Elise BriscoUSA TODAY
Famed supermodels including Beverly Johnson and Tyra Banks are speaking out about how they revolutionized the runway.
The 2021 September issue of Vogue magazine features the models of today’s fashion industry on the cover – Black models like Anok Yai and Precious Lee are featured alongside Bella Hadid and Lourdes Leon – but the first Black model to ever grace the cover of Vogue happened less than 50 years ago in the 1970s.
“I’m aware of what that Vogue cover meant,” said Johnson, who was the first Black woman to cover the magazine in 1974, in a series of vignettes published by The Cut Tuesday for its fall fashion issue. She appeared on the Vogue cover dressed in a turquoise turtleneck with a scarf tucked underneath.
Johnson recalled in a 2009 column for Vogue that she was paid the editorial rate for her cover shoot that day: $100.
“But at the time, as a new model in New York City four years into my career, I didn’t know the impact it would have on Black models,” Johnson said.
Johnson went on to shoot many more magazine covers and snagged TV and film acting gigs. In an op-ed for the Washington Post last June she revealed she was paid less than her white counterparts throughout her modeling career and was even “reprimanded” for demanding to have Black makeup, artists and photographers, for her shoots.
Read the full story at USA Today | Entertainment.
