It used to be that models across the spectrum weren’t considered to really have stories at all, much less ones so interesting that they’d make it to the big screen. Models were understood to, essentially, look pretty and help sell clothes by (usually male) designers — not to reflect candidly about their lives and careers.
Things have changed from, say, the 1970s, when Hardison, now 80, was at the height of her modeling career, traveling across the globe, being photographed in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue and walking the runway at the Battle of Versailles fashion show. This month alone, there are multiple documentaries and docuseries that tell the stories of Black models.
That sounds dry, and even a little wistful. But it’s because she had to be persuaded to do a movie about herself when for several years she had been working in vain to get an exposé on the modeling industry’s prejudices off the ground. (One that still sounds pretty necessary, for archival’s sake, but Hardison felt it became obsolete once the industry began changing its ways.)
“Invisible Beauty,” the new documentary on her that she also co-directed and wrote with Frédéric Tcheng, is far from the portrait of a woman who had ever really felt unfulfilled or unrecognized — despite what its title implies. It often serves as a record of the illustrious life she’s led and continues to lead as well as her myriad successes. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s a straightforward, cradle-to-present-day biopic in documentary form. The movie traces her life from Brooklyn as the daughter of a socially conscious Islamic imam, who recalls Malcolm X visiting her home, to becoming a model in her 20s and later helping shepherd the careers of nonwhite models, including Naomi Campbell, as the founder of her own agency.
During our conversation, she is as frank and personable as she is in “Invisible Beauty,” fondly remembering details from her storied journey. “First of all, I’ve been married twice,” she said with a laugh. “Second of all — a lot of boyfriends, a lot of lovers. And I still keep one or two, in different ports.”
“We were coming off a time frame that we are very conscious,” she recalled. “And at the same time, everybody’s cool. Our girls — it’s an integrated campaign of models: white, Black, Asian. And at the end of the day, it was all good. We all had a good time. I can’t forget Norma Jean.”
How many audiences today recognize any of these names, including Hardison’s? I’ll put myself on the spot, as I admit that I only knew of Cleveland and Sims before I watched “Invisible Beauty” months ago. Maybe that is my own ignorance as someone who’s never closely followed the modeling world.
That’s a common assumption that puts a lot of responsibility on the increasingly popular medium of films and TV to share those stories, however elemental that some are. It seems that is why so many of them have sprouted lately, with a presumption that they will spark further interest of viewers who are genuinely interested in learning more about the past.
That kind of sentiment seems to be what “Time of Essence,” OWN’s recently aired docuseries, hopes to tap into. Darden, 83, appears for about five minutes total in the first episode of the five-part series, which primarily functions as a look back at Essence magazine’s decadeslong journey.
Campbell has more of an opportunity to tell hers in “The Super Models,” the Apple TV+ docuseries that premieres Wednesday. It attempts to parse the complicated ’90s era of modeling through the biographies of supernovas Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista. But is it necessary?
Neither did the movie’s filmmakers. Producer and former magazine editor Melissa Kramer was first intrigued by Luna when she saw her on the cover of a 1965 issue of Harper’s Bazaar at a 2006 exhibit. Because she was totally unaware of her existence. Oh, and because Luna was recognizably Black but appeared as a fair-skinned illustration on the magazine.
But seeing Luna’s image thrillingly made Kramer want to find out everything she could about her. So, down the rabbit hole she went, long before the film became an idea. Finding bits of information on Luna only sent Kramer down more rabbit holes, becoming a low-key “investigator” on the project as she continued to dig for the answers.
Among Kramer’s initial questions is a pressing one that serves as a good starting point for the narrative in “Donyale Luna: Supermodel”: Why was Luna only illustrated when most magazines moved away from illustrated covers 20 years prior?
The documentary extensively unpacks that, ultimately unraveling a fascinating and personalized story of a model, born Peggy-Ann Freeman in Detroit, whose relationship with her Blackness was, in a word, knotty. Yes, she struggled to navigate prejudice in the industry. Still, she reached unheard-of heights as one of almost no other Black models during her time in the ’60s.
She was also bullied as a child by those in and outside of the Black community for her unusual look, later wearing color contacts and telling some press and others in her circle that she was from the moon when they asked, or she’d say that she was mixed with Mexican or Native blood.
That certainly left a lot of ground for “Supermodel” to explore through interviews with those who knew Luna at certain points in her life as well as cultural experts who helped contextualize her as a complex Black figure. While Jefferson tries “not to explain her away,” she does have a takeaway after her deep dive on the model.
“I think very early on she decided that she wanted to control her own narrative, and she also wanted to make up her own narrative,” the director told me. “And so what you knew is what she told you, and she could tell you a different story on a different day.”
And at age 33 in 1979, years after she finally stepped away from the spotlight, she died after a drug overdose. She left behind a 1-year-old daughter, Dream, and her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga. As Hardison put it later in our conversation, she didn’t stick around, she metaphorically “jumped out a window.”
Themes of mental health, Blackness and beauty all come into razor-sharp focus in “Donyale Luna: Supermodel.” But with that comes the question of how a filmmaker can tell this story without falling into a common trap of venerating Black figures of the past without reflecting on their complexities.
Luna’s approach to her Blackness was very different from others around her time, including Johnson and Cleveland, who are both interviewed in “Supermodel.” Despite the obstacles Luna faced, she was not vocal in the ’60s amid the rising Black civil rights movement before she left for London. And that is fairly critiqued in the film.
“Donyale Luna: Supermodel” is certainly an example of storytelling that not only presumes audiences today could be interested in someone they might not have heard of, but also that they would remain invested once they realize that she was a flawed icon who didn’t necessarily hold up the race. Multiple truths aren’t exactly popular in today’s pop culture landscape.
“We also have to appreciate the fact that she was the first,” Jefferson added. “Maybe she didn’t do it the way we would’ve wanted her to do it, but what she accomplished during that time is tremendous. And I don’t think that should be forgotten.”
Or, as Hardison explained to me, whose stories are assumed to be all the same. She told me that she was invited to be interviewed in “Supermodel” but ultimately turned it down. “I couldn’t do it. I didn’t like Donyale Luna. But that’s just coming up as a kid and you’re looking at her like, all these gay boys making so much of her. I’m like, ‘Ah, she all that’ — that mentality.”
“For someone to say that to me — can you imagine?” she said, clearly still annoyed. “That’s like, wow. I said, ‘What’d you just say?’ Because the executive said that and then she couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.”
This content was originally published here.
