Black Butterfly: Model Muses at the Metropolitan Museum

I've decided that if we get a do-over, I want to come back a supermodel. Not the anonymous coat hangers from places like the Czech Republic or Estonia, but the genetically blessed creatures who by virtue of their abundant pulchritude wound up retired by 30, married to moguls and millionaires, and staring at trunks of the best couture threads, from Azzedine Alaia to vintage Versace.

You know them on a first-name basis: Naomi, Christy, Linda, Cindy...

The "Model as Muse" exhibit closed this past weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. I swung by for a second time to take a good look at the dizzyingly beautiful show, which included well-curated rooms devoted to decades in fashion and modeling from the 1920s on.

Archival issues of Vogue were flung open to memorable images by lensmen, including Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon. In some instances, looks worn on the page were featured on mannequins arranged on plateaus.

You would have recognized looks from George Michael's "Freedom" video in the '80s room, and pieces from Marc Jacobs's infamous Perry Ellis collection in the grunge room. G.M. and Nirvana pounded from the speakers in the corresponding spaces; it was perfect, if obvious.


But I gravitated to the pioneering black models, some of whom I admittedly had only passing familiarity with: Naomi Sims, who died at 61 just days before the exhibit ended and covered the Oct. 1969 issue of LIFE; Donyale Luna (left), who was cast in William Klein's Qui-Etes Vous, Polly Magoo? (1966) and landed a 1964 cover of British Vogue.

If you missed this show, you can always grab the catalog at the gift shop. Or the souvenir Marc Jacobs lipstick tube pens!

Chanel No. 1

Back when I barely had a notion that I might one day find my name and affiliation taped to a front row seat at Fashion Week in New York, I used to watch the shows on the local cable channels, daydreaming, wishing I were there. So much of the thrill of the shows to me was about the (black) models, whom we knew then by name: Naomi, Veronica, and later, Alek, Liya. At the top of the current crop of generously pigmented beauties is Sessilee Lopez, Arlenis Sosa, Jourdan Dunn, and Chanel Iman (pictured). Chanel happens to be one of my favorite posers right now. A rash of commercial and editorial work has followed her, from GAP campaigns to coveted spreads in Vogue and Teen Vogue. The girl can do Neutrogena-scrubbed clean as effortlessly as high fashion Marc Jacobs. The 20-year-old biracial model has been tabloid fodder for her dating choices (Ryan Leslie, Kanye), both real and imagined, but it's the strut that got my attention. She's gangly and almost equine (impossibly long limbs) off the runway, but under the flashing lights, playing dress up, she does her dual namesakes proud.