Pat Cleveland on Conquering Racism to Become the World's First Black Supermodel
Pat Cleveland was 16 years old when she was told she would never make it as a model.
It was the late Sixties, and Cleveland, who had just signed with Ford Models, was sitting nervously in a large leather chair in the agency's intimidating Manhattan office. Co-founder Eileen Ford had requested to see the lanky teenager for some "real" talk.
"Patricia, we have very few colored girls in our agency. And do you know why?" Cleveland remembers Ford saying. "Because there is no work for colored girls. The only reason I took you is because [photographer] Oleg Cassini recommended you. But I really think you will never make it in the modeling business."
Clearly the late Ford, known as the grande dame of the modeling industry, was wrong. Cleveland went on to become one of fashion's most prolific models-and as Andre Leon Talley described her in his 2003 memoir A.L.T.: A Memoir: "The first black supermodel, the Josephine Baker of the international runways." (Cleveland did, after all, start out before Beverly Johnson, and long before Iman.)
Despite Ford's skepticism, Cleveland stayed with the agency. Now 65 and striking as ever, Cleveland details the deeply entrenched racism and discrimination she faced throughout her career in a new memoir, Walking with the Muses.
"It really bothered me because I would sit there and watch these black girls be rejected because they weren't good enough," she told HarpersBAZAAR.com, referring to a specific "go-see" she had with photographer Patrick Lichfield, who had told her: "Tell that agency not to be ridiculous. This is not the type of girl I want to photograph."
"I would sit there and watch these black girls be rejected because they weren't good enough."
Two years before that meeting with Ford, Cleveland had been spotted by a fashion editor on her way home from her Manhattan high school.
"My mother said to me, 'If you don't wear makeup, nobody's ever going to look at you and you'll die lonely,'" admits Cleveland. "So I put on that eyeliner and I put on the clothes I'd made. I went to school. And that was the day I was discovered."
She pauses for a few seconds, before breaking into her famous, wide smile: "It was the eyeliner!"
Though Cleveland says she shrugged off the editor's interest, her mother convinced her to take the meeting.
"All you need is one person to believe in you. And my mother thought that I could do that and I thought I couldn't do that because I looked at the magazines and I didn't see anybody who looked like me," she reveals.
After taking calls with photographers, Cleveland was cast for the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling runway show featuring African-American models that first started in 1958. Cleveland describes it as a show that brought high fashion to middle-class black women around the country.
"Sometimes we'd do shows in a restaurant or a hotel and the runways were a little shabby but the ladies were always elegant," she says. "They were dressed in gloves and furs and hats, and they were somebody even if the prejudice poison was in the air."
The show took the girls deep into the South. Cleveland grew up in New York-her father was a saxophonist from Sweden; her mother an artist who grew up in the Jim Crow South. There, the young models experienced run-ins with the Ku Klux Klan. They were also told they weren't allowed to use the restrooms at a diner.
"We went for a walk, my girlfriend and I, and people threw rocks at us," Cleveland recalls. "We were attacked by people when we tried to use the lavatories. Just being black in the South was a very horrible experience-horrible in contrast to all the beauty we were trying to bring to the world."
Soon after, she went to model for Essence-the first glossy for black women. But Cleveland found she didn't fit in there, either. For the first time, she wasn't "black enough." She writes in her memoir:
"[Photographer Anthony Barboza] wasn't convinced that I fit in with its mission. He would kid around, saying, "I only photograph black girls" or "You're not black enough." That hurt my feelings. I just wanted to be photographed no matter what color I was… While blacks were often denied opportunities because of their skin color-and believe me, I lost plenty of jobs because I didn't have the conventional all-American looks that higher-ups at fashion magazines considered pretty-I also got passed over for jobs that went to models who were a deeper shade of brown."
Despite Barboza's hesitation, Cleveland did appear in the first issue of Essence. After that, she switched agencies to Wilhelmina, where an agent told her that she needed to become a success abroad to make it big in America. So in 1971, Cleveland set out for Europe where she connected with models like Donna Jordan and artists like Andy Warhol.
"I looked at the magazines and I didn't see anybody who looked like me." - Pat Cleveland
"They're used to different kinds of cultures there, you know?" she says. "We went to Paris and showed our colors like peacocks. We let those feathers just come right out. My friend Karl [Lagerfeld], he knew how to live very well and he knew how to dress well. It was such an education. He knew what fork to use, what time to come and what time to go. He was our meter and he was our guide. We taught him how to be free and American, and he taught us how to be European and royal. We just exchanged our cultures, basically. It was like, 'ooh taste this, ooh that's yummy, ooh you taste this now!'"
Cleveland found immediate success. By day, she was modeling for magazines in both Europe and the U.S., regularly walking the runway for brands like Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent and Kenzo. By night, she was dancing in nightclubs with the likes of Mick Jagger, who she dated on-and-off.
"He's so playful and such a lovely person," she reveals. "The time when that was happening, I think he was between everything. He was going to be married to this one and that one. I was always sort of in between somewhere."
She also caught the eye of artist Salvador Dali, who she met through her friend Juan Fernandez, one of Dali's muses.
"He said, 'I want you to pose for me. Can you get up on the table? Now pretend you're a dog and get on all fours and throw your derriere up!' I posed for him many times. He became a friend." Here, she he pauses, deciding whether or not to go on. Finally she adds slyly: "He told me one thing, he said, 'The most beautiful art that a woman can make is to have a child. And I didn't know where he was going with that!'"
Still, Cleveland was much more than a muse. She participated in the legendary Battle of Versailles fashion show during her time in Paris. The 1973 event pitted French designers against their American contemporaries. Of the 36 models used by the American designers, 10 were African-American-a monumental shift from the mindset she left behind in the US years earlier.
"I think the designers began to understand the cultural changes. In order to fit in you have to go with the flow or else you're out in the cold," she says, gazing at an old modeling shot of herself on the cover of her memoir. "Everything started changing. I was lucky because I was surfing right on the top of the wave."
Diversity, she says, is "so international now!" When she started modeling, things were "black and white with no middle ground. The world has changed-we're all part of one world now. Fashion has to be for everyone."
Cleveland, who moved back to America in 2006, continued to model over the next several decades. She recently walked the runway for H&M at Paris Fashion Week. And now her daughter Anna Cleveland is a successful model in her own right. Cleveland says despite what she experienced starting her career, she encouraged her daughter to follow in her footsteps.
"Modeling is just in her DNA. She's got it and I say if God gives you something, use it," she says. "She's having as big a love story with fashion as I had with some of the same people."
