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{{short description|American model and actress}}
{{Short description|American model and actress}}
{{very long|date=December 2021}}
{{over-quotation|both=y|date=July 2024}}

{{Use American English|date=July 2020}}
{{Use American English|date=July 2020}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2020}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2020}}
{{Infobox model
{{Infobox model
| name = Donyale Luna
| name = Donyale Luna
| image = Donyale Luna.jpg
| image = Donyale Luna.jpg
| image_size =
| image_size =
| caption = Luna, in a 1966 ''[[Twen]]'' shoot
| caption = Luna, in a 1966 ''[[Twen]]'' shoot
| alt =
| alt =
| birth_name = Peggy Ann Freeman
| birth_name = Peggy Ann Freeman
| birth_date = {{birth date|1945|8|31|mf=y}}
| birth_date = {{birth date|1945|8|31|mf=y}}
| birth_place = [[Detroit, Michigan]], U.S.
| birth_place = [[Detroit, Michigan]], U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|1979|5|17|1945|8|31|mf=y}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|1979|5|17|1945|8|31|mf=y}}
| death_place = Rome, Italy
| death_place = [[Rome]], Italy
| death_cause = [[Heroin intoxication]]
| death_cause = [[Heroin overdose]]
| occupation = Model, actress
| occupation = Model, actress
| yearsactive =
| yearsactive =
| spouse = {{marriage|Luigi Cazzaniga|1976}}
| spouse = {{marriage|Luigi Cazzaniga|1976}}
| children = 1
| children = 1
| height = {{convert|6|ft|2|in|m}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wyllie|first1=Timothy R. |last2=Parfrey|first2=Adam|last3=Nasr|first3=Sammy M. |date=2009|title=Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment|publisher=Feral House|isbn=978-1-932-59537-6|page=68}}</ref>
| height = {{convert|6|ft|2|in|m}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wyllie|first1=Timothy R. |last2=Parfrey|first2=Adam|last3=Nasr|first3=Sammy M. |date=2009|title=Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment|publisher=Feral House|isbn=978-1-932-59537-6|page=68}}</ref>
| hair_color = Black
| hair_color = Black
| eye_color = Brown
| eye_color = Brown
| agency =
| agency =
}}
}}


'''Peggy Ann Freeman''' (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979), known professionally as '''Donyale Luna''', was an American model and actress who gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s.<ref name="thecut.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html|title=The First Black Supermodel, Whom History Forgot|website=The Cut|date=July 10, 2013 }}</ref><ref name="meikmag.com">{{Cite web|url=https://meikmag.com/en/donyale-luna-the-first-black-supermodel-in-history/|title=Donyale Luna: The first black supermodel in history|date=April 28, 2020|website=MEIK}}</ref> Generally cited as "the first Black supermodel",<ref name="goff">{{cite web |last1=Goff |first1=Kelli |title=The First Black Supermodel, Whom History Forgot |url=https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html |website=The Cut |publisher=thecut.com |access-date=June 20, 2018 |date=July 10, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/02/14/donyale-luna-worlds-first-black-supermodel/79102546/ |title=Remembering Donyale Luna, world's first black supermodel |website=eu.usatoday.com |access-date= }}</ref> Luna was the first [[African-American]] model to appear on the cover of the British edition of ''[[British Vogue|Vogue]]'', in March 1966.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna - Telegraph|author=|date=|website=fashion.telegraph.co.uk}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/black-fashion-model-donyale-luna_n_1246588.html|title=Donyale Luna, The First Black Model To Cover Vogue UK (PHOTO)|first=Julee|last=Wilson|date=1 February 2012|publisher=|via=Huff Post}}</ref>
'''Peggy Ann Freeman''' (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979), known professionally as '''Donyale Luna''', was an [[African Americans|African-American]] model and actress who gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s.<ref name="thecut.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html|title=The First Black Supermodel, Whom History Forgot|website=The Cut|date=July 10, 2013 }}</ref><ref name="meikmag.com">{{Cite web|url=https://meikmag.com/en/donyale-luna-the-first-black-supermodel-in-history/|title=Donyale Luna: The first black supermodel in history|date=April 28, 2020|website=MEIK}}</ref> Generally cited as "the first Black supermodel",<ref name="goff">{{cite web |last1=Goff |first1=Kelli |title=The First Black Supermodel, Whom History Forgot |url=https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html |website=The Cut |publisher=thecut.com |access-date=June 20, 2018 |date=July 10, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/02/14/donyale-luna-worlds-first-black-supermodel/79102546/ |title=Remembering Donyale Luna, world's first black supermodel |website=eu.usatoday.com |access-date= }}</ref> Luna was the first Black model to appear on the cover of the British edition of ''[[British Vogue|Vogue]]'', in March 1966.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna - Telegraph|author=|date=June 9, 2015|newspaper=The Telegraph}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/black-fashion-model-donyale-luna_n_1246588.html|title=Donyale Luna, The First Black Model To Cover Vogue UK (PHOTO)|first=Julee|last=Wilson|date=1 February 2012|publisher=|via=Huff Post}}</ref>

Although the first Black cover model, Luna was not the first black model, as she was preceded by models (then called mannequins) such as [[Aïcha Goblet]] ([[Années folles|artists]] model), [[Adrienne Fidelin]] (first black model in ''Harpers Bazaar'' in September 1937), [[Sarah Lou Harris Carter|Sarah Harris]], Bani Yelverton (first black model to appear in an American fashion show), and [[Anthea August]] (first black model in British ''Vogue'' in 1963), who entered into previously '[[One-drop rule|White]]' modelling spaces before the 1966 cover.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/obituaries/ady-fidelin-overlooked.html|title=Overlooked No More: Ady Fidelin, Black Model 'Hidden in Plain Sight'|first=Rachel|last=Felder|date=April 29, 2022|website=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-man-who-shot-beautiful-women/NF6A7VS7473SH425EJYKAVCLR4/|title=The Man who shot Beautiful Women|first=Remy|last=Blumenfeld|date=January 21, 2014|website=nzherald.co.nz}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.essence.com/fashion/fashion-week/history-black-models/#299532|title=The History of Black Models|date=October 28, 2020|website=essence.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/gallery/peter-rand|title=From Grace Coddington To Bob Dylan, Revisit Peter Rand's Greatest Swinging '60s Portraits In Vogue|first=Poppy|last=Roy|date=May 13, 2021|website=vogue.co.uk}}</ref> Luna entered modeling in a period that favored "[[Passing (racial identity)|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".<ref name="formidablemag.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.formidablemag.com/donyale-luna/|title=DONYALE LUNA - FORMIDABLE MAG - Style Icon}}</ref> She appeared on 11 fashion magazine covers between 1965 and 1975.


She appeared in several [[underground film]]s such as the screen tests of [[Andy Warhol]] (1966), and had roles in ''[[Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?]]'' (1966) and, most notably, as Enotea in the 1969 [[Federico Fellini]] film ''[[Fellini Satyricon]]'', as well as Otto Preminger's [[Skidoo (film)|''Skidoo'']] (1968) in the role of "'God's Mistress".
Luna made several [[underground film]]s with [[Andy Warhol]] beginning in 1965, and following the experimental film ''[[Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?]]'' (1966), she appeared in Otto Preminger's [[Skidoo (film)|''Skidoo'']] (1968) and Federico Fellini's ''[[Fellini Satyricon|Satyricon]]'' (1969).


==Early life==
==Early life==
Donyale Luna as she later became known, was born Peggy Ann Freeman in [[Detroit, Michigan]], to working-class parents Nathaniel Freeman and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog) in 1945.<ref>While some sources give her birth name as Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Pegeon Freeman, the name on her birth certificate is Peggy Ann Freeman.</ref> She was one of three daughters, Lillian, Peggy-Ann, and Josephine.<ref name="blackpast.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/luna-donyale-1946-1979/|title=Donyale Luna (1946-1979) •|first=Olga|last=Bourlin|date=June 30, 2014}}</ref> Her parents had moved to Detroit from Georgia as part of the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Powell|first=Richard J. Powell|title=Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture|year=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-67727-9|page=87}}</ref> Her father, of mixed African-American heritage, worked in production at the [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] plant, and her mother, of African-American & German heritage, worked as a secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association and had been given the nickname 'Big Peggy' to differentiate her from Peggy-Ann, who was "Little Peggy". Luna's parents married and divorced on four separate occasions due to their "headstrong characters" and Nathaniel's relatives alcoholism. They lived a "financially stable upbringing in a middle-class neighbourhood of Detroit" on Scotten Avenue. As a child, she would frequently go on trips to local [[Movie theater|cinema]]s with her father and in summer to swim at the "[[Kronk Gym]]" in Detroit.<ref name="vogue.co.uk">{{Cite web|url=https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/donyale-luna-model-vogue|title=Remembering Donyale Luna, The First Woman Of Colour Ever To Appear On The Cover Of Vogue|website=British Vogue|date=April 19, 2019}}</ref><ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 14 {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}</ref>
Peggy Ann Freeman was born in [[Detroit, Michigan]] to working-class parents Nathaniel Freeman and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog) in 1945.<ref>While some sources give her birth name as Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Pegeon Freeman, the name on her birth certificate is Peggy Ann Freeman.</ref> She was one of three daughters, Lillian, Peggy Ann, and Josephine.<ref name="blackpast.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/luna-donyale-1946-1979/|title=Donyale Luna (1946-1979) •|first=Olga|last=Bourlin|date=June 30, 2014}}</ref> Her father had moved to Detroit from Georgia as part of the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Powell|first=Richard J. Powell|title=Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture|year=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-67727-9|page=87}}</ref> Her father, of African-American heritage, worked in production at the [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] plant, and her mother, of African-American and German heritage, worked as a secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association and had been given the nickname "Big Peggy" to differentiate her from Peggy-Ann, who was "Little Peggy". Luna's parents married and divorced on four separate occasions due to their "headstrong characters" and Nathaniel's relatives’ alcoholism. Luna and her sisters had a "financially stable upbringing in a middle-class neighbourhood of Detroit" on Scotten Avenue. As a child, her father frequently took her on trips to local [[Movie theater|cinema]]s, and, in summer, to swim at the "[[Kronk Gym]]" in Detroit.<ref name="vogue.co.uk">{{Cite web|url=https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/donyale-luna-model-vogue|title=Remembering Donyale Luna, The First Woman Of Colour Ever To Appear On The Cover Of Vogue|website=British Vogue|date=April 19, 2019}}</ref><ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 14 {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}</ref>
[[File:CassTechOld.jpg|thumb|Luna attended [[Cass Technical High School]] in Detroit]]
[[File:CassTechOld.jpg|thumb|Luna attended [[Cass Technical High School]] in Detroit]]
As a child, she attended the Detroit High School of Commerce, where she studied data processing and typing. As a teen, she attended [[Cass Technical High School]], where she studied journalism, performing arts and languages and was in the school choir, local community theatre and the experimental Concept East Theater.<ref>[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=e9I_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZuEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,1650834&dq=princeton+cass+technical&hl=en Parade] - ''[[The Modesto Bee]]'', 8 January 1967</ref><ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15">Ben Arogundade, ''Beauty's Enigma''', 2012, p. 15, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref> It was during this time that she began calling herself "Donyale George Luna" aged 18, thought to have "been her way of dealing with a turbulent home life" when her mother began raising the family as a single parent, and was also said to speak with an accent as "Donyale", which "she spoke not with a broad A or a French R, but in an accent she'd invented". Her mother said its tone "was like she was singing".<ref name="dazeddigital.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/22897/1/luna-space-model|title=Luna Space Model|date=December 13, 2014|website=Dazed}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://delectant.com/donyale-luna-iconic-american-cover-model-soars-heat-civil-rights-movement-50-years-ago/|title=Donyale Luna, Cover Model Soars 50 Years Ago • FashCam|date=January 5, 2016}}</ref><ref>Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties, Joel Labenthal, 1990</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/> The name Luna has been speculated to be chosen for its "symbolic dimensions, reflecting her yearning for complete, far-flung autogeny", being what Donyale described as the "real" surname of her father, or a reference to the [[Space Race]]. At this time she wanted to pursue being an actress as a career.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Luna's sister later described her as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream". She would routinely create fantasies about her background or "origins" and herself. She was known then as an aspiring actress, a boyfriend, Sanders Bryant III, recalled first meeting her writing a play at lunchtime. She took roles such as Cherry in ''[[Paint Your Wagon (musical)|Paint Your Wagon]]'', Ariel in ''[[The Tempest]]'', Chastity in ''[[Anything Goes]]'' and Jean in ''Stage Door''. After rehearsals, inspired by the [[Beat Generation|beatnik]]s, she would go to coffeehouses around [[Wayne State University]] with her boyfriend, dressed in head to toe black. On weekends she would cross the bridge to neighboring [[Windsor, Ontario]], travel to other nearby parts of Canada. She became known by Roland Sharette, the managing director of the Detroit Civic Center Theatre, as a "kook" because she had a habit of walking around barefoot "even down the street". During the 1963 run of ''Paint Your Wagon'' she fed popcorn to pigeons when they rehearsed outdoors.<ref name="powell">{{cite book|last=Powell|first=Richard J. Powell|title=Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture|year=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-67727-9}}</ref>{{rp|88}} <ref name="ReferenceA">Work!: A Queer History of Modeling, Elspeth H. Brown, 2019</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/>
She attended the Detroit High School of Commerce, where she studied data processing, and [[Cass Technical High School]], where she studied journalism, performing arts and languages, and was in the school choir. Outside of school, she participated in local community theater and the experimental Concept East Theater.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120712082428/http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=e9I_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZuEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,1650834&dq=princeton+cass+technical&hl=en Parade] - ''[[The Modesto Bee]]'', 8 January 1967</ref><ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15">Ben Arogundade, ''Beauty's Enigma''', 2012, p. 15, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref> It was during this time, at age 18, that she began calling herself "Donyale George Luna.” This was thought to have "been her way of dealing with a turbulent home life" when her mother began raising the family as a single parent. She was also said to have spoken "not with a broad A or a French R, but in an accent she'd invented". Her mother said its tone "was like she was singing".<ref name="dazeddigital.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/22897/1/luna-space-model|title=Luna Space Model|date=December 13, 2014|website=Dazed}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://delectant.com/donyale-luna-iconic-american-cover-model-soars-heat-civil-rights-movement-50-years-ago/|title=Donyale Luna, Cover Model Soars 50 Years Ago • FashCam|date=January 5, 2016}}</ref><ref>Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties, Joel Labenthal, 1990</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/> The name Luna has been speculated to have been chosen for its "symbolic dimensions, reflecting her yearning for complete, far-flung autogeny", or a reference to the [[Space Race]]. At this time she wanted to pursue a career in acting.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Luna's sister later described her as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream. She routinely created fantasies about her background or "origins" and herself. She was known then as an aspiring actress. An early boyfriend, Sanders Bryant, III, recalled first meeting her writing a play at lunchtime. She took roles such as Cherry in ''[[Paint Your Wagon (musical)|Paint Your Wagon]]'', Ariel in ''[[The Tempest]]'', Chastity in ''[[Anything Goes]]'' and Jean in ''Stage Door''. After rehearsals, inspired by the [[Beat Generation|beatniks]], she visited coffeehouses near the [[Wayne State University]] campus with her boyfriend, dressed in head to toe black. On weekends, she often crossed the bridge to neighboring [[Windsor, Ontario]], or traveled to other nearby parts of Canada. She became known to Roland Sharette, the managing director of the Detroit Civic Center Theatre, as a "kook" because she had a habit of walking around barefoot "even down the street. During the 1963 run of ''Paint Your Wagon'' she fed popcorn to pigeons when they rehearsed outdoors.<ref name="powell">{{cite book|last=Powell|first=Richard J. Powell|title=Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture|year=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-67727-9}}</ref>{{rp|88}} <ref name="ReferenceA">Work!: A Queer History of Modeling, Elspeth H. Brown, 2019</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/>


