Without Pat Cleveland, there would be no Iman, Naomi, or Tyra. Earlier this week, the black fashion icon Pat celebrated a milestone. Let’s all say, Happy Birthday Original 70s Supermodel Pat Cleveland.
Her modeling career began by accident in 1967 and one of the first black models to achieve recognition on the catwalk. Pat rosed to fame during the civil rights era with her ground-breaking career.
Pat, born June 23, 1950, in New York City to a white father and black mother. Cleveland’s mother, Lady Bird, best known as an artist whose work depicted African American culture beginning in the 1940s in Harlem.
Pat, at fourteen years old on her way to design classes at LaGuardia Performing Arts High School, discovered for her style on a New York subway by Carrie Donovan.
Carrie, an assistant editor at Vogue, invited Pat to tour the headquarters. The magazine published a feature on her as an up and coming young designer. From there, in 1966, Pat selected by an African American lifestyle magazine, Ebony, to model for their annual Fashion Fair national runway tour. During Pat’s time touring in the South, the group experienced a terrifying run-in with the Klu Klux Klan.
As evident with the George Floyd protests, we know racism is still a problem. Back in the 1960s, Pat became disillusioned by the racism in the United States and moved to Paris. At that time, she declared she wouldn’t return until a black model starred on the cover of Vogue.
While living in Paris, Cleveland worked with Vogue illustrator Antonio Lopez and became a house model for Karl Lagerfeld. She modeled for designers such as Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, and Christian Dior. In 1973, Pat was one of the ten black models in the epic Battle of Versailles fashion show.
True to her word, Pat moved back to the United States in 1974 after Beverly Johnson featured Vogue publication broke the fashion glass ceiling. While back in the native New Yorker continued modeling in the 1980s. She also established a modeling agency in Milan, Italy, and published a volume of poetry in 2001 called The Spirit of Grace and her 2016 memoir, Walking with the Muses.
In 2003, Cleveland returned to the fashion runway, walking for designer Bill Blass and Stephen Burrows, and at Chanel, with her daughter, Anna van Ravenstein. Pat also modeled with her daughter for designer Zac Posen in 2013.
Ms. Cleveland paved the way for many others, as pictured in the 2001 iconic photo by Annie Leibovitz. Today, there are generations of beauties modeling the catwalks. André Talley once called her, “the Josephine Baker of ’70s runway modeling,” an apt tribute to her dazzling runway style.
It’s worth noting before Pat Cleveland, the evolution of the black model included pioneers: Dorethea Church, Helen Williams, Donyale Luna, and Naomi Sims. According to fashion historians, Donyale Luna, the first black woman to appear on British Vogue in 1966. After a sketch of her appeared on Harper’s Bazaar, January 1965.
Encountering racism never stopped Pat from pursuing her dreams. “My grandmother was one of the first black women to graduate from Spelman College – she was a slave and an orphan,” “So, when you think of your history, you cannot succumb to ‘oh, I’m no good because somebody says the palette is not right for that.’ You have to march through.”
After surviving six decades in fashion, the legendary runway rebel diagnosed with colon cancer in 2019 a little over a week after walking Paris runway. The 5’10” beauty lives in Willingboro, New Jersey, with her husband, Paul van Ravenstein of 38 years. Stay well, Pat.
As always, thank you for reading. Have a fantastic week stay safe, wear your mask, Corona is resurging.
