page_title: Donyale Luna
section_title: Detroit and New York
hierarchical_section_title: Donyale Luna / Modeling career / Detroit and New York
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Starmannequin Periana aus Guadeloupe präsentiert ein Kettenhemd von Paco Rabanne.
context_page_description: Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Peugot Luna, better known as Donyale Luna, was an American supermodel and actress who gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s, generally cited as “the first black supermodel”, Luna was the first African American model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, in March 1966. She entered modeling in a period which favoured 'white passing models' and has been described as 'the first black model who really began to change things; to enable more diverse beauty paradigms to break through.' She is known to have been a covergirl 11 times between 1965 - 1975.
  She appeared in several underground films like the screen tests of Andy Warhol, and had roles in Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?, and most notably as Enotea in the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon as well as Otto Preminger's Skidoo in the role of 'God's Mistress'.
context_section_description: Luna was discovered by the English photographer David McCabe on the streets of Detroit around the Fisher Building in 1963. Luna was then invited to move to New York City to pursue modeling. At first, her mother discouraged her from traveling to New York wanting her to become a nurse instead, but Luna persisted and her mother sent her to live with an aunt near the New York Harbor in New Jersey.
  In October 1964, Luna called McCabe and he sent out her photographs to various agencies. McCabe introduced to Harper's Bazaar editor Nancy White and fashion photographer Richard Avedon; White signed her to an exclusive contract for the remainder of 1964, while Avedon served as her manager. Her first job as a model was a shoot for Mademoiselle with Woody Allen. In November 1964, Luna moved out of her aunt's apartment into her own in New York City.
  In 1964, working as a model for Paco Rabanne, Luna witnessed American journalists spitting in the face of Rabanne because his fashion show used only black models.
  Nancy White had Luna's likeness sketched into an illustration for the January 1965 cover of Harper's Bazaar, replacing a pre-planned cover – the first black person ever put on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in its then 98 years of publication. The sketch was her first work for Harper's Bazaar, and included six other illustrations in the January 1965 issue. In the April 1965 edition she was shot again by Avedon in the 'What's Happening' editorial, along with Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton and Ringo Starr. In the editorial, she was described as a 'Masai Warrior', which was picked up in an article by the Sarasota Herald Tribune who then explored the work prospects of African-American women.
  In April 1965, Luna received news of her father's death but decided to not return home for the funeral. Around this time, Luna also began having problems with Avedon. In an interview with an Italian magazine in 1975, she recalled that "The more successful she became, the more controlling and possessive her fashion-photographer-manager became".
  Luna's career began to slow down when she met with the color bar of print publishing at the time. Southern US advertisers had reported complaints against the inclusion of Luna's images in Harper's Bazaar, pulling their advertising revenue, with readers cancelling subscriptions. Designers Mainbocher and Norman Norell refused to dress Luna in their clothes, and Harper's Bazaar owner William Randolph Hearst had stopped Avedon working with Luna after her contract expired. Richard Avedon believed that he was no longer allowed to work with Luna due to 'racial prejudice and the economics of the fashion business'. McCabe later stated he believed that "the magazine world really wasn't ready for photographing beautiful black women". Black models were only shown through "a racial script that brought together both primitivism and modernity as the material precondition for participation within the industry," an "exotic noble savage" role.
  Due to the death of her father and a failed marriage of 10 months in New York, she then had a nervous breakdown and spent time recovering in hospital at the end of 1965. Two years later she told the New York Times that she fled New York for Europe, at the end of 1965, when she found “they said beautiful things on one side and turned around and stabbed you in the back.” She would later remember of the move to Europe, "I wouldn't have to be bothered with political situations when I woke up in the morning - I could live and be treated as I felt, without having to worry about the police coming along".
  
  Avedon (who had moved over to the American Vogue in 1966) requested Luna again for a shoot around Northern Japan featuring furs, he told Doon Arbus he had requested her specifically because of his association with her as an "extenuated black girl" given "there was no way of not being reminded of Egypt and not being reminded of Watusis and Africans", again using the primitivist iconography which Luna had been portrayed in her shoots with him in Harper's Bazaar. Diana Vreeland, along with Alexey
caption: A black model in Paco Rabanne in 1971. Luna modeled for Rabanne in 1964, bringing derision from American journalists.
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