The documentary Invisible Beauty tells the story of Bethann Hardison, a fashion revolutionary who has been on the front lines of racial justice in her industry for over five decades. Through her life journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent and activist, the film explores race, beauty, and representation.

This is an abstract from our conversation in Park City after the screening of Invisible Beauty at the Sundance Film Festival.

 

Bethann Hardison attends as Gucci Celebrates the Premiere of Bethann Hardison & Frédéric Tcheng’s Invisible Beauty at the Sundance Film Festival at Nickel Bar at Firewood on January 21, 2023 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Gucci)

 

Why “invisible?”

What happened is that Black, brown and yellow fashion models, at one given point, began to disappear. There was even a study called ‘Still Invisible’ documenting what the advertising industry wasn’t doing, and how the industry sees models of color. I liked the title, but I never thought less of myself because of my color. The first model that inspired me was a blonde girl with blue eyes, when I was 11 years old, Carol Lynley, and I was crazy about that blonde girl. She was very famous, always on the cover of Seventeen magazine, and then she became an actor. A lot of times, a lot of the young Black models say, “I never saw anyone that looked like me. Then came Naomi Campbell, and that made me feel better about myself.” I never felt like that. I never felt less, no matter who I saw.

It’s interesting how your film recalls that in the 1970s there were so many Black models. And then they disappeared for over a decade, and now they are back.

Back in the day, say the ’60s, there was a woman who started a modeling agency, called Black Beauty, and it was primarily Black models. Then another one started around 1970. I started in the garment business working with designers. There were always Black models around. Beverly Johnson, Iman and different models came along, but it became a real strong influx of Black models in the early ’80s, and they were working! It may have been because I existed, but I had a white modeling agency. I just had some Black kids in it and they started to come out. I think it was almost a spiritual thing what wound up happening because they had never before been editorialized. They were runway models, not print models.

 

So what happened?

What happened is that a wonderful man named Regis Pagniez from Paris was sent by Filipacchi, the publishing house that owned Elle magazine in France, to America to open American Elle. This man didn’t care what you looked like. If he thought you were beautiful, he wanted you. This guy started Elle magazine and competed quickly against Conde Nast and Hearst: Mademoiselle, Glamour, Vogue. This man came into America, started the magazine, and he started using so many Black girls. That changed the game. This was in the early ’80s.

That’s when you started the Black Girls Coalition?

Yes, I started the Black Girls Coalition. But then the Berlin Wall came down, Eastern Europe opened up, and scouts started going into Eastern Europe, Estonia, you name it.  These scouts started seeing those girls were available for our market and started to bring these girls in. Body alignment is perfect. Other people say they’re skinny and all that, but that’s what models are supposed to be. They say they look malnourished. Well, of course, Eastern European people were kind of malnourished! The girls started to come through because of this flux of the industry changing. And certain designers latched on to these Eastern European girls because they brought a new image. Miuccia Prada was one of them. No more Linda Evangelistas. No Christy Turlingtons. No Naomi Campbells. None of the glamour supermodels. They didn’t want any of that. Those Eastern European girls became “hangers with the bun in the back,” and they’re all blonde. They didn’t use any kind of girl with whom you would notice the girl before you noticed the clothes. That’s why we used to call them ‘hangers’ [laughs].

So, designers all seemed to align with this trend?

Yes. Designers are typical of each other. No matter how individual they are, they tend to follow trends. They start to do what the other guy’s doing. And all of a sudden, the Black model has been replaced.

That lasted a while, right?

Ten fucking years. Put that in the article. Ten fucking years! I had just given up my modeling agency in 1996. I was going down to Mexico, starting a new life in my little house and loving it.  And the next thing you know, I start getting these phone calls. “You got to come back, Ma. You got to come back because it’s terrible. There’s no Black models.” “What do you mean there’s no Black models?” And I started thinking, “Okay, I got to get back there and do something.” One year went by. Two years went by. I said, “Shoot, I got to get back there.” So I go back and I’m still trying to get it together. And by the fourth year, it just looked like it was never going to change. I kept thinking, “It’ll change, it’ll change.” And it didn’t. So that’s when I called the first press conference which you see in the film, with all the famous black models surrounding me and expressing their views. That was the beginning of it.

You were just being an advocate at that point.

I think it’s just you come to the earth to do certain things. I had more to lend to speaking to people, but it was never because I was a model. I knew how to tell deal with other models.

See, I grew up in the garment business. The models you see today, the models you know today, they didn’t come from where I come from. My background is apparel working with designers. That changed. This whole fashion thing changed with, what you can say, pop culture. I was a runway model. A runway model is different than a print girl. A runway model just serviced the industry. We wear the clothes, but we weren’t photographed.

