When 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.” Once she walked in the Battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973, however, she became an inspiration to a world of Black girls who felt not only seen, but beautiful too.
In the half-century since, Hardison has blazed a trail across runways around the world, opened her own highly successful modelling agency and continues to be a well-loved, well-known advocate for people of colour in the fashion industry. But that 1973 show in Paris – which pitted American and French designers against each other – remains one of the most significant moments in her legacy.