Contrasting her time in Europe modelling she later noted: "Back in Detroit I wasn't considered beautiful or anything."<ref name="thecut.com"/> A fellow student at Cass Technical, Verna Green noted "She was such a striking image, I couldn't forget her ... She looked like an oddball to the run-of-the-mill student. Not enough people had told her how strikingly beautiful she was."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/02/14/donyale-luna-worlds-first-black-supermodel/79102546/|title=Remembering Donyale Luna, world's first black supermodel|first=Cassandra|last=Spratling|website=USA Today}}</ref> She was not a "fashion-conscious" student, her attire mostly consisting of "simple black skirts and long loose sleeved tops". She stated that at her time in Cass Technical, she "wasn't accepted because I talked funny, I looked funny and I was a weirdo to everyone. I grew up realizing I was strange."<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/>
Contrasting her time in Detroit with her time in Europe modeling, she later noted: "Back in Detroit I wasn't considered beautiful or anything."<ref name="thecut.com"/> A fellow student at Cass Technical, Verna Green, noted "She was such a striking image, I couldn't forget her. . . . She looked like an oddball to the run-of-the-mill student. Not enough people had told her how strikingly beautiful she was."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/02/14/donyale-luna-worlds-first-black-supermodel/79102546/|title=Remembering Donyale Luna, world's first black supermodel|first=Cassandra|last=Spratling|website=USA Today}}</ref> She was not a "fashion-conscious" student; her attire mostly consisting of "simple black skirts and long loose sleeved tops. She stated that in her time in Cass Technical, she "wasn't accepted because I talked funny, I looked funny, and I was a weirdo to everyone. I grew up realizing I was strange."<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/>


She moved to New York to pursue acting and modeling in October 1964, and worked during this time as a junior secretary at an "electronic cabling firm on [[Varick Street]]". She eventually moved into her own apartment with another roommate by advertising for one on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]], having joined their actor's union. Her sister Lillian later recalled "she packed so little it seemed like she was going on an overnight trip rather than to live in New York".<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 9">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 9, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>
In October 1964, she moved to New York to pursue acting and modeling, and found work as a junior secretary at an "electronic cabling firm on [[Varick Street]]." After joining an actors’ union, she moved into an apartment on Broadway, sharing the space with a roommate. Her sister Lillian later recalled "she packed so little it seemed like she was going on an overnight trip rather than to live in New York.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 9">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 9, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>


In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defence as he was reportedly abusive, coming to Luna's childhood home drunk and threatening her mother "just steps away from the family home". Lillian witnessed the incident, acknowledging the shooting to be accidental.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 9"/> Luna only received the news 3 months after the fact and stayed in New York which is said by psychologists to be a coping mechanism of familial loss and trauma.<ref name="powell"/>{{rp|92}}<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk">{{Cite web|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna - Telegraph|website=fashion.telegraph.co.uk}}</ref><ref>Richard J. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, 2009</ref> In 1966, she reported to a journalist, "My mother is worried about me. She doesn't know that I have already been hurt."<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 18, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>
In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive, coming to Luna's childhood home drunk and threatening her mother "just steps away from the family home. Lillian witnessed the incident, acknowledging the shooting to be accidental.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 9"/> Luna received the news three months after the fact, and stayed in New York, which is said by psychologists to be a common coping mechanism for familial loss and trauma.<ref name="powell"/>{{rp|92}}<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk">{{Cite news|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna - Telegraph|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=June 9, 2015 }}</ref><ref>Richard J. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, 2009</ref> In 1966, she reported to a journalist, "My mother is worried about me. She doesn't know that I have already been hurt."<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 18, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>


Luna moved in between Europe and North America for the next five years. She professed during the filming of ''Salome'' in 1971 that she wished to quit modeling to focus on acting, and that she "professo la magia y el'amore e vivo en el mondo vio, deliziomente surreale" (speaks of magic and love, living in a deliciously surreal world) having become heavily influenced by [[Surrealism]] and [[New Age]] thought by this time, but still continued to do sporadic modelling in the 1970s.<ref>https://www.thejuanfernandez.com/053204149098, Anna Bella, No.28</ref> By 1972 when she had moved to [[Rome]], she was working for Danish photographer Gunnar Larsen, modeling for the [[Haute couture|couturier]] [[Ted Lapidus]] with [[Veruschka von Lehndorff|Veruschka]] and [[Jean Shrimpton]] on the streets of [[Paris]], earning "$1000 ... for the day" ($6,250 in 2020).<ref>''The Australian Women's Weekly'', June 14, 1972, p. 25.</ref>
For the next five years, Luna divided her time between Europe and North America. She professed during the filming of ''Salome'' in 1971 that she wished to quit modeling and focus on acting, and that she "professo la magia y el'amore e vivo en el mondo vio, deliziomente surreale" (speaks of magic and love, living in a deliciously surreal world) having become heavily influenced by [[Surrealism]] and [[New Age]] thought by this time; however, she continued accept modeling work in the 1970s.<ref>https://www.thejuanfernandez.com/053204149098, Anna Bella, No.28</ref> By 1972, when she had moved to [[Rome]], she was working for Danish photographer {{ill|Gunnar Larsen (writer, born 1930)|lt=Gunnar Larsen|fr|Gunnar Larsen}}, modeling for the [[Haute couture|couturier]] [[Ted Lapidus]] alongside [[Veruschka von Lehndorff|Veruschka]] and [[Jean Shrimpton]] on the streets of [[Paris]], earning "$1000 ... for the day" ($6,250 in 2020).<ref>''The Australian Women's Weekly'', June 14, 1972, p. 25.</ref>


== Modeling career==
== Modeling career==
===Detroit and New York===
===Detroit and New York===
Luna was discovered by the English photographer [[David McCabe (photographer)|David McCabe]] on the streets of Detroit around the [[Fisher Building]] in 1963.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Luna was then invited to move to New York City to pursue modeling by McCabe. 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]].<ref name="ReferenceB">Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard J. Powell, 2009</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/>
In 1963, near Detroit’s Fisher Building, Luna met English photographer [[David McCabe (photographer)|David McCabe]].<ref name="vogue.co.uk" /> McCabe suggested she move to New York City to pursue modeling. Her mother initially discouraged this plan, suggesting that she become a nurse instead. Luna persisted, and her mother facilitated her moving in with an aunt near the [[New York Harbor]] in [[New Jersey]].<ref name="ReferenceB">Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard J. Powell, 2009</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/>


In October 1964, Luna called McCabe and he sent out her photographs to various agencies. McCabe introduced her to ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]'' editor [[Nancy White (editor)|Nancy White]], fashion photographer [[Richard Avedon]] and senior fashion editor [[China Machado]]; White signed her to an exclusive contract for the remainder of 1964, while Avedon served as her manager.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com">{{Cite web|url=https://vmagazine.com/article/black-excellence-donyale-luna/|title=Black Excellence: The Legacy of Donyale Luna &#124; V Magazine|website=vmagazine.com}}</ref><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="arogundade.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.arogundade.com/donyale-luna-the-first-black-african-american-model-on-the-cover-of-vogue-her-biography.html|title=BEST Donyale Luna Vogue Model Biography: 60s Fashion Beauty: Photos, Death|website=Arogundade}}</ref><ref name="aenigma-images.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.aenigma-images.com/2016/03/donyale-luna/|title=Donyale Luna – the fashion world's wayward moon-child|date=March 29, 2016|website=aenigma}}</ref> Her first job as a model was a shoot for ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]'' starring [[Woody Allen]]. In November 1964, Luna moved out of her aunt's apartment into her own in New York City.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 8–9, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>
In October 1964, Luna contacted McCabe, and he sent out her photographs to various agencies. McCabe introduced her to ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]'' editor [[Nancy White (editor)|Nancy White]], fashion photographer [[Richard Avedon]], and senior fashion editor [[China Machado]]; White signed her to an exclusive contract for the remainder of 1964, while Avedon served as her manager.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com">{{Cite web|url=https://vmagazine.com/article/black-excellence-donyale-luna/|title=Black Excellence: The Legacy of Donyale Luna &#124; V Magazine|website=vmagazine.com}}</ref><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="arogundade.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.arogundade.com/donyale-luna-the-first-black-african-american-model-on-the-cover-of-vogue-her-biography.html|title=BEST Donyale Luna Vogue Model Biography: 60s Fashion Beauty: Photos, Death|website=Arogundade}}</ref><ref name="aenigma-images.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.aenigma-images.com/2016/03/donyale-luna/|title=Donyale Luna – the fashion world's wayward moon-child|date=March 29, 2016|website=aenigma}}</ref> Her first job as a model was a shoot for ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]'' starring [[Woody Allen]]. In November 1964, Luna moved out of her aunt's apartment and into an apartment on Broadway in New York City, sharing the space with a roommate.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 8–9, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>


