Now 80, she has always advocated for respect, recognition and equal pay for Black talent, with a passion and power that could never be ignoredhen Bethann Hardison was a kid she didn’t see faces like hers in magazines. Not that she needed them to feel seen as a Black woman. “I grew up feeling very secure about who I was,” she says assuredly over a videocall from her Gramercy Park apartment in New York. “And I didn’t long for anything to look like myself.
in the US of the 60s and 70s, which sought to ameliorate the racist image of African people and the diaspora in the public consciousness.Conceived by the legendary American fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, the purpose of the Versailles show was to raise funds towards the restoration of the historic palace, with the world’s most glitzy, glamorous and seriously minted in attendance, including Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol.
Onstage that November night, they danced and sashayed to Liza Minnelli singing Broadway tunes, and a DJ playing Al Green and Barry White. Anyone who arrived unconvinced of America’s fashion prowess left a believer. For Hardison, it was when she stepped into Burrows’ yellow silk dress that she felt especially recalcitrant. “When I walked out, all the programmes were up in the air and they started screaming and yelling, ‘Bravo! Bravo!’” she says. “Even though we presented first, I knew we had it.
But, in 2013, 40 years after the Battle of Versailles, Hardison entered a new conflict on the fashion frontlines when it came to racial diversity. By the early 00s, the Black Is Beautiful movement had all but vanished from fashion. The Eastern bloc had opened up, allowing young, super-skinny models from Russia and eastern Europe to work in the West. There was a shift towards models, says Hardison, where, “you don’t notice the girl, you only notice the clothes.
“They did not understand what they were creating,” says Hardison. “I had to believe in my heart that they were being ignorant, not intentional.”