Let me explain it better. There were two divisions in the industry of models. There was a division that was only for designers. We didn’t do pictures. We just did runway shows. We fit the clothes. We were fit models. We were production models. We were going to shows to show for the buyers. We were those girls. We serviced the industry of apparel, the real fashion industry. And there were the print girls who just did all the magazines. It’s completely different than what we did. I was the girl on the runway. I was never the print girl. So I was just somebody who had the nature to be able to take care of models. I’m a mother, not a mama. Like more a ‘mamacita,’ not a mother.

You did become a mother figure for so many of them.

Yes, I have a big family. That’s why I don’t miss my children! [Laughs.] And I still have two little houses in Mexico! I don’t spend enough time there. After this movie, I want to start thinking about spending four months a year there, four months in upstate New York and maybe four months in Marrakesh. I love it there!

You had a relationship with Calvin Klein, right?

I was one of Calvin’s regular models. He would have me come to his studio to help him with his fittings because he loved my style. I always had great ideas. I was the one who told him, when he did the first jeans, to put a heel on with that jean. No one had ever done that before. No one ever wore heels and jeans ever until he and I sat down one night in his studio. And the one thing they would do is bring me a six-pack of beer. And I would sit there and talk and try things on and he would say, “Oh my God, look at the shirt Bethann is wearing!” And he would show me what he was doing with the clothes, and I’d say, “You need to give it a longer leg.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Put a heel…” He said, “Heel? You can’t wear heels and jeans.” But he did! He put the heel on with the jeans and that changed everything. That became a trend which still lasts.

The film talks about the role Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, had on the resurgence of Black models.

Franca was incredible. We became friends. When she did the Italian Vogue Black issue, she asked me to come and help her. So I was an editor there, living in America, shooting all the young models that came in. She needed me to do that for the online version. She was the first one to do it online, out of all the magazines. We became close. Whenever I would go to Paris, I would see Franca. I loved Franca. Everyone loved Franca. Franca was an exceptional human. We had a nickname for each other, “BB.”

What did “BB” stand for?

She was my Black Blonde. She called me “BB” for Bourgeois Black. I said, “I am not bourgeois Black!” Franca would laugh and tell me I was! It was a big loss when she died. 

Another Italian, Gucci, had a role in the film? How did that happen? 

Gucci supported the film. I’ve always been a Gucci lover. Not so much for the clothes or the luxury leathers, but because I like the gangster criminal side of it all. Every time Aldo Gucci would come into town, we had lunch together. This young Black girl from Brooklyn sitting there with these men. But what impressed me mostly about Gucci is that they closed their store as if they were home in Italy. Was it from two to four pm? And it was New York City! I thought that was fucking cool!

A few years ago, you sent a strong letter, as we see in the film, telling all the designers and the fashion industry to change and be more diverse. How satisfied are you with where the situation is today in the fashion and modeling business?

It’s changed so much.   After I sent those letters, everybody stepped into place. So now they’re doing so many Black models that I’m having a tough time finding white models [laughs]. And I take all the credit! We can never go back to where we were. Funny enough, I’m still looking for that great white girl. Somebody recently told me, “White models are now having more difficulty getting jobs.” And I say, “I can only imagine that, but I can’t feel too sorry because if I do, there will be Blacks who say, ‘Well, it’s about time they feel it.’” Right? Because it’s been a long ride. Come on kids. I needed to put the Black girl back in and the Black boy back in. But I didn’t mean to replace anybody. They’re still there, the white girls. As we say in that first Black Girl Coalition press conference, “We’re looking to integrate not separate.”

That’s why you are such a visionary! Do you consider yourself a feminist?

It’s interesting about the Women’s Movement, because the thing that we talked about with Gloria Steinem and all those girls when they came along, people used to say, “You’re a feminist.” And I said, “The last thing I am is a feminist.” But I didn’t understand what feminism really meant. But then I understood, and it was a nice white woman who helped me understand.

Culturally, women are different. White women really needed to have their independence. Black women had it all along. We wish that some man would tell us to stay the fuck home and let us pay the bills. We never had that. Our mothers had to just keep on going because a lot of men left. Whether they broke up as a couple or because they got beaten down as human beings to the point that they didn’t feel good about themselves anymore. The reverse of that is in the white culture, the Caucasian world. And it was interesting that they basically were always in the house, and they really, really, wanted to get out. Black women were already out, wishing that the man they loved, and they had children with, stayed with them. So at the end of the day, those white women out there wanted to march and take off their bras. Well, my bra was already off!

Not a feminist perhaps but a strong supporter of women.

Absolutely. When I do my dinners, I always do them all with only women. You know why? Because they don’t get a chance to do that. And they’re always impressed that I gather them all together. If I’m going to have a baby shower, why would I want men there? I don’t understand that. To me, there are moments when women should only be together. I do appreciate that, because I think that we need to get our strength together and be smarter, so we can take this shit over. I think that really women can run this. We’d do a much better job.