[[File:Internationale Modenschau im Schloss (Kiel 50.596).jpg|thumb|A Black model in [[Paco Rabanne]] in 1971. Luna modeled for Rabanne in 1964, bringing derision from American journalists.|left]]
[[File:Internationale Modenschau im Schloss (Kiel 50.596).jpg|thumb|Periana, a Black model in [[Paco Rabanne]] in 1971. Luna modeled for Rabanne in 1964, bringing derision from American journalists.|left]]
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.<ref name="thefashioninsider.com">{{Cite web|url=https://thefashioninsider.com/2015/03/21/supermodel-biography-top-model-donyale-luna-marcellous-jones/|title=DONYALE LUNA|date=March 21, 2015}}</ref>
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.<ref name="thefashioninsider.com">{{Cite web|url=https://thefashioninsider.com/2015/03/21/supermodel-biography-top-model-donyale-luna-marcellous-jones/|title=DONYALE LUNA|date=March 21, 2015}}</ref>


Nancy White had Luna's likeness sketched into an illustration for the January 1965 cover of ''Harper's Bazaar'', replacing a pre-planned cover{{snd}}the first Black person ever put on the cover of ''Harper's Bazaar'' in its then 98 years of publication, however her image was white washed.<ref name="vice.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb5gdn/the-model-who-broke-barriers-as-vogues-first-ever-black-cover-girl|title=The Model Who Broke Barriers as Vogue's First Ever Black Cover Girl|website=www.vice.com|date=February 12, 2018 }}</ref> The sketch was her first work for ''Harper's Bazaar'', and included six other illustrations in the January 1965 issue.<ref name="vice.com"/> Denzinger described drawing 'a total of 40 brush and ink studies for that session, in a one-room studio apartment on [[Lexington Avenue]]. . . .I remember that the Bazaar editors came to the apartment with the clothes, and that uniformed cops watched while Donyale modeled and I drew her'.<ref>Richard J. Powell, ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 90.</ref>
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. However, Luna was portrayed as [[Whitewashing (beauty)|ethnically ambiguous]].<ref name="vice.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb5gdn/the-model-who-broke-barriers-as-vogues-first-ever-black-cover-girl|title=The Model Who Broke Barriers as Vogue's First Ever Black Cover Girl|website=www.vice.com|date=February 12, 2018 }}</ref> The sketch was her first work for ''Harper's Bazaar'', and included six other illustrations in the January 1965 issue.<ref name="vice.com"/> Denzinger described drawing "a total of 40 brush-and-ink studies for that session, in a one-room studio apartment on [[Lexington Avenue]]. . . . I remember that the Bazaar editors came to the apartment with the clothes, and that uniformed cops watched while Donyale modeled and I drew her."<ref>Richard J. Powell, ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 90.</ref>


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]].<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In the editorial, she was described using the conflating racalist phrase: "The tall strength and pride of movement of a [[Maasai People#Clothing|Masai Warrior]]", which was picked up in an article by the ''[[Sarasota Herald Tribune]]'', who finding the language deeply prejudiced and racialized, explored the work prospects of African-American women.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="ReferenceB"/><ref name="Stone">Judy Stone, "Luna, Who Dreamed of Being Snow White", ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 19, 1968.</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071022043935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html Time (magazine)]</ref><ref name="gal-dem.com">{{Cite web|url=https://gal-dem.com/fashion-tbt-donyale-luna/|title=Fashion Throwback Thursdays: Donyale Luna|date=January 7, 2016|website=gal-dem}}</ref> In the same month, 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".<ref>Panorama Magazine, 1975</ref>
In the April 1965 edition she was again photographed by Avedon in the "What's Happening" editorial, along with [[Paul McCartney]], [[Jean Shrimpton]], and [[Ringo Starr]].<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The piece included a description of her as showing "The tall strength and pride of movement of a [[Maasai People#Clothing|Masai Warrior]]." This description was picked up in an article by the ''[[Sarasota Herald Tribune]].'' Finding the language and comparison deeply prejudiced and racialized, ''Herald Tribune'' writers explored and wrote of work prospects of African-American women.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="ReferenceB"/><ref name="Stone">Judy Stone, "Luna, Who Dreamed of Being Snow White", ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 19, 1968.</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071022043935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html Time (magazine)]</ref><ref name="gal-dem.com">{{Cite web|url=https://gal-dem.com/fashion-tbt-donyale-luna/|title=Fashion Throwback Thursdays: Donyale Luna|date=January 7, 2016|website=gal-dem}}</ref> In the same month, Luna received news of her father's death but decided against returning to Detroit home for his 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".<ref name="Panorama Magazine, 1975">Panorama Magazine, 1975</ref>


Luna's career began to slow down when she met with the [[Racial segregation in the United States|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 [[Hearst Communications]] had stopped Avedon working with Luna after her contract expired.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref name="gal-dem.com"/><ref name="ReferenceA"/> Richard Avedon believed that he was no longer allowed to work with Luna due to "racial prejudice and the economics of the fashion business".<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com"/> McCabe later stated he believed that "the magazine world really wasn't ready for photographing beautiful Black women".<ref name="vmagazine.com"/>
Luna's career began to slow down when she met with the [[Racial segregation in the United States|color bar]] of print publishing at the time. Southern U.S. 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 [[Hearst Communications]] had stopped Avedon working with Luna after her contract expired.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref name="gal-dem.com"/><ref name="ReferenceA"/> Richard Avedon believed that he was no longer allowed to work with Luna due to "racial prejudice and the economics of the fashion business.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com"/> McCabe later stated he believed that "the magazine world really wasn't ready for photographing beautiful Black women”.<ref name="vmagazine.com"/>


Black models were shown only through "a racial script that brought together both [[primitivism]] and modernity as the material precondition for participation within the industry,"<ref name="ReferenceA"/> in an ''exotic [[noble savage]]'' role which required Black models to present only as outsiders from ''primitive African cultures''. [[Brigid Keenan]] wrote that Luna "until then any Black person who appeared in a fashion picture was usually there because they'd been popped into the background as a kind of prop" such as Bani Yelverton, who was in 1958 placed "on the far right of the foldout, so she could be easily torn out of the magazine by [offended] readers".<ref>https://wsimag.com/entertainment/16734-the-man-who-shot-beautiful-women (Accessed 25.03.2021)</ref> Keenan further wrote how the othering "exotic Black model trope" perpetrated by white media creators that "Luna's breakthrough into the glossy magazines meant that from then on a Black model might actually have some sort of career in front of her ... yet extraordinary as she was, Ms. Luna did not have a style that other women could adopt. "She looked more like she was going to attack you," wrote one Black girl. White fashion editors used her and immediate successors for impact, as freakish [[Clothes horse|clothes-horses]] on which they could photograph their outrageous garments. [Her] acceptance ... no doubt boosted the morale of the Black community, but she could not give them a look of their own."<ref name="Brigid Keenan 1977, pp.173-178">''The women we wanted to look like'', Brigid Keenan, 1977, pp.173-178</ref>
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."<ref name="aenigma-images.com"/> 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".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>


Following the death of her father and a short-lived marriage of 10 months in New York, Luna 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."<ref name="aenigma-images.com"/> 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".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>
Avedon who had moved American ''[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue]]'' in 1966 requested Luna again for a shoot near [[Hokkaido|Northern Japan]], 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 [[Ankole-Watusi|Watusis]] and Africans".[[Diana Vreeland]], along with [[Alexey Brodovitch]], suggested [[Veruschka]] instead for the 27-page ''Great Fur Caravan'' shoot published in October 1966.[[File:ABC Jean Shrimpton.ogv|thumb|ABC Jean Shrimpton]] "Ironically, in 1966 [American] ''Vogue'' named Donyale Luna 'The Model of the Year'."<ref>''Work! A Queer History of Modeling'', Elspeth H Brown, 2019.</ref> Living in London, she was described in ''[[Jet (magazine)|Jet]]'' magazine as "the most photographed girl of 1966 ... challenging [[Jean Shrimpton]] for position (and bankroll) as the model most in demand in Europe's ''haute couture'' houses."<ref>Charles L. Sanders, ''Jet'', June 16, 1966, p. 28.</ref>


Avedon (who had moved over to the American ''[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue]]'' in 1966) requested Luna again for a shoot around [[Hokkaido|Northern Japan]] featuring furs, telling [[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 [[Ankole-Watusi|Watusis]] and Africans," deftly conflating African culture, and employing the prescribed primitive racial script of the exotic Black model which Luna had been portrayed in her shoots with him in ''Harper's Bazaar'' which compared Luna to an animal as she was dressed in animal print. [[Diana Vreeland]], along with [[Alexey Brodovitch]], prevented Avedon from using Luna as the only model in the shoot and suggested [[Veruschka]] instead for the 27-page ''Great Fur Caravan'' shoot published in October 1966.[[File:ABC Jean Shrimpton.ogv|thumb|ABC Jean Shrimpton]] However, in 1966, American ''Vogue'' named her the Model of the Year.<ref>''Work! A Queer History of Modeling'', Elspeth H Brown, 2019.</ref> Living in London, she was described in ''[[Jet (magazine)|Jet]]'' magazine as "the most photographed girl of 1966 ... challenging [[Jean Shrimpton]] for position (and bankroll) as the model most in demand in Europe's ''haute couture'' houses."<ref>Charles L. Sanders, ''Jet'', June 16, 1966, p. 28.</ref>
By 1966, Luna had become an internationally recognized model and in November 1966, Luna appeared in ''[[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|Cosmopolitan]]''. In April 1967 Donyale also frequented [[Trude Heller's]] discotech in [[Greenwich village]] and covered a number of albums for [[Blue Note Records]] such as [[Lush Life (Lou Donaldson album)|Lush Life]], [[Mustang! (Donald Byrd album)|Mustang]], [[A New Conception]], [[Let 'Em Roll (album)|Let 'em Roll]] and [[Easy Walker]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/02/11/donyale-luna-naked-actors-and-hippies-a-wild-1967-weekend-in-new-york-city/|title=Donyale Luna, Naked Actors, and Hippies: A Wild 1967 Weekend in New York City|date=February 11, 2010|website=villagevoice}}</ref> Luna appeared in American ''Vogue'' in August 1969 and in 1970 in an advertisement for a colored contacts company which she often wore, it was reported she "changes her eyes to match her moods as she flits through Rome's posh parties while picture making for [[Carlo Ponti]]."<ref>Sepia Publishing Corporation, 1969, Sepia, Volume 18, Issue 11, p.46</ref>

By 1966, Luna had become an internationally recognized model and in November 1966, Luna appeared in ''[[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|Cosmopolitan]]''. In April 1967 Donyale also frequented [[Trude Heller's]] discotheque in [[Greenwich village|Greenwich Village]] and covered a number of albums for [[Blue Note Records]] such as ''[[Lush Life (Lou Donaldson album)|Lush Life]]'', ''[[Mustang! (Donald Byrd album)|Mustang]]'', ''[[A New Conception]]'', ''[[Let 'Em Roll (album)|Let 'em Roll]]'' and ''[[Easy Walker]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/02/11/donyale-luna-naked-actors-and-hippies-a-wild-1967-weekend-in-new-york-city/|title=Donyale Luna, Naked Actors, and Hippies: A Wild 1967 Weekend in New York City|date=February 11, 2010|website=villagevoice}}</ref> Luna appeared in American ''Vogue'' in August 1969 and in 1970 in an advertisement for a colored contacts company which she often wore, it was reported she "changes her eyes to match her moods as she flits through Rome's posh parties while picture making for [[Carlo Ponti]]."<ref>Sepia Publishing Corporation, 1969, Sepia, Volume 18, Issue 11, p.46</ref>


