Category: Fashion

Jordan Roach + Minett Mouton Assistant Stylist | Casting and Production by XTheStudio

Hair by Takuya Sugawara @ Walter Schupfer Management using Aveda | Makeup by Miriam Robstad @ Bryan Bantry | Manicure by Honey Nailz | Video Director of Photography Kao Cheng Kai | Production by XTheStudio | Stylist Assistant Jaclyn Mastropasqua | Production Assistant Benjamin Price

Dress by Alexander Wang Ring | Earrings by Sarina Suriano

She is a woman who has danced with Dietrich and Warhol, was a muse to the genius Yves Saint Laurent, became a favorite to photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, and was one of the first African American models to walk the runways in Paris. Pat Cleveland is an icon that has the same vivacious, exuberant spirit that helped build a career which has spanned over five decades.

To call her simply a model would not do her justice. She is a star. Former Vogue editor-at- large Andre Leon Talley once called her “the first black supermodel, the Josephine Baker of the international runways!”. Even with all the fame, traveling the world, dancing on tables, and living the glamorous life with an eccentric and famous crew of famous friends. A tour through the South modeling for Ebony Fashion Fair, exposed her to the nation’s racial divide on a first hand account. Confrontations with the Ku Klux Klan, and later with the American fashion industry’s incessant bigotry, led Pat to flee to Paris where she soon became the house model for Karl Lagerfeld. Since then, she has traveled the world, shot with some of the biggest names in history, was a fit model at the atelier of Christian Dior, and immortalized the colorful characters of her life via her new memoir, Walking with the Muses.

What is it about the fashion industry and modeling that inspires you and gives you passion for the work?

Fashion gives you an open runway, like a runway for an airplane. You get ready to take off and go to another world with all these people that you meet. The designers and all the visionaries, like the photographers who are so technically talented, they make you look better than you could ever imagine.

Can you tell us how you first started working for big designers like Halston?

Halston was one of the first designers to see me in a fashion show in Chicago, and I did not know who he was at the time.. He was introduced to me by Stephen Burrows, the designer, and he told me, “that’s someone you should know and work for” but who knew he would become what he became. It was the green part of his career, the early beginnings and luckily enough I was there. He was so gorgeous, so confident, and such a gentleman. To be with him in a room he would give you confidence about yourself by just being in his presence. And there I was, right off the Fashion Fair, and Stephen Burrows introduced me to Halston. Jump to sitting there with the other ladies in his New York salon on 68th street. The Getty’s and the Berenson’s and all these amazing people like Naomi Sims and Elsa Peretti and Anjelica Huston.

Dress by Reem Acra | Earrings and Bracelet by Sarina Suriano

What part did the late Yves Saint Laurent play in your career?

He was so important and so young and so beautiful and such a free spirit and untouchable by many. He was so playful, and to my career he was everything an artist should be because he could teach you how to totally evaporate yourself and be in that space of being in love with something other than yourself. He was friends with my friends, like Antonio Lopez, and it was like a big love fest and we would go out and dance all night. Everybody was young and gorgeous and free. It was like a big flirtation, and I was just thrown in there like a sandwich with the boys floating along with the rest of the swans.

What was it like to be a fit model for the legendary couturiers of Paris?

Being pinned into couture…what an honor! Now there is a whole new way of producing things, with everything done by computers. But the draping! If you can see a couturier drape a dress, then you have gotten to the art of fashion. It’s like a dance you can see them throw the fabric and I remember seeing Halston doing that and Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. Like one time I saw Halston taking a bolt of fabric and just throwing across the floor and just start cutting into it rapidly. He just worked out of faith, he just knew it was going to be good. The confidence they had was important.

What were those first fashion shows like for you?

It was a different time. We used to walk down the salon with cards with numbers in our hands so clients would know what dress to order. He had jazz bands play music, but it wasn’t like the big shows they have now; it was the beginning. I mean, the big show was the Fashion Fair and we had commentary like, “This is a sensuous woman walking down, imagine having this outfit from Dior” or something like, “Imagine yourself in this Valentino, wearing this to your debutante ball”.

Dress by Joanna Mastroianni | Fur by Georgine | Earrings by Sarina Suriano

Do you remember the change in the production value as in the runway shows from what you described to what they are today?

Well, I think Hollywood had a lot to do with it. The director Busby Berkeley, putting on a show, being in America, the funky sounds and music and dancing, and this crazy time started exploding in every culture. I remember going to Paris and it was just a small room full of socialites and countesses and princes sitting in a beautiful salon having tea and looking at us models in the dresses and touching the fabrics. Back then the music was setting the pace and they got the black girls to move to the music and then you HAD to move. I started dancing like a dancer on the runway and then the audience would feel good and it was contagious.