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March 1966 front cover - she became Vogue’s first black cover girl. A black model gracing the cover of a mainstream magazine was of great cultural significance back in 1966. David Bailey, surely a connoisseur of beautiful women, remembers his first impressions of Luna. “She was extraordinary looking, she was so tall and skinny,” he says. “She was like an illustration, a walking illustration.” He is quick to play down his part in Vogue’s landmark decision. “It was just another beautiful girl,” he says cockily. “I didn’t care what she was, she could have been a fucking Martian for all I care.” He reckons the editorial folk at Vogue House were just as laid back about using a black model although he does concede, “the sales people always had a problem.” It is quite revealing that this milestone was made in the UK and not America where Harper’s Bazaar, who were happy to have her black beauty within the pages of their magazine, had only (dared) to feature drawings of Luna with a misleading pinkish complexion, on their January 1965 cover. Luna would have grown up in an America that rendered black skin second class and the only black faces she would have seen in the media would be those of actors playing servants or maids in films. There were not many black models either and the ones who did make it - mostly possessing Euro-centric features that could be more easily mistaken for something more ‘acceptable’ like Mexican - were confined to appearing in black women’s magazines like Our World and Ebony. America was still in the belly of the racism beast and Luna’s meteoric rise happened against the backdrop of Martin Luther King being assassinated (1968) and blood being spilt on the streets of her hometown of Dazed & Confused Detroit, (summer 1967) during clashes between African- Donyale Luna - Cult VIP Americans and the police. Admittedly, Luna was not at the front-line of battles by civil right foot soldiers but An accidental drugs overdose in Rome put an end to she did make a significant contribution to the canon the Donyale Luna phenomenon. During the 60s and 70s of black visual history. In 1967 the world’s leading the African-American Luna managed to enchant the mannequin manufacturer, Adel Rootstein, created a overwhelmingly white worlds of fashion, film and art mannequin in Luna’s image, which was a follow-up to with her arresting visual presence. The untimely death the company’s famous Twiggy mannequin of 1966. The of this impossibly tall girl from Detroit was 30 years ago perfect mannequin was now made in the image of a and it is only now that the resonance of her amazing life black woman and for the first time black beauty was is being felt. something to be proud of. Vogue said so. The mass enchantment with Donyale Luna, who was Luna, though, was not interested in being a black born the youngest of 3 children to working-class black icon and was pathologically reluctant to participate in parents in 1946, started at an early age according to race-centred discourse. A New York Times interview former boyfriend Don Strachan. “In Detroit every artist with her in May 1968 makes for uncomfortable wanted a piece of her, every writer wanted to write reading with the interviewer’s obsessive probing of about her and every director wanted to direct her,” he her multiracial lineage jarring with Luna’s obvious says of the 17 year-old Luna, an aspiring actress, who displeasure at talking about it. When the interviewer used to hang out with Strachan and his older, artsy asks her whether her high profile would open up college friends. It was not long after charming the more film roles for black actresses Luna answers in college boys of Michigan that the much-coveted Luna, what became a characteristically nonchalant attitude donning a schoolgirl plaid skirt, was discovered by towards matters of race. “If it brings about more jobs photographer David McCabe in downtown Detroit, who for Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Negroes, groovy,” marvelled at her willowy, 6ft 2in body and Nefertiti-like she tells the interviewer. “It could be good, it could be face. In 1965, the 18 year-old Luna went off to New York bad. I couldn’t care less.” Luna’s cavalier attitude to to become a model, disappointing her mother who had racial identity, as well as a penchant for wearing blue wanted her to go into nursing. It only took 3 months for eye contacts, was seen by some as race betrayal but the Luna effect to take hold at Harper’s Bazaar where was probably part of a process of reinvention that had she became the first African-American to feature in a begun in her teenage years. In fact, constructing a new mainstream magazine. In December 1965 Luna moved identity seemed a paramount concern to Luna who was to London where she became an even bigger hit and it born Peggy Anne Freeman but started calling herself was at Vogue’s ivory towers that more history was ‘Donyale’ in high school and adopted the surname made when David Bailey took her photograph for the ‘Luna’ when she was 18. Self-invention might have been her way of dealing with a turbulent home- would collaborate with him on art projects, books and life. Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga, who was photographs that mostly remain unpublished. “She was married to Luna in the 70s, admits she “never talked the one pushing for the creativity,” he says. about her past.” Cazzaniga was unaware, until recently, that that in January 1965 Luna’s father had died from Whilst Luna was being avant-garde in Rome other a gunshot wound to his chest fired by Luna’s mother black models had started to storm the catwalks. Clean- in self-defence. This tragic event had happened in the cut models like Beverley Johnson and Iman, whose same month that their daughter had made her Harper’s lives were not to end murkily through the overzealous Bazaar debut. use of a heroin needle, were louder and prouder ambassadors of the ‘black is beautiful’ message. Their In Europe Luna became a highly sought-after model more palatable versions of black womanhood loom working for a coterie of international designers large in the public consciousness today. Eccentric including Yves Saint Laurent, Mary Quant and Paco Luna, on the other hand who was eternally cagey about Rabanne. So fÍted was she as a model that in the her racial identity, had a habit of not wearing shoes documentary London Is a Swinging City (1967) she and waxed lyrical about LSD in interviews has, for the alone represents the film’s idea of the most swinging most past, been forgotten. Beverley Johnson who was model of the time. Luna, was however, not satisfied American Vogue’s first black cover girl in 1974 made with just being the darling of the fashion world and no secret of her disdain for what she saw as Luna’s had an obvious yearning for artistic experimentation unprofessionalism. “As for Donyale Luna, she doesn’t that had already been cultivated in New York. There wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she’s she had spent her non-model time acting in numerous from - Mars? She went up and down the runways on productions, hanging out with Miles Davis and being her hands and knees and didn’t show up for bookings” painted by psychedelic painter Mati Klarwein (artist Johnson said, in a 1975 interview with the New York for record covers for Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix). Times, vehemently denying that her career had been Her rare beauty and kookiness had also piqued the made easier because Luna fought the battles of racial interest of artist and collector of the Big Apple’s finest prejudice before her. Eventually the shoeless one’s eccentrics, Andy Warhol. Luna became one of only two reputation was usurped by the goody two-shoes of the black women (the other being Pat Hartley) to be part catwalk. of Warhol’s East Forty-Seventh Street Factory. Warhol deemed her fascinating enough to make one of his Recently though there has been a resurgence of Screen Tests of her in which she displays a queenly interest in Luna - Jennifer Poe is making a film about assurance, adjusting her hair and teasingly bobbing in her life, Don Strachan is writing a book about her and and out of shot. the American academic Richard J Powell has devoted a whole chapter to her cultural impact in his book Luna also got to pursue her first love, acting. Film roles Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. There came in thick and fast from distinguished directors, is a new school of thought that believes that Luna’s who used her towering physique and intense presence innate rebelliousness, that until now has besmirched to full effect. One of her most curious roles was in her chances of attaining iconic status, might also just Federico Fellini’s Satrycion (1969), the master of Italian be what makes her so damn fascinating. And strangely, cinema’s vision of the decline of the Roman. In the if not depressingly, the biggest triumph of Luna’s career small but unforgettable part her character’s vagina - her groundbreaking Vogue cover of 1966 - represents becomes the only source of fire in the village. Her final a battle that is still being fought. Sarah Doukas, scene shows villagers thrusting their unlit torches founder of Storm model agency and the woman who between her legs.

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