===Move to London===
===Move to London===
Arriving in December 1965,<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> [[London]] proved to be where Luna would make her name as a model, emerging in Swinging London, part of a youth cultural revolution associated with [[Beatlemania]] and in fashion [[Mary Quant]]s [[miniskirt]]s with other models of color like [[Kellie Wilson (model)|Kellie Wilson]] and Hazel Collins in the stylized-bobs of [[Vidal Sassoon]], [[Mod (subculture)|Mods]], [[Teddy Boy]]s and bright colors and patterns and fashions like those sold in shops like [[Barbara Hulanicki]]s [[Biba]] or seen in the street culture of [[Carnaby Street]] or [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]].<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/feminist-fashion-trends|title=8 Current Fashion Trends That Had Their Roots In The Feminist Movement|first=Kat|last=George|website=www.refinery29.com}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA"/> She was photographed in London by [[David Bailey]], [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]], [[Helmut Newton]], Charlotte March (image in infobox, above) and [[William Claxton (photographer)|William Claxton]]. Keen to join the London arts scene, she would become friends with [[Mick Jagger]], [[Julie Christie]], [[Michael Caine]], [[Iain Quarrier]] and [[Yul Brynner]].<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com"/> She rented an apartment by the [[River Thames|Thames]] and bought a pet [[Maltese dog]] she named "Christianne".<ref>''Beauty's Engima'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 16.</ref>
Luna arrived in London in December 1965.<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> [[London]] is where she made her name as a model, emerging in Swinging London, as a growing youth cultural revolution was drawing international attention. Elements included [[Beatlemania]] and [[Mary Quant]]'s [[miniskirt]]s with other models of color, including [[Kellie Wilson (model)|Kellie Wilson]] and Hazel Collins wearing the stylized bobs of [[Vidal Sassoon]], [[Mod (subculture)|Mods]], [[Teddy Boy]]s and bright colors and patterns and fashions such as those sold in shops including [[Barbara Hulanicki|Barbara Hulanicki’]]s [[Biba]] or seen in the street culture of [[Carnaby Street]] or [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]].<ref name="vogue.co.uk" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/feminist-fashion-trends|title=8 Current Fashion Trends That Had Their Roots In The Feminist Movement|first=Kat|last=George|website=www.refinery29.com}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA" /> She was photographed in London by [[David Bailey]], [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]], [[Helmut Newton]], Charlotte March (image in infobox, above) and [[William Claxton (photographer)|William Claxton]]. Keen to join the London arts scene, she became friends with [[Mick Jagger]], [[Julie Christie]], [[Michael Caine]], [[Iain Quarrier]] and [[Yul Brynner]].<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vmagazine.com"/> She rented an apartment near the [[River Thames|Thames]] River and bought a pet [[Maltese dog]] she named Christianne.<ref>''Beauty's Engima'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 16.</ref>
[[File:DonyaleLunaMarch1966Cover.jpg|thumb|An artists rendition of the March 1966 cover]]
[[File:DonyaleLunaMarch1966Cover.jpg|thumb|An artists rendition of the March 1966 cover]]
She became the first African-American model to appear on the cover of any ''[[British Vogue|Vogue]]'' magazine,<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> the March 1966 British issue,<ref name="cocoandcreme">[http://cocoandcreme.com/2010/10/iconic-cover-girls/ Iconic Cover Girls] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20101017041258/http://cocoandcreme.com/2010/10/iconic-cover-girls/ |date=2010-10-17 }} - Coco & Creme</ref><ref>[http://allwomenstalk.com/230-british-vogue-covers-history-of-fashion-in-pictures/4/ 230 British Vogue Covers – History of Fashion in Pictures ...] - Allwomenstalk</ref> shot by photographer [[David Bailey (photographer)|David Bailey]], only months after arriving in London. Bailey described her as "extraordinary-looking, so tall and skinny, ... She was like an illustration, a walking illustration." Shooting her for the cover he noted "I didn't care what she was – she could have been a fucking Martian for all I cared." He thought the editorial staff at ''Vogue'' House were happy about using a Black model but states that "the sales people always had a problem [with using her]."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> She was chosen by [[Beatrix Miller]], the-then British ''Vogue'' editor for "her bite and personality", also describing her as "[happening] to be a marvellous shape ... All sort of angular and immensely strange and tall".<ref name="arogundade.com"/> The shot composition was inspired by Spanish [[Surrealism|surrealist]] [[Picasso]]'s [[Ocular dominance|ocular-centric portraiture]] with "one of Luna's eyes peered suggestively from between her fingers". She was wearing a [[Chloé]] dress and Mimi de N earrings in the shot. In the editorial images she was dressed in [[Christian Dior]] silk tunics, Mod dresses by [[Pierre Cardin]] and a silver [[Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|Yves Saint Laurent]] dress.<ref name="vmagazine.com"/><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>
In March 1966, about three months after having arrived in London, she appeared on the cover of British Vogue, becoming the first African-American model to appear on the cover of any ''[[British Vogue|Vogue]]'' magazine,<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> her image <ref name="cocoandcreme">[http://cocoandcreme.com/2010/10/iconic-cover-girls/ Iconic Cover Girls] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20101017041258/http://cocoandcreme.com/2010/10/iconic-cover-girls/ |date=2010-10-17 }} - Coco & Creme</ref> captured by photographer [[David Bailey (photographer)|David Bailey]], who described her as "extraordinary-looking, so tall and skinny, ... She was like an illustration, a walking illustration." Shooting her for the cover, Bailey noted "I didn't care what she was—she could have been a fucking Martian for all I cared." He thought the editorial staff at ''Vogue'' House were pleased with their selection of a Black cover model, but observed that "the sales people always had a problem [with using her]."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> She was chosen by [[Beatrix Miller]], then the editor of British ''Vogue,'' for "her bite and personality.” Miller described Luna as "[happening] to be a marvelous shape . . . All sort of angular and immensely strange and tall".<ref name="arogundade.com"/> The shot composition was inspired by Spanish [[Surrealism|surrealist]] [[Picasso]]'s [[Ocular dominance|ocular-centric portraiture]] with "one of Luna's eyes peered suggestively from between her fingers. She wore wearing a [[Chloé]] dress and Mimi de N earrings in the shot. In the editorial images she was dressed in [[Christian Dior]] silk tunics, Mod-style dresses by [[Pierre Cardin]], and a silver [[Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|Yves Saint Laurent]] dress.<ref name="vmagazine.com"/><ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/><ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>


In popular internet lore such as on [[blog]]s, it has been speculated that the shot was angled so "Luna's face, most notably her lips and nose, are ... obscured on her British ''Vogue'' cover, also somewhat hiding her race" a proponent of [[Discrimination based on skin color#United States|featurism]] coded in [[White Privilege|privilege]] and [[Eurocentrism#In the beauty industry|Eurocentric beauty standards]].<ref name="thecut.com"/><ref>Deliovsky, Kathy (2008). "Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender and the Politics of Beauty". ''Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice''. 33.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.therotundaonline.com/opinion/we-need-to-recognize-featurism-and-its-effects/article_1c841d3c-4313-11ea-a12f-fb4b83810632.html|title=We need to recognize featurism and its effects|first=Davina Applewhite &#124; Opinions|last=Staff &#124; @longwoodrotunda|website=The Rotunda Online|date=January 29, 2020 }}</ref><ref>Finkelman, Paul (2009). Finkelman, Paul (ed.). ''Encyclopedia of African American History'': 5-Volume Set, Volume 1. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 352.</ref> However, in 2019 her family revealed the shot was chosen as "a single heavily lined eye ... visible through her fingers, which form a V for Vogue".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>
In popular internet lore such as on [[blog]]s, it has been speculated that the shot was angled so "Luna's face, most notably her lips and nose, are . . . obscured on her British ''Vogue'' cover, also somewhat hiding her race," a proponent of [[Discrimination based on skin color#United States|featurism]] coded in [[White Privilege|privilege]] and [[Eurocentrism#In the beauty industry|Eurocentric beauty standards]].<ref name="thecut.com"/><ref>Deliovsky, Kathy (2008). "Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender and the Politics of Beauty". ''Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice''. 33.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.therotundaonline.com/opinion/we-need-to-recognize-featurism-and-its-effects/article_1c841d3c-4313-11ea-a12f-fb4b83810632.html|title=We need to recognize featurism and its effects|first=Davina Applewhite &#124; Opinions|last=Staff &#124; @longwoodrotunda|website=The Rotunda Online|date=January 29, 2020 }}</ref><ref>Finkelman, Paul (2009). Finkelman, Paul (ed.). ''Encyclopedia of African American History'': 5-Volume Set, Volume 1. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 352.</ref> However, in 2019, her family revealed the shot was chosen as "a single heavily lined eye . . . visible through her fingers, which form a V for Vogue".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>

She was shot, by Charlotte March, for a jewelry spread in the German magazine ''[[Twen]]'' of March 1966. Fellow model and friend [[Pat Cleveland]] noted: "she had no tits, but lots of presence, we'd walk down the street and men's mouths would drop open in awe. When we walked into restaurants people would stop eating and stand up and applaud. She was like a mirage, or some kind of fantasy."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/><ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> She also went on to work for French ''Vogue''. [[Bethann Hardison]] stated of Luna that "no one looked like her. She was like a really extraordinary species."<ref name="vmagazine.com"/> ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine in an article titled "The Luna Year" (1966), described her as: "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads ''Harper's Bazaar'', ''[[Paris Match]]'', Britain's ''[[Queen (magazine)|Queen]]'', the British, French or American editions of ''Vogue''."<ref name="Time">{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071022043935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=October 22, 2007 | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | title=Fashion: The Luna Year | date= April 1, 1966 | access-date=1 May 2010}}</ref> She also appeared in ''London Life'', a monthly fashion magazine, in a shoot as a shop window display model at a [[Wallis (retailer)|Wallis]] department store in London.<ref>[https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VIVIANE-VENTURA-Charlotte-Rampling-DONYALE-LUNA-London-Life-magazine-1966-vtg-UK-/382905427841 "VIVIANE VENTURA Charlotte Rampling DONYALE LUNA London Life magazine 1966 vtg UK"]. Retrieved August 11, 2020</ref>
In March 1966, she appeared in a jewelry spread in the German magazine ''[[Twen]],'' photographed by Charlotte March. Fellow model and friend [[Pat Cleveland]] noted: "She had no tits, but lots of presence; we'd walk down the street and men's mouths would drop open in awe. When we walked into restaurants, people would stop eating and stand up and applaud. She was like a mirage, or some kind of fantasy."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com" /><ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk" />

Luna also went on to work for French ''Vogue''. [[Bethann Hardison]] stated of Luna that "No one looked like her. She was like a really extraordinary species."<ref name="vmagazine.com" /> ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine in an article titled "The Luna Year" (1966), described her as: "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads ''Harper's Bazaar'', ''[[Paris Match]]'', Britain's ''[[Queen (magazine)|Queen]]'', the British, French or American editions of ''Vogue''."<ref name="Time">{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071022043935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=October 22, 2007 | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | title=Fashion: The Luna Year | date= April 1, 1966 | access-date=1 May 2010}}</ref> She also appeared in ''London Life'', a monthly fashion magazine, in a shoot as a shop window display model at a [[Wallis (retailer)|Wallis]] department store in London.<ref>[https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VIVIANE-VENTURA-Charlotte-Rampling-DONYALE-LUNA-London-Life-magazine-1966-vtg-UK-/382905427841 "VIVIANE VENTURA Charlotte Rampling DONYALE LUNA London Life magazine 1966 vtg UK"]. Retrieved August 11, 2020</ref>
[[File:Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress, around 1965. White gauze with sequin and bead embroidery.jpg|thumb|Yves Saint Laurent 1965; Donyale wears a blue version in ''Vogue'' in 1966 [https://www.heroine.com/the-editorial/fashion-inclusivity]|left]][[File:Modelos de Pierre Cardin (1966).tiff|thumb|Models in the Mod Style by Cardin (1966)]]
[[File:Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress, around 1965. White gauze with sequin and bead embroidery.jpg|thumb|Yves Saint Laurent 1965; Donyale wears a blue version in ''Vogue'' in 1966 [https://www.heroine.com/the-editorial/fashion-inclusivity]|left]][[File:Modelos de Pierre Cardin (1966).tiff|thumb|Models in the Mod Style by Cardin (1966)]]
In April she appeared again in ''Vogue'' UK shot by [[David Bailey]] in a feature called ''This Summer's dancing patterns'' in mod styled luxury brands. She then appeared on the cover of ''Harper's Bazaar'' UK in June 1966, her features and skin color had not been edited out in this cover, shot by [[Bill King (photographer)|Bill King]]. In the October 15 edition of British ''Vogue'', she was featured in a [[William Klein (photographer)|Klein]] shoot with [[Audrey Hepburn]].
In April she appeared again in ''Vogue'' UK, shot by [[David Bailey]] in a feature called ''This Summer's dancing patterns'' in mod-styled luxury brands. She then appeared on the cover of ''Harper's Bazaar'' UK in June 1966. Her features and skin color had not been obscured in this cover, shot by [[Bill King (photographer)|Bill King]].
In the October 15 edition of British ''Vogue'', she was featured in a [[William Klein (photographer)|Klein]] shoot with [[Audrey Hepburn]].

