She received death threats as a young model, but that didn’t stop her. She refused Muhammad Ali’s proposal, inspired Dalí and set up her own agency – then became an artist
In the late 60s, Pat Cleveland was one of the most popular models in New York, working with the best-known photographers: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Hiro. Yet she could not get on the cover of Vogue. The photographers “were all very upset”, she says, “because they’d shoot covers of me and sometimes the editors said: ‘Wow! This is the cover!’ Then they’d replace me with a caucasian girl. I just got fed up.”
She made a vow. “Why am I going to waste my time” in the US, she wondered, “when they don’t care about people of colour?” In 1971, she moved to France, promising not to return to the US until a black model was on the cover of US Vogue.
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