 5-ft. 10-in. Pittsburgher whose other vital statistics (32-23-34) will never qualify her for a Playboy centerfold, but make her currently one of the most ubiquitous and highest-paid fashion models in the world. Two years ago, Naomi was studying psychology on a scholarship at New York University. Now she is the girl in the A. T. & T. ads ("Fashions by Bill Blass, Telephone by A. T. & T.") and the "Body Magnetic" in Harper's Bazaar, clad only in a black body stocking.

Natural Afro. Naomi's model success, if not matched, is at least approximated by half a dozen other Negro mannequins. Charlene Dash, a willowy, 5-ft. 9-in. New Yorker, got her big break with a two-page spread in Vogue last January, since then has appeared in Look and filmed a Noxzema commercial that alone earns her $178 a week in residuals. Jolie Jones, green-eyed cafe au lait daughter of Jazzman Quincy Jones, this month appeared simultaneously on the covers of Mademoiselle and Coed. Carmen Bradshaw, who accentuates her dark beauty with even darker makeup, is one of the girls who split in two in the RCA television commercial. Anne Fowler has been modeling for eight months, but already has appeared in Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Vogue and Redbook, in a magazine ad for RevIon and two TV commercials.

The "Afro look" is the specialty of Yahne Sangare, who comes by it naturally: she is the daughter of the Liberian ambassador to Paris. By any modeling standards, Haitian-born Jany Tomba was an instant success; she started work only last January, has since posed for Simplicity Patterns, the J. C. Penney catalogue and a Seventeen ad.

To some extent, fashion publications and advertising agencies are using blacks because of the temper of the times. But photographers have more professional reasons for insisting that black is beautiful. "Negroes photograph better against white," explains Bert Stern--and most pure fashion photography is white-backgrounded to show off the clothes. Milton Greene, famed for his photographs of Marilyn Monroe, adds: "Black models are more willing and able to put out for the camera."

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