PARIS – Bethann Hardison is one of the most famous black figures in the fashion world. Ever since she walked in the Battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973, she has been defending the rights of black models. She fights for equal rights and equal pay for them. Today she is 80 years old and the owner of a very famous modeling agency.
Hardison says that as a child she never saw faces like hers in fashion magazines. “I grew up feeling very secure in who I was, I didn’t feel the need to show myself,” Hardison said, and when she walked in the Battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973, she broke new ground for Black girls who felt not only “seen” but also beautiful.
The 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show in Paris, which pitted American and French designers against each other, played a pivotal role in the industry. The appearance of 10 African-American models on the catwalk on the stage of the Théâtre Gabriel became one of the most meaningful symbols of the “Black is Beautiful” movement, which aimed to correct the racist image of the fashion world.
The Versailles fashion show, designed by the legendary American fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, aimed to raise funds for the restoration of the historic palace with the participation of the world’s leading figures, including Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol.
The French designers were Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Pierre Cardin, Marc Bohan and Hubert de Givenchy, representing the European approach to haute couture as opposed to the North American “ready-to-wear” approach.
Hardison, a dark-skinned, 31-year-old black woman with short hair, was among the 36 models invited to Paris by five American designers – Halston, Anne Klein, Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows and Bill Blass.
The French press magnified this US-European clash, refusing to take the American designers seriously in the run-up to the event and portraying the benefit as a cultural war.
Hardison not only modeled for Klein, de la Renta and his friend Burrows, the only black designer, but also co-produced the US event. “The American designers had to work with a skeleton crew and the models had to spend long days in the cold palace with ‘no toilet paper’ and ‘no good food’. In addition, the planned sets were unusable. We felt very lonely,” she recalls. When they went on stage, she says, they were a huge success, receiving a standing ovation from the most important fashion names in Europe.
At that fashion show, Hardison decided to make the fashion industry a multicultural space where diversity was celebrated. In 1984, she opened her own modeling agency, Bethann Management, launching the careers of Veronica Webb, Kimora Lee Simmons, Roshumba Williams and the first Black male supermodel, Tyson Beckford. As one of the first black-owned modeling agencies, the company catered to all the major players in the fashion industry and had a multicultural staff.
Recognizing that black models were underpaid compared to their white counterparts, Hardison founded the Black Girls Coalition in the ’90s, which included Naomi Campbell, Iman and Tyra Banks, and advocated for black and ethnic minority models to be more prominent in print and on the runway and to be paid the same as their white counterparts.
In 2007, Hardison began holding town hall meetings in New York City, sharing her experiences with designers, agents, models and organizations. At the time, he was nicknamed “The Oracle” after the character in the Matrix movies.
In 2008, Franca Sozzani, former editor of Vogue Italia, prepared the “Black” issue under Hardison’s guidance. The cover featured all-Black models and the magazine’s sales tripled. “
In 2013, exactly 40 years after the Battle of Versailles, Hardison entered a new conflict on the fashion world’s racial diversity front. In the early 2000s, the Black is Beautiful movement had all but disappeared from fashion. The Eastern bloc had opened up, allowing young models from Russia and Eastern Europe to work in the West. Noticing the shift in attention towards these models, Hardison said, “You don’t notice the girl, you just notice the clothes. It’s an idea that changes the game and makes the others disappear in an instant.” She chose to stay away from fashion for a while.
Then came the issue of “bleaching”, which became increasingly common on the catwalks, in lookbooks and magazines.
Diversity coalition
Hardison could not believe this decline. “Even though we had achieved success, it was continuing to decline and it was time to do more,” he said, secretly founding the Diversity Coalition. He sent members to the front rows and backstages of the fall/winter 2013 shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris. When the results were appalling, she wrote an open letter and sent it to the media, national fashion councils and leading designers. Chanel, Versace, Prada and Alexander McQueen were among the main culprits for ignoring models of color, the letter made clear: “Whatever the intention, the result is racism.”
Hardison recounts: “This letter took them by surprise. Designers immediately made a conscious effort to include models of color in their fashion shows and advertisements. Prada featured a black model, Malaika Firth, in its fall/winter 2013 ad campaign for the first time in 19 years.”
At 80, Hardison remains one of fashion’s most influential figures. “I hope people realize that the only truth you can fight for is the rights we have as human beings,” she says…