In 1967, the world-leading fiberglass [[mannequin]] designer [[Adel Rootstein]] released a model based on Luna's statuesque figure. The previous figure been the [[It girl|popular]] model [[Twiggy]]. ''Jet'' described the Luna-inspired mannequins as "unmistakeably Negro, excellently sculpted and posed, and dressed in the London Mod styles" and reported that Adel Rootstein had paid Luna to pose for the work at $105 per hour ($830 per hour today).<ref name="rootstein.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.rootstein.com/collections/donyale-luna|title=Rootstein Display Mannequin: Donyale Luna|website=www.rootstein.com}}</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com" /><ref>Jet, 30 March 1967, p 60 Negro Mannequins in London Stir Controversy</ref> She was also noted to be working in New York for a short period in September 1967, but her flatmates "thought they were all going to get kicked out soon because Donyale was making about $500 worth of calls to Europe every month".<ref>''POPism: The Warhol Sixties'', Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, pp. 299, 1980.</ref> Another mannequin model was made by [[Lester Gaba]], who made both a black and white version.<ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 19</ref> She was also shot in Rabanne by [[Peter Knapp (photographer)|Peter Knapp]] for ''[[The Sunday Times]]''.

On the March 27, 1968, she appeared on the cover of the British magazine ''Queen'' in a headwrap.

In November 1968, Luna and a party of five, including Iain Quarrier and Mia Farrow, went for breakfast at the [[Mayfair]] Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn Street, St James's, London, and, at 4 a.m., were asked to leave, with the men, who were not wearing ties, being informed they were "not properly dressed. When Quarrier noted that other seated men were not wearing ties, Luna asked the managers if it was because she was colored. Eventually, all five were denied service in the hotel restaurant and were removed by police for causing a disturbance. In her usual extravagance, Luna "arrived in a maroon-coloured Rolls-Royce, wearing a yellow coat of Mongolian lamb’s wool . . . [and] knee-high blue suede boots ... [where] Luna accused the police of lying, but her claims went unheard. Quarrier defended Luna in the London Bow Street court, noting when the judge, Kenneth Harrington, said: "I am quite sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with Miss Luna's colour" Quarrier shouted from the dock in the courtroom "that is not true[!]." Quarrier would eventually be charged £10 for disturbing the peace.


Luna later summarized the event for the American press, saying that "rowdiness" had occurred, and that her party was asked to leave "because I am colored. It was a nightmare. The hotel staff and police were pushing me around. The hotel refused to tell us why we were being thrown out."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-entertainment-donyale-luna-london-106860724.html|title=Stock Photo - Entertainment - Donyale Luna - London|first=Alamy|last=Limited|website=Alamy}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/16/mia-farrow-iain-quarrier-witness-court-bow-street-1968|title=Mia Farrow at the witness box: archive, 16 November 1968|author=Guardian Staff|date=November 16, 2015|website=the Guardian}}</ref><ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 22</ref><ref>The Press Telegram, November, 1968</ref><ref>Jet,
In 1967 the world-leading fiberglass [[mannequin]] designer [[Adel Rootstein]] released a model based on Luna's statuesque figure, the previous figure been the [[It girl|popular]] model [[Twiggy]]. Jet described them as "unmistakeably Negro, excellently sculpted and posed, and dressed in the London Mod styles" and that Adel Rootstein had paid Luna to pose for the work at $105 per hour ($830 per hour today).<ref name="rootstein.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.rootstein.com/collections/donyale-luna|title=Rootstein Display Mannequin: Donyale Luna|website=www.rootstein.com}}</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref>Jet, 30 March 1967, p 60 Negro Mannequins in London Stir Controversy</ref> She was also noted to be working in New York for a short period in September 1967 but her flatmates "thought they were all going to get kicked out soon because Donyale was making about 500 dollars' worth of calls to Europe every month".<ref>''POPism: The Warhol Sixties'', Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, pp. 299, 1980.</ref> Another mannequin model was made by [[Lester Gaba]], who made both a black and white version.<ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 19</ref> She was also shot in Rabanne by Peter Knapp for [[The Sunday Times]].
November 1968</ref>


In the same month she was shot for British ''Vogue'' again by [[Harry Peccinotti]].
On the March 27, 1968, she appeared on the cover of the British magazine ''Queen'' in a headwrap. Around November 10, 1968, Luna and a party of five including Iain Quarrier and Mia Farrow went for breakfast at the [[Mayfair]] Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn Street, St James's, London, when at 4 a.m. they were asked to leave due to because the men being informed they were "not properly dressed" in not wearing ties. When Iain pointed out that other seated men were not wearing ties, Luna asked the managers if it was because she was colored. Eventually, all five were denied service in the hotel restaurant and kicked out by police for causing a disturbance. In her usual extravagance, she "arrived in a maroon-coloured Rolls Royce wearing a yellow coat of Mongolian wools lamb ... [and] knee high blue suede boots ... [where] Luna accused the police of lying, but her claims went unheard". Quarrier defended Luna in the London Bow Street court noting when the judge, Kenneth Harrington, said: "I am quite sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with Miss Luna's colour" Quarrier shouted from the dock in the courtroom "that is not true[!]." Quarrier would eventually be charged £10 for disturbing the peace.
Luna later stated to the American press how that incidence of "rowdiness" occurred and that they were thrown out "because I am colored. It was a nightmare. The Hotel staff and police were pushing me around. The Hotel refused to tell us why we were being thrown out."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-entertainment-donyale-luna-london-106860724.html|title=Stock Photo - Entertainment - Donyale Luna - London|first=Alamy|last=Limited|website=Alamy}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/16/mia-farrow-iain-quarrier-witness-court-bow-street-1968|title=Mia Farrow at the witness box: archive, 16 November 1968|author=Guardian Staff|date=November 16, 2015|website=the Guardian}}</ref><ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 22</ref><ref>The Press Telegram, November, 1968</ref><ref>Jet,
November 1968</ref> In the same month she was shot for British ''Vogue'' again in November by [[Harry Peccinotti]].


By 1969, she was again being paid "$1,000 a week" ($7,000 in 2020).<ref>[[Donald Zec]], Analysing, ''Daily Mirror'', April 28, 1969, p. 17, see 6.</ref>
By 1969, she was again being paid "$1,000 a week" ($7,000 in 2020).<ref>[[Donald Zec]], Analysing, ''Daily Mirror'', April 28, 1969, p. 17, see 6.</ref>
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'''Paris'''
'''Paris'''
[[File:1968 Guy Laroche minidress, cyclamen pink wool.jpg|thumb|Guy Laroche Mini-dress (1968)|left]]
[[File:1968 Guy Laroche minidress, cyclamen pink wool.jpg|thumb|Guy Laroche Mini-dress (1968)|left]]
Luna was initially supposed to cover [[Vogue Paris]] before British Vogue when she arrived in Europe in December 1965. [[Edmonde Charles-Roux]] who had fostered the talent of William Klein, had shot Luna for the cover, but prior to release, the cover was changed overnight to that of two acceptably white models, in a move to not offend readers for its capacity to 'shock' because Luna was a woman of color.<ref>https://www.thecut.com/2016/01/edmonde-charles-roux-obituary.html (Accessed 18.03.2021)</ref> She was put forward for the cover by the French editor Charles-Roux who was subsequently fired on the charge of [[Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr.|Si Newhouse]] for attempting to put a Black model on the cover, a feat which would take another 22 years when [[Naomi Campbell]] was put on the cover, but even then only on the grounds that [[Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|YSL]] would otherwise withdraw advertising revenue.<ref>https://theartsdesk.com/books/nina-sophia-miralles-glossy-debut-author-takes-vogue-and-cond%C3%A9-nasties (Accessed 18.03.2021)</ref>
Luna was initially supposed to cover ''[[Vogue Paris]]'' before British ''Vogue'' when she arrived in Europe in December 1965. [[Edmonde Charles-Roux]] who had fostered the talent of William Klein, had shot Luna for the cover, but prior to release, the cover was changed overnight to that of two white models, in an effort to avoid offending readers for its capacity to "shock" because Luna was a woman of color.<ref>https://www.thecut.com/2016/01/edmonde-charles-roux-obituary.html (Accessed 18.03.2021)</ref> She was put forward for the cover by the French editor Charles-Roux who was subsequently fired on the charge of [[Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr.|Si Newhouse]] for attempting to put a Black model on the cover, a feat which would take another 22 years when [[Naomi Campbell]] was put on the cover, but even then only on the grounds that [[Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|YSL]] would otherwise withdraw advertising revenue.<ref>https://theartsdesk.com/books/nina-sophia-miralles-glossy-debut-author-takes-vogue-and-cond%C3%A9-nasties (Accessed 18.03.2021)</ref>


By 1966, of her modeling, she was quoted as saying "Being what I am, I can get what I ask".<ref>''TIME'', The Lunar Year, April 1, 1966.</ref> Paco Rabanne had her model in his "debut Paris show, entitled '12 Unwearable Dresses'" designed for dancing in, in which fellow London based model [[Kellie Wilson (model)|Kellie Wilson]] also appeared, working in the spring of 1966 she was modelling for [[Paris Match]] who had 11 different photographers doing shoots for the magazine including on "the landing gear of an airborne helicopter" and underwater with "her robe streaming behind her". She was shot for [[Guy Laroche]] for Match on a skating rink and by Charles Courrière (b.1928) in [[Emanuel Ungaro]] for the Spring/Summer collection.<ref>"Remembering Donyale Luna, The First Woman Of Colour Ever To Appear On The Cover Of Vogue". British Vogue.</ref><ref>TIME, The Lunar Year, April 1, 1966</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 17">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 17.</ref><ref>''Paris Match'', March 5, 1966.</ref>
By 1966, of her modeling, she was quoted as saying "Being what I am, I can get what I ask".<ref>''TIME'', The Lunar Year, April 1, 1966.</ref> Paco Rabanne had her model in his "debut Paris show, entitled '12 Unwearable Dresses'" designed for dancing in, in which fellow London based model [[Kellie Wilson (model)|Kellie Wilson]] also appeared, working in the spring of 1966 she was modeling for [[Paris Match]] who had 11 different photographers doing shoots for the magazine including on "the landing gear of an airborne helicopter" and underwater with "her robe streaming behind her". She was shot for [[Guy Laroche]] for Match on a skating rink and by Charles Courrière (b.1928) in [[Emanuel Ungaro]] for the Spring/Summer collection.<ref>"Remembering Donyale Luna, The First Woman Of Colour Ever To Appear On The Cover Of Vogue". British Vogue.</ref><ref>TIME, The Lunar Year, April 1, 1966</ref><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 17">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 17.</ref><ref>''Paris Match'', March 5, 1966.</ref>


She appeared on the cover of ''[[Elle (magazine)|Elle]]'' for July 1966 shot by [[Ronald Traeger]] in a long toga dress by [[Galeries Lafayette]] and in beach shoot with [[Jill Kennington]].<ref>''Elle Magazine'', July 7, 1966, see also http://www.doucementlematin.com/archives/tag/elle/index-38.html in French.</ref>
She appeared on the cover of ''[[Elle (magazine)|Elle]]'' for July 1966 shot by [[Ronald Traeger]] in a long toga dress by [[Galeries Lafayette]] and in beach shoot with [[Jill Kennington]].<ref>''Elle Magazine'', July 7, 1966, see also http://www.doucementlematin.com/archives/tag/elle/index-38.html in French.</ref>
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'''Sydney'''
'''Sydney'''
[[File:Mystic Eye Pop art paper dress by Harry Gordon, American, 1967.jpg|thumb|Pop-art paper dress (1967)]]
[[File:Mystic Eye Pop art paper dress by Harry Gordon, American, 1967.jpg|thumb|Pop-art paper dress (1967)]]
In 1967 she modelled in Sydney a number of paper dresses for the store Paraphernalia, which was a short fad popular at the time with teenage girls.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 17"/> She appeared on a catwalk in Sydney for the "Donyale Luna spectacular" fashion walk.<ref>British Pathe, 1967, Sport.</ref>
In 1967, in Sydney, she modeled several paper dresses for the store Paraphernalia, paper dresses having been a fad popular with teenage girls.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 17"/>
She appeared on a catwalk in Sydney for the "Donyale Luna spectacular" fashion walk.<ref>British Pathe, 1967, Sport.</ref>


'''Italy'''
'''Italy'''


