black models
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Icon to Icon: Zendaya Paid a Stunning Homage to Modeling Legend Donyale Luna. Now, Can We Get a Biopic?
Another week, another Zendaya cover? Well actually, there are, in total, four versions of Zendaya’s December-January collector’s edition cover for Essence. But there’s also more than one woman being immortalized in this series of highly stylized black-and-white images conceived by Zendaya’s longtime stylist and creative director for the shoot (and 2019 The Root 100 honoree),…
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E! People's Choice Fashion Icon Award Winner Tracee Ellis Ross Reminds Us Fashion Is in Her Blood
The widely beloved Tracee Ellis Ross has many identities: award-winning actress, director and producer, activist, beauty entrepreneur, and the middle daughter of stage and screen icon Diana Ross. Lesser known is that well before she was delighting us on Girlfriends or Black-ish (which returns this Wednesday), Ross was a model-turned-fashion editor—before which, she was just…
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'She Is the Blueprint': Vogue's November Cover Celebrates the Iconic Impact of Naomi Campbell
Fashion may be fueled by trends, but Naomi Campbell has never gone out of style. The supermodel shifted the paradigm for beauty when she entered the industry in the mid-’80s, cementing her place in the firmament among fashion’s most famous faces by the early ‘90s. Three decades, countless covers and catwalks, and a few well-publicized…
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'I Knew I Was a Token': Beverly Johnson Revisits the Trauma of #ModelingWhileBlack—Including That Time They Drained the Pool
In case you forgot, supermodel Beverly Johnson is a g—one of the originals, in fact. And the woman who walked so Naomi can strut is far from finished wielding her decades-long influence on fashion, as evidenced by her recent revelations about her groundbreaking career, which included being the first Black model to land the cover…
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Cover Stories: The #VogueChallenge Is a Black Beauty Revolution for the Fashion World
In a world currently consumed with black trauma (and copious amount of white guilt, in response), black beauty may feel like a luxury we can’t currently afford as the moment demands we keep our eye on what feels like an ever-moving goalpost. Nevertheless, beauty is not only necessary to black life, but it is a…
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B. Smith, Trailblazing Fashion Model and Entrepreneur, Dead at 70, Husband Confirms
B. Smith, the trailblazing fashion model who proved to be more successful as a restaurateur, television personality and branding pioneer, has passed away at age 70. Her husband, Dan Gasby, confirmed her death on the couple’s Facebook page Sunday morning. “It is with great sadness that my daughter Dana and I announce the passing of…
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Pretty in Pink: Halima Aden Is Essence’s First Cover Star to Wear Hijab
She’s Muslim, an icon of modest fashion, and one of the models of the moment. Now, Halima Aden is also the first model to wear hijab on the cover of Essence, giving us all-pink-everything glamour for the magazine’s January/February 2020 issue, the first in celebration of its 50th(!) year. As the issue illustrates, Aden is…
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Beauty, Brains and Bravery: Remembering Mama Cax
It is with profound sadness that The Glow Up learned today that one of our favorite models and activists, Cacsmy “Mama Cax” Brutus, has died at age 30. Fondly called Cax by her colleagues and clients in the fashion industry, the Haitian American broke new ground as an in-demand model who’d survived cancer as a…
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From Here to Eternity: Fashion Icon Bethann Hardison Proves Her Slay Is Timeless in Gucci's New Lookbook
When it comes to fashion influencers, there’s one who’s been at it since before Instagram was a twinkle in its creators’ eyes. Advocate, activist, agent, influencer and prodigal model Bethann Hardison began her approximately 50-year career in fashion as a merchandising student who failed to graduate from New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology (h/t…
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Google Us, Baby: What Loni Love Doesn't Know About Black Plus Models Is Hurtful to the Women Who've Been Doing the Work
“There are no real plus size icons for me,” The Real co-host and author Loni Love told Hello Beautiful earlier this month—ironically, while hawking her first fashion collaboration with full-figured fashion stalwart Ashley Stewart. While The Glow Up and a whole gang of Aretha, Oprah, Queen Latifah, Jill Scott, and Lizzo fans would beg to…