Clever girl coalition querious12/8/2023 ![]() That’s half of my heritage, and the other half is French. I just felt like her fight for diversity and how she pushed for representation-it’s not something that I spent a lot of time thinking about growing up in France, but I really should have, because it’s just something that seeps into your personality. She just has that charisma, that upbeat way of talking and looking at things, and she’s a nonconformist, and she just, she’ll just take you by surprise, make you laugh, make you think. I remember telling her after that she reminded me of Diana Vreeland, who I never met but I made it a documentary about. ![]() She’s so compelling, and she was so much fun to be around. She has not only a great story, but an incredible way of telling the story. I interviewed her one afternoon, and we talked for maybe four hours, and we could have gone for four more hours. Photo: Getty ImagesįT: I met her in 2014 when we worked on a short film for the CFDA. Hardison, accepting her CFDA Award from Iman and Naomi Campbell, in 2014. I walked into the North Moore space and said, “this is it”: oak wood floors, wide open space, a little kitchen in the back. And I wanted something-it’s so funny to say this-without fluorescent lights. Because I have no lead horse in front of me, I have no pattern to follow. John Casablancas was like, what are you doing? But I didn’t want to be in midtown or uptown. Were there other agencies there at the time?īH: Oh no. When John John Kennedy moved in, he moved in four buildings from me. Where was that in New York City?īH: Tribeca, North Moore Street between Hudson and Varick. I’d seen some of the Battle of Versailles stuff, but not your agency days. ![]() But there were people in my life saying, “Hey, this is great you’re doing this documentary, but somebody should do a documentary about you.” I was trying to tell that story, and I was going to use three models and tell their stories. In the beginning I was trying to use the medium to expose the industry because the industry had flatlined. It took me a long time to get out of my own way and let this film be about me. Is it all yours?īH: For me, I didn’t think I had enough to tell my own story. It must’ve been a lot of work to gather all those images and that footage. ![]() In the movie I learned that your father was friendly with Malcolm X.īH: Yes, he used to come often to talk to my father. And time after time, in 1992, in 2007, in 2013, she called out the lack of Black representation in fashion and its adjacent industries. In 1994 she signed Tyson Beckford to the exclusive contract with Ralph Lauren that transformed him into the first Black male supermodel. Near the end of Invisible Beauty, the new film about her life that she co-wrote and co-directed with Frédéric Tcheng premiering at Sundance this weekend, she says, “there’s not going to be another Bethann.”Īnd really, how could there be? In 1973, Hardison was one of the Black models who won the Battle of Versailles for the American designers (one look at Hardison and her contemporaries Pat Cleveland and Alva Chinn and the French didn’t stand a chance). Tracee Ellis Ross says she’s “the godmother of fashion.” Iman says she’s her “Statue of Liberty.” And Naomi Campbell calls her “ma.” But nobody’s as good on the subject of Bethann Hardison as Hardison herself. The model-turned-model agent-turned-advocate and activist Bethann Hardison has been called many things over the decades.
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