Luna appeared in the Italian magazine [[Amica (magazine)|Amica]] in a number of animal print and fur coats in 1966 and ''Vogue'' Italia shot by [[Gian Paolo Barbieri]]. She modelled later in a number of camera advertisements in 1968. She bought an apartment in Italy in 1970, and would drive around in her Cinquenta car, and "fold herself into like an accordion, squeezing her knees up to her chin" to get to new modelling shoots.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 23.</ref> In January 1970, she appeared in the Italian adult magazine [[Playmen]] in a number of fishnet style outfits, in a multiple-page spread. In this time she was reportedly thrown out by Italian police for not having the correct paperwork to reside in Italy, but her husband recalled later that she was harassed for her skin color in Rome.<ref>LA FAMOSA MODELO DONYALE LUNA SE CASARA A PRINCIPIOS DE 1974, Spain, 1974/</ref>
Luna appeared in the Italian magazine ''[[Amica (magazine)|Amica]]'' in a number of animal print and fur coats in 1966 and ''Vogue'' Italia shot by [[Gian Paolo Barbieri]]. She modelled later in a number of camera advertisements in 1968. She bought an apartment in Italy in 1970, and drove around in her Cinquenta car, and "fold herself into like an accordion, squeezing her knees up to her chin" to get to new modeling shoots.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 23.</ref> In January 1970, she appeared in the Italian adult magazine ''[[Playmen]]'' in a number of fishnet-style outfits, in a multiple-page spread. In this time she was reportedly thrown out by Italian police for not having the correct paperwork to reside in Italy, but her husband recalled later that she was harassed for her skin color in Rome.<ref>LA FAMOSA MODELO DONYALE LUNA SE CASARA A PRINCIPIOS DE 1974, Spain, 1974/</ref>


When Luna moved to Italy in 1974 she was a collaborator with her husband in photographic shoots and other media such as a "hand-illustrated fairy tale, avant-garde film scripts and beautiful coloured prints" which remain unpublished. She was said to be the most creative as a content creator of art in this period of her life.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> However historians have also noted she is said to have felt a deep sense of "existential aloneness" in this period. In a short prose piece entitled ''LUNAFLYLABY'', she wrote a self-aware "part confessional [work which] alludes to an insular and at times stifling childhood, the excitement and challenges Luna experienced in the fashion world [and] her move to Europe" and how as a biracial woman, these "societal forces conspired to render Black women ''INVISIBLE'' " versus her ''VISIBLE LIFE'', which is heavily present throughout the work in the motifs of ''VISIONS'' (her spiritual visions as other Black women in history in her writings she refers to as ''Future Visioning'') and "succumbing to ''VISUAL MISTAKES''" (her desire to achieve her own form of beauty which she considered her ''art'', such as modelling photographs or films) due to her conflicting position as a biracial woman in her environment in her career.<ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, pp. 85–86.</ref><ref>Popular Photography, Volume 76 CBS Magazines, 1975 pp.98 - 101</ref> She also modeled for artist [[Peter Beard]] in 1977.<ref name="formidablemag.com"/>
When Luna moved to Italy in 1974 she was a collaborator with her husband in photographic shoots and other media such as a "hand-illustrated fairy tale, avant-garde film scripts and beautiful coloured prints" which remain unpublished. She was said to be the most creative as a content creator of art in this period of her life.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> However, historians have also noted she is said to have felt a deep sense of "existential aloneness" in this period. In a short prose piece entitled ''LUNAFLYLABY'', she wrote a self-aware "part confessional [work which] alludes to an insular and at times stifling childhood, the excitement and challenges Luna experienced in the fashion world [and] her move to Europe" and how as a biracial woman, these "societal forces conspired to render Black women ''INVISIBLE''" versus her ''VISIBLE LIFE'', which is heavily present throughout the work in the motifs of ''VISIONS'' (her spiritual visions as other Black women in history in her writings she refers to as ''Future Visioning'') and "succumbing to ''VISUAL MISTAKES''" (her desire to achieve her own form of beauty which she considered her ''art'', such as modeling photographs or films) due to her conflicting position as a biracial woman in her environment in her career.<ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, pp. 85–86.</ref><ref>Popular Photography, Volume 76 CBS Magazines, 1975 pp.98 - 101</ref> She also modeled for artist [[Peter Beard]] in 1977.<ref name="formidablemag.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.formidablemag.com/donyale-luna/|title=DONYALE LUNA - FORMIDABLE MAG - Style Icon}}</ref>


===Return to North America===
===Return to North America===
She would return for a year between 1973 and April 1974, with her work later published and returning again between October 1974 and June 1975, to the US to do runway modeling in New York and [[California]] and [[Toronto]].<ref name="The Migrant's Time pp. 81 - 82">''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, pp. 81–82.</ref> She appeared on the cover of Warhol's magazine [[Interview (magazine)|Interview]] for October 1974.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.beatchapter.com/andy-warhols-interview-october-1974-donyale-luna-philippe-petit-hiram-keller-michael-winner-martha-15729-p.asp|title=Andy Warhol's Interview October 1974 Donyale Luna Philippe Petit Hiram Keller Michael Winner Martha|website=Beatchapter}}</ref> Luna then appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of ''[[Playboy]]''; the photographer being her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga. In the shoot she depicts herself as "characters of her own devising - as an angel soaring over the Los Angeles skyline or as a mermaid perched on a rock by the Pacific Ocean". Powell notes, "Although fulfilling Playboy's prerequisite for female nudity, the photographs were far from titillating or sexually explicit. Luna seemed not only at ease with her nudity, but completely beyond societal structures and moral rectitude." She was also noted for defying the usual body type portrayed in the magazine of more "voluptuous" women with her smaller build, placing more emphasis on her [[Spiritualism|spiritual]] "visions" which occurred on her photography shoots such as in Playboy.[[File:Mary Quant toont haar zomerlaarzen op schoenenbeurs te Utrecht de show, Bestanddeelnr 922-2260.jpg|thumb|Mary Quant model at a show in 1969 in a miniskirt]]
She would return for a year between 1973 and April 1974, with her work later published and returning again between October 1974 and June 1975, to the US to do runway modeling in New York and [[California]] and [[Toronto]].<ref name="The Migrant's Time pp. 81 - 82">''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, pp. 81–82.</ref> She appeared on the cover of Warhol's magazine ''[[Interview (magazine)|Interview]]'' for October 1974.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.beatchapter.com/andy-warhols-interview-october-1974-donyale-luna-philippe-petit-hiram-keller-michael-winner-martha-15729-p.asp|title=Andy Warhol's Interview October 1974 Donyale Luna Philippe Petit Hiram Keller Michael Winner Martha|website=Beatchapter}}</ref> Luna then appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of ''[[Playboy]]'', photographed by her husband Luigi Cazzaniga. In the shoot she depicts herself as "characters of her own devising - as an angel soaring over the Los Angeles skyline or as a mermaid perched on a rock by the Pacific Ocean". Powell notes, "Although fulfilling Playboy's prerequisite for female nudity, the photographs were far from titillating or sexually explicit. Luna seemed not only at ease with her nudity, but completely beyond societal structures and moral rectitude." She was also noted for defying the usual body type portrayed in the magazine of more "voluptuous" women with her smaller build, placing more emphasis on her [[Spiritualism (movement)|spiritual]] "visions" which occurred on her photography shoots such as in ''Playboy''.[[File:Mary Quant toont haar zomerlaarzen op schoenenbeurs te Utrecht de show, Bestanddeelnr 922-2260.jpg|thumb|Mary Quant model at a show in 1969 in a miniskirt]]
<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, p. 85.</ref>
<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, p. 85.</ref>


By this time however, Luna's modeling career began to decline due to a variety of factors; the first being a shift in her career from modeling into acting on her behalf; secondly a negative reception from mainstream popular media, which chastised her "dependency on drugs like heroin, LSD, pot and her eccentric behavior" (see Artistry section).<ref name=finkelman>{{cite book|last=Finkelman|first=Paul |editor=Finkelman, Paul |title=Encyclopedia of African American History: 5-Volume Set, Volume 1|volume=1|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-195-16779-5|page=351}}</ref><ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> A designer for whom Luna once worked said, "She took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills".<ref>{{cite book|last=Gross|first=Michael|title=Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women|year=2011|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-062-06790-6|page=238}}</ref> [[Beverly Johnson]] in 1974 was asked about how her Vogue cover had been won by other Black women like Luna, said "[Luna] doesn't wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she's from—[[Mars]]? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn't show up for bookings. She didn't have a hard time, she made it hard for herself."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Burton|first=Philippa|date=2014-12-13|title=Luna Space Model|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/22897/1/luna-space-model|access-date=2020-11-21|website=Dazed|language=en}}</ref><ref name=finkelman /> Johnson later acknowledged in 2016 that Luna had "made it possible for models like me and others" and that "Luna is one of several Black models everyone needs to know" being "one of those legends in our industry; one of the shoulders I stood on."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/>
By this time, however, Luna's modeling career began to decline due to a variety of factors, including a shift in her career from modeling into acting and a negative reception from mainstream popular media, which chastised her "dependency on drugs like heroin, LSD, pot and her eccentric behavior" (see Artistry section).<ref name=finkelman>{{cite book|last=Finkelman|first=Paul |editor=Finkelman, Paul |title=Encyclopedia of African American History: 5-Volume Set, Volume 1|volume=1|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-195-16779-5|page=351}}</ref><ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> A designer for whom Luna once worked said, "She took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills".<ref>{{cite book|last=Gross|first=Michael|title=Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women|year=2011|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-062-06790-6|page=238}}</ref> [[Beverly Johnson]] in 1974 was asked about how her ''Vogue'' cover had been won by other Black women like Luna, said "[Luna] doesn't wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she's from—[[Mars]]? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn't show up for bookings. She didn't have a hard time, she made it hard for herself."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Burton|first=Philippa|date=2014-12-13|title=Luna Space Model|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/22897/1/luna-space-model|access-date=2020-11-21|website=Dazed|language=en}}</ref><ref name=finkelman /> Johnson later acknowledged in 2016 that Luna had "made it possible for models like me and others" and that "Luna is one of several Black models everyone needs to know" being "one of those legends in our industry; one of the shoulders I stood on."<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/>


In June 1975 she attended a [[Zandra Rhodes]] show at the Circle in the Square in New York where she was seen "posing in a veiled harem outfit".<ref name="warholstars.org">{{Cite web|url=https://warholstars.org/donyale-luna.html|title=Donyale Luna|website=warholstars.org}}</ref><ref>''Zandra Rhodes: 50 Fabulous Years in Fashion'', Dennis Nothdruft, Zandra Rhodes, 2019, p. 61.</ref>
In June 1975 she attended a [[Zandra Rhodes]] show at the Circle in the Square in New York where she was seen "posing in a veiled harem outfit".<ref name="warholstars.org">{{Cite web|url=https://warholstars.org/donyale-luna.html|title=Donyale Luna|website=warholstars.org}}</ref><ref>''Zandra Rhodes: 50 Fabulous Years in Fashion'', Dennis Nothdruft, Zandra Rhodes, 2019, p. 61.</ref>


===Luna's walk===
===Luna's walk===
Whilst Luna did have a regular walk for the catwalk defined as "a free-form, hip-popping strut" but she was also known among the high fashion circles for her unconventional walking styles still used by models like Pat Cleveland. Luna was known for her eccentricity since childhood which derived from her time in acting doing local and [[experimental theatre]] in Detroit.<ref>''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', Richard J. Powell, p. 87.</ref> She was often drawn to "radical creatives", avant-garde artists such as Dali and Warhol and she extended these influences to her model career. In a method she developed based on [[method acting]] known in internet lore as ''method modeling'', she developed her own theatrical style of catwalk walks such as "crawling like a lion, grooving to the music or suddenly freezing and making direct eye contact with journalists", "walking like a robot, stopping abruptly midway through a promenade, crawling on all fours", "like a stalking animal", "sometimes slither like a snake" or simply having "laid down and rolled from one end of the runway to the other". Method modeling employs techniques "within one's individual consciousness ... [and] technical skills in body movement are combined with camera awareness and artistic freedom" which allowed an audience to view the model's body as a work of 3D or visual art, like considering how a sculptor considers dimensions in sculpting the human form, or using more vivid body language to express a wider function related to a theme to sell a product.<ref>Method Modeling, Valerie Cragin, 1980, {{ISBN|0-8227-4045-1}}</ref> Luna's Method modeling background was more rooted in theatre technique, and as such was a derivative of [[performance art]]. [[Bill Cunningham (American photographer)|Bill Cunningham]] described watching the experience as how "Her body moves like a panther, her arms, the wings of an exotic bird, the long neck suggests a black trumpet swan. ... The audience responds with shattering applause - for the model's performance rather than the designer's clothes. It is the birth of a new fashion era - that of the spectacular show that rivals any on Broadway." "The coterie of international designers for whom she often modeled ([[André Courrèges]], Yves Saint Laurent, [[Rudi Gernreich]], Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne) encouraged such displays, equating them to their own exuberant designs and to the rebellious conduct of their youthful ... clientele".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 2009, p 108</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref name="thefashioninsider.com"/><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 16">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 16.</ref><ref>https://donyaleluna.w0rdpress.com/ April 17, 2011. Retrieved August 11, 2020.</ref>
Luna did have a regular walk for the catwalk, defined as "a free-form, hip-popping strut", but she was also known among the high fashion circles for her unconventional walking styles still used by models like Pat Cleveland. Luna was known for her eccentricity since childhood which derived from her time in acting doing local and [[experimental theatre|experimental theater]] in Detroit.<ref>''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', Richard J. Powell, p. 87.</ref> She was often drawn to "radical creatives", avant-garde artists such as Dali and Warhol and she extended these influences to her model career. In a method she developed based on [[method acting]] known in internet lore{{clarify|date=July 2024}}{{citation needed|date=July 2024}} as ''method modeling'', she developed her own theatrical style of catwalk walks such as "crawling like a lion, grooving to the music or suddenly freezing and making direct eye contact with journalists", "walking like a robot, stopping abruptly midway through a promenade, crawling on all fours", "like a stalking animal", "sometimes slither like a snake" or simply having "laid down and rolled from one end of the runway to the other". Method modeling employs techniques "within one's individual consciousness ... [and] technical skills in body movement are combined with camera awareness and artistic freedom" which allowed an audience to view the model's body as a work of 3D or visual art, like considering how a sculptor considers dimensions in sculpting the human form, or using more vivid body language to express a wider function related to a theme to sell a product.<ref>Method Modeling, Valerie Cragin, 1980, {{ISBN|0-8227-4045-1}}</ref> Luna's Method modeling background was more rooted in theater technique, and as such was a derivative of [[performance art]]. [[Bill Cunningham (American photographer)|Bill Cunningham]] described watching the experience as how "Her body moves like a panther, her arms, the wings of an exotic bird, the long neck suggests a black trumpet swan. ... The audience responds with shattering applause - for the model's performance rather than the designer's clothes. It is the birth of a new fashion era - that of the spectacular show that rivals any on Broadway." "The coterie of international designers for whom she often modeled ([[André Courrèges]], Yves Saint Laurent, [[Rudi Gernreich]], Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne) encouraged such displays, equating them to their own exuberant designs and to the rebellious conduct of their youthful ... clientele".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 2009, p 108</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref name="thefashioninsider.com"/><ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 16">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 16.</ref><ref>https://donyaleluna.w0rdpress.com/{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} April 17, 2011. Retrieved August 11, 2020.</ref>


'''Covers'''
'''Covers'''
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==Acting career==
==Acting career==
Luna had initially planned to work in theatre having done work in local theatre in Detroit after school hours and doing bit parts in Detroit's repertory theatres.<ref name="arogundade.com"/><ref name="aenigma-images.com"/> When she joined theater camp in 1964, she was remembered by her acting tutor David Rambeau as '"warm and naive. he recalled.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 16"/> "I never planned to be a model when I was in Detroit," she told a reporter in 1966. "I wanted to be a starving actress in New York."<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> She soon also began moving in circles associated with experimental theater like [[The Living Theatre]].<ref>Life, Keith Richard, 2010</ref><ref>Powell, Richard J. (2009). ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture''.</ref>
Luna had initially planned to work in theater, having acted in Detroit after school hours, including bit parts in Detroit's repertory theaters.<ref name="arogundade.com"/><ref name="aenigma-images.com"/> When she joined theater camp in 1964, she was remembered by her acting tutor David Rambeau as "warm and naive", he recalled.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 16"/> "I never planned to be a model when I was in Detroit," she told a reporter in 1966. "I wanted to be a starving actress in New York."<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> She soon also began moving in circles associated with experimental theater like [[The Living Theatre]].<ref>Life, Keith Richard, 2010</ref><ref>Powell, Richard J. (2009). ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture''.</ref>


On British TV she appeared on ''Late Show London'' on March 14 and ''The [[Eamonn Andrews]] Show'' on May 1, 1966.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1419163/ "Late Show London (1966– )|Episode #1.26"], IMDb.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1626074/|title = "The Eamonn Andrews Show" Episode #2.31 (TV Episode 1966) - IMDb| website=[[IMDb]] }}</ref> On December 12, 1966 (11:15pm – 1:00am), she appeared on ''[[The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson]]''.<ref>Powell, Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. University of Chicago Press. pp. 82–83.</ref>
On British TV she appeared on ''Late Show London'' on March 14 and ''The [[Eamonn Andrews]] Show'' on May 1, 1966.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1419163/ "Late Show London (1966– )|Episode #1.26"], IMDb.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1626074/|title = "The Eamonn Andrews Show" Episode #2.31 (TV Episode 1966) - IMDb| website=[[IMDb]] }}</ref> On December 12, 1966 (11:15pm – 1:00am), she appeared on ''[[The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson]]''.<ref>Powell, Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. University of Chicago Press. pp. 82–83.</ref>


Luna appeared in several movies produced by [[Andy Warhol]]. Warhol created a series of short ''Screen Tests'', engaging his "stars" only if he deemed them to be film-worthy subjects. Of the ''Screen Tests'', each around four minutes long, Luna, the filmmaker Pat Hartley, who appeared in Warhol's full-length ''[[Ciao! Manhattan]]'' and in two ''Screen Tests'' and ''Prison'' in 1965, Dorothy Dean in ''My Hustler'' in 1965, and actress Abigail Rosen in ''Tub Girls'' in 1967, are notable for being only 4 African-Americans that Warhol shot for the series.<ref>Richard Powell, 2009 Cutting a Figure</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref>The Last Word: Dorothy Dean and Black Fugitivity in Andy Warhol's My Hustler, Osterweil, Ara Art Journal, 2019-10-02, Vol.78 (4), p.58-75</ref> Luna appeared in his ''Screen Test: Donyale Luna'' (1964), for which critic [[Wayne Koestenbaum]] described Luna as "pure diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism".<ref>{{cite news| url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023349/pg_1 | work=ArtForum | title="Andy Warhol: Screen Tests": Moma Qns, New York - Critical Essay | first=Wayne | last=Koestenbaum | year=2003}}</ref> Luna also appeared in the feature length ''[[Camp (1965 film)|Camp]]'' in 1965, Warhol's "satire of his own world, in which she dances in a backless dress and fur stole to The [[Ramsey Lewis Trio]]'s hit "[[The 'In' Crowd (song)|The In Crowd]]" and walking a catwalk in the fur stole.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> She also starred in ''Donyale Luna'' (1967), Warhol's 33-minute color film in which she plays [[Snow White]], wearing blue contacts.<ref name="warholstars.org"/>
Luna appeared in several films produced by [[Andy Warhol]], including his series of short ''[[Screen Tests]]'' in 1965. Among the "stars" Warhol engaged for these short films, each roughly four minutes, Luna is notable as one of four African-Americans in the series.<ref>Richard Powell, 2009 Cutting a Figure</ref><ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref>The Last Word: Dorothy Dean and Black Fugitivity in Andy Warhol's My Hustler, Osterweil, Ara Art Journal, 2019-10-02, Vol.78 (4), p.58-75</ref> Critic [[Wayne Koestenbaum]] described Luna in the ''Screen Tests'' as "pure diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism".<ref>{{cite news | url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023349/pg_1 | work=ArtForum | title="Andy Warhol: Screen Tests": Moma Qns, New York - Critical Essay | first=Wayne | last=Koestenbaum | year=2003 | access-date=January 11, 2024 | archive-date=November 14, 2007 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071114213836/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023349/pg_1 | url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>


Luna also appeared in the feature length ''[[Camp (1965 film)|Camp]]'' in 1965, Warhol's "satire of his own world" where she dances to the [[Ramsey Lewis Trio]] instrumental "[[The 'In' Crowd (song)|The 'In' Crowd]]" wearing a backless dress and fur stole.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> She is the eponymous star of Warhol's ''Donyale Luna'' (1967), a 33-minute color film in which she plays [[Snow White]], wearing blue contacts.<ref name="warholstars.org"/>
In 1966 upon having moved to London, she appeared in [[Michelangelo Antonioni]]s ''[[Blowup]]'' (1966), a satire of fashion photography. Luna also appeared in ''[[The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus]]'' (1968) as the assistant of a circus performer's [[fire-eater]] act.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>


In 1966 upon having moved to London, she appeared in [[Michelangelo Antonioni]]s ''[[Blowup]]'' (1966), a satire of fashion photography. Luna also appeared in ''[[The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus]]'' (1968) as the assistant of a circus performer's [[fire-eater]] act.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/>
In the French film ''Who are you Polly Magoo?'' (1966) she played a model dressed in conical and 'almost unwearable' abstract silver dress constructions shot by William Klein.<ref>Powell (2009), ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', p. 108.</ref>


In the French film ''Who are you Polly Magoo?'' (1966) she played a model dressed in conical and "almost unwearable" abstract silver dress constructions shot by William Klein.<ref>Powell (2009), ''Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture'', p. 108.</ref>
In ''[[Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (film)|Tonite Let's All Make Love in London]]'' (1967), a documentary on London art and youth culture, she was said to embody "the film's idea of the most swinging model of the time".<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0526021/|title=Donyale Luna|website=IMDb}}</ref>


Luna's only mainstream Hollywood film was the 1968 [[Otto Preminger]] comedy ''[[Skidoo (film)|Skidoo]]'', in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by [[Groucho Marx]]. Preminger also signed her with [[MGM]] for 3 years after she secured the role at a party for [[Twiggy]]. By this period, she had sold her apartments in London and Paris to live full-time in Italy and focus on acting.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 23–24.</ref> In 1969 she appeared as a background character in a television set in the film [[Dillinger is Dead]].<ref>https://mubi.com/films/dillinger-is-dead/cast (Accessed 25 November 2020)</ref>
Luna's only mainstream Hollywood film was the 1968 [[Otto Preminger]] comedy ''[[Skidoo (film)|Skidoo]]'', in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by [[Groucho Marx]]. Preminger also signed her with [[MGM]] for 3 years after she secured the role at a party for [[Twiggy]]. By this period, she had sold her apartments in London and Paris to live full-time in Italy and focus on acting.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 23–24.</ref> In 1969 she appeared as a background character in a television set in the film [[Dillinger is Dead]].<ref>https://mubi.com/films/dillinger-is-dead/cast (Accessed 25 November 2020)</ref>
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She then appeared in the 1970 ''Happening'' documentary film ''Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí'', a biography narrated by [[Orson Welles]] for French TV. Luna's last acting role was the title character in the 1972 Italian film ''[[Salome (1972 film)|Salomé]]'', directed by [[Carmelo Bene]].
She then appeared in the 1970 ''Happening'' documentary film ''Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí'', a biography narrated by [[Orson Welles]] for French TV. Luna's last acting role was the title character in the 1972 Italian film ''[[Salome (1972 film)|Salomé]]'', directed by [[Carmelo Bene]].


In May 1973 at the [[Cannes Film Festival]], considering herself as an international star, she pitched her life story to European and American film production company executives, like [[Berry Gordy]], who was at Cannes supporting [[Diana Ross]] in promoting her new film ''[[Lady Sings the Blues (film)|Lady Sings the Blues]]''. Interest was sparked in relation to [[The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show]], but the pitch was never taken any further. In an interview for the Italian publication ''[[Panorama (magazine)|Panorama]]'', Luna claimed that Gordy based the 1975 film ''[[Mahogany (film)|Mahogany]]'' on this pitch.<ref>Panorama Magazine, 1975</ref>
In May 1973 at the [[Cannes Film Festival]], considering herself as an international star, she pitched her life story to European and American film production company executives, like [[Berry Gordy]], who was at Cannes supporting [[Diana Ross]] in promoting her new film ''[[Lady Sings the Blues (film)|Lady Sings the Blues]]''. Interest was sparked in relation to [[The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show]], but the pitch was never taken any further. In an interview for the Italian publication ''[[Panorama (magazine)|Panorama]]'', Luna claimed that Gordy based the 1975 film ''[[Mahogany (film)|Mahogany]]'' on this pitch.<ref name="Panorama Magazine, 1975"/>


== Death ==
== Death ==
During the early morning hours of May 17, 1979, Donyale Luna died of a heroin overdose in a clinic in Rome at age 33. Luna was survived by her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga, and her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.<ref name="telegraph" /><ref>{{cite news |date=May 19, 1979 |title=Black fashion model dies |page=10 |work=The Spokesman-Review |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gcciAAAAIBAJ&pg=3735,1673072&dq=donyale+luna+death&hl=en |access-date=February 26, 2013}}</ref>
During the early morning hours of May 17, 1979, Donyale Luna died from a heroin overdose in a clinic in Rome at age 33. Luna was survived by her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga, and her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.<ref name="telegraph" /><ref>{{cite news |date=May 19, 1979 |title=Black fashion model dies |page=10 |work=The Spokesman-Review |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gcciAAAAIBAJ&pg=3735,1673072&dq=donyale+luna+death&hl=en |access-date=February 26, 2013}}</ref>


==Artistry==
==Artistry==
{{essay|section|date=July 2024}}
Luna was known to be a muse of [[Salvador Dalí]], and acted in many of the ways Dali did in accord with the philosophy of Surrealism. The American photographer William Claxton introduced Luna to Dalí when he met her in Catalonian village of [[Cadaqués]], becoming Dali's lifelong muse whom he would refer to as "the reincarnation of [[Nefertiti]]".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Artworks show how she would stand on a half-submerged piano which Dali has submerged himself for her to stand on, Claxton shooting "Dali drawing impromptu traceries on Luna's body" (a [[line art]] piece on a cream dress) whilst she wore it or emerging from a human-sized egg full of red paint which made into an 1 hour long surrealist film being ''"a sciptless series of happenings, all centred on images of birth and creativity"'' in plastic costumes designed by Paco Rabanne.<ref>Cavalier Men magazine, 1967</ref> She could be found "lying on a bed of fresh fish" in Dali's home.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 208 p 108</ref><ref>Sex, Surrealism, Dali and Me: The memoirs of Carlos Lozano, Clifford Thurlow, 2011</ref> She was also known to carry around a $1 million check according to the supermodel Pat Cleveland, "a legitimate cheque from her model agency" which she never took out and would try to pay with for a single meal, or her "entourage of boys who followed her everywhere" behind her in file, and because "she'd never sat in chairs, she'd always lounge" while her entourage would lay at her feet and with her penchant for going barefoot everywhere, Luna became known as an eccentric.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 20–21.</ref>
Luna was known to be a muse of [[Salvador Dalí]], and acted in many of the ways Dali did in accord with the philosophy of Surrealism. The American photographer William Claxton introduced Luna to Dalí when he met her in Catalonian village of [[Cadaqués]], becoming Dali's lifelong muse whom he would refer to as "the reincarnation of [[Nefertiti]]".<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Artworks show how she would stand on a half-submerged piano which Dali has submerged himself for her to stand on, Claxton shooting "Dali drawing impromptu traceries on Luna's body" (a [[line art]] piece on a cream dress) while she wore it or emerging from a human-sized egg full of red paint which made into an 1 hour long surrealist film being "a scriptless series of happenings, all centred on images of birth and creativity" in plastic costumes designed by Paco Rabanne.<ref>Cavalier Men magazine, 1967</ref> She could be found "lying on a bed of fresh fish" in Dali's home.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 208 p 108</ref><ref>Sex, Surrealism, Dali and Me: The memoirs of Carlos Lozano, Clifford Thurlow, 2011</ref> She was also known to carry around a $1 million check according to the supermodel Pat Cleveland, "a legitimate cheque from her model agency" which she never took out and would try to pay with for a single meal, or her "entourage of boys who followed her everywhere" behind her in file, and because "she'd never sat in chairs, she'd always lounge" while her entourage would lay at her feet and with her penchant for going barefoot everywhere, Luna became known as an eccentric.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 20–21.</ref>
[[File:nefertiti busto.jpg|thumb|left|Bust of Nefertiti]][[File:Noire et Blanche.jpg|thumb|left|Noire et Blanche; of [[Alice Prin]] by Man Ray, 1926]][[File:Joséphine Baker par Jean Chassaing.jpg|thumb|right|Josephine Baker Poster from 1931]]
[[File:nefertiti busto.jpg|thumb|left|Bust of Nefertiti]][[File:Noire et Blanche.jpg|thumb|left|Noire et Blanche; of [[Alice Prin]] by Man Ray, 1926]][[File:Joséphine Baker par Jean Chassaing.jpg|thumb|right|Josephine Baker Poster from 1931]]
The ''eccentric'' character of Donyale Luna can be seen as both a hyperbolic alter-ego and an extension of a ''[[fake it until you make it]]'' persona which Luna may have thought of as a "metamorphosis". Luna used [[Camp (style)|camp]] to give off a larger than life character, using hairpieces, lengthened eyelashes, and "a collection of blue, green, yellow, purple and orange [coloured contacts] ... which she changed like underwear" to play fast and loose with defined boundaries she may have had as Peggy-Ann. She would both employ others and use her own designs for her clothes, experimenting with [[Bindi (decoration)|bindis]] on her [[third eye]], and often wearing loose-fitting or flowing garments. These two (Peggy-Ann and Donyale) were succinctly distinct however to Freeman, she stated of viewing "Donyale" in photographs: "If I had seen something like me in a magazine as a child, I would have died laughing, or been scared ... I find my own photographs weird, [[Mimoplastic art|terribly sophisticated]] and different".<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 19–20.</ref>
The ''eccentric'' character of Donyale Luna can be seen as both a hyperbolic alter-ego and an extension of a ''[[fake it until you make it]]'' persona which Luna may have thought of as a "metamorphosis". Luna used [[Camp (style)|camp]] to give off a larger than life character, using hairpieces, lengthened eyelashes, and "a collection of blue, green, yellow, purple and orange [colored contacts] ... which she changed like underwear" to play fast and loose with defined boundaries she may have had as Peggy-Ann. She would both employ others and use her own designs for her clothes, experimenting with [[Bindi (decoration)|bindis]] on her [[third eye]], and often wearing loose-fitting or flowing garments. These two (Peggy-Ann and Donyale) were succinctly distinct to Freeman, however; she spoke of viewing "Donyale" in photographs: "If I had seen something like me in a magazine as a child, I would have died laughing, or been scared ... I find my own photographs weird, [[Mimoplastic art|terribly sophisticated]] and different".<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 19–20.</ref>
[[File:Nachtoptreden van Josephine Baker in het Citytheater te Amsterdam, Bestanddeelnr 911-7669.jpg|thumb|Josephine Baker performing in Amsterdam in 1960]]
[[File:Nachtoptreden van Josephine Baker in het Citytheater te Amsterdam, Bestanddeelnr 911-7669.jpg|thumb|Josephine Baker performing in Amsterdam in 1960]]
The alter ego of Donyale Luna was created in what Freeman termed ''future visioning'', a [[New Age]] approach culminating when she completed attended Central High Theater in Detroit, a technique (drawing from pantomime and experimental dancing and acting) which allowed the individual to create an altogether new identity by drawing on traits seen in "visions" from a desired individual like Baker, to form a new identity. Luna would alter her [[Clothing|attire]], appearance, [[social group|social circles]], [[Body Language|mannerisms]] and [[Paralanguage|paralinguistic features]] like altering the pitch in her voice for instance, to create the character of Donyale, crafting subtle [[Phantasiai|bodily perceptions]] to alter or shift the viewers perception of her as a Black body;<ref>The 'Black Body' is a modern term to refer to the corporeal theoretical paradigm of stereotypes placed on African-Americans, and how this can reduce their value in society as individuals and human beings.</ref><ref>''"African American identity and the concept of the black body are tragically intertwined through what the residue of slavery has left behind in the form of "body economics" – a fixation on power over the black body is woven into identity, agency and power over your own body, as well as social and political powers over the body."'', Deconstructing the Body: Identity and Power in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, Zoe Lloyd-Williams, 17th October 2017</ref><ref>''"the black body does not describe the actual appearance of any real person or group of people." ''Embodying Black Experience : Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body'', Young, Harvey, 1975–2010, p. 7.</ref><ref>''"the black body comes prejudged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy. ... You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street"'', https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/black-body-re-reading-james-baldwins-stranger-village "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'", Teju Cole, ''[[The New Yorker]]'', August 19, 2014.</ref> too increase her pragmatical [[social prestige]] or [[Social status|standing]].
The alter ego of Donyale Luna was created in what Freeman termed ''future visioning'', a [[New Age]] approach culminating when she attended Central High Theater in Detroit. This technique drew from pantomime, experimental dance, and acting, and allowed the individual<!-- Is this a more broadly accepted technique, or something unique to Luna? If the latter, "the individual" should be changed to "Luna" --> to create an altogether new identity by drawing on traits seen in "visions" from a desired individual like Baker. Luna would alter her attire, appearance, social circles, mannerisms, and [[Paralanguage|paralinguistic features]] such as the pitch in her voice, to create the character of Donyale, crafting subtle bodily perceptions to alter or shift the viewer's perception of her as a Black body.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}<!-- this statement is followed by four references, but none of them actually support the claim; they simply explain the meaning of the academic phrase "Black body" --><ref>The 'Black Body' is a modern term to refer to the corporeal theoretical paradigm of stereotypes placed on African-Americans, and how this can reduce their value in society as individuals and human beings.</ref><ref>''"African American identity and the concept of the black body are tragically intertwined through what the residue of slavery has left behind in the form of "body economics" – a fixation on power over the black body is woven into identity, agency and power over your own body, as well as social and political powers over the body."'', Deconstructing the Body: Identity and Power in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, Zoe Lloyd-Williams, 17th October 2017</ref><ref>''"the black body does not describe the actual appearance of any real person or group of people." ''Embodying Black Experience : Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body'', Young, Harvey, 1975–2010, p. 7.</ref><ref>''"the black body comes prejudged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy. ... You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street"'', https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/black-body-re-reading-james-baldwins-stranger-village "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'", Teju Cole, ''[[The New Yorker]]'', August 19, 2014.</ref>


Exemplified in an advert for a polyester peasant blouse in 1966 for [[Ebony (magazine)|Ebony]] magazine, the iconography work was said to evoke the black and white images of [[Man Ray]], acknowledging the shift of the early 20th century "visual modernism" morphed into the "disjuncted body" (see [[Mikhail Bakhtin]]'s theory of the [[Grotesque body|grotesque]] and read ''Negro: An Anthology'' (1934) by [[Nancy Cunard]], Hugh D. Ford, p.&nbsp;417), a moving away from the classical ''Western'' notion of what a body should be, to one of "distorted corporeal forms" originating in African Arts, [[Expressionism]] and [[Cubism]] and the body language of [[Josephine Baker]] which Luna emulates in the advertisement to create a more "dynamic" image of herself and African-American visual imagery.<ref>Powell, Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. University of Chicago Press. p. 86</ref>
Exemplified in a 1966 advertisement for a polyester peasant blouse for [[Ebony (magazine)|Ebony]] magazine, the iconography work was said{{by whom|date=July 2024}} to evoke the black and white images of [[Man Ray]], acknowledging the shift of the early 20th century "visual modernism" morphed into the "disjuncted body"<!-- "(see [[Mikhail Bakhtin]]'s theory of the [[Grotesque body|grotesque]] and read ''Negro: An Anthology'' (1934) by [[Nancy Cunard]], Hugh D. Ford, p.&nbsp;417)" — this is not how we cite further readings! -->, a moving away from the classical Western notion of what a body should be to one of "distorted corporeal forms" originating in African Arts, [[Expressionism]] and [[Cubism]], as well as the body language of [[Josephine Baker]] which Luna emulates in the advertisement to create a more "dynamic" image of herself and African-American visual imagery.<ref>Powell, Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. University of Chicago Press. p. 86</ref> "Luna's referencing of [Baker and Nefertiti] within the European context signaled her identification with them", as Black women "heroines and tropes" which Luna used as a model to emulate what Black success could be presented as in an environment which responded to both figures by "primitivizing, sexualizing and ultimately dehumanizing [them in] ... exotic or erotic roles that did not provide occupational transitions to more fulfilling, post spectacle lives".<ref>''The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell.</ref>
As a content creator, "Luna's referencing of [Baker and Nefertiti] within the European context signaled her identification with them", as Black women "heroines and tropes" which Luna used as a model to emulate what Black success could be presented as in an environment which responded to both figures to by "primitivizing, sexualizing and ultimately dehumanizing [them in] ... exotic or erotic roles that did not provide occupational transitions to more fulfilling, post spectacle lives".<ref>''The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell.</ref>


Brown notes of how (in the early 20th century) "the expression of primitive glamour by self-consciously urban sophisticates such as Baker ... could equally be produced as a reimagining of subject-object relations, a paradoxical critique and deployment of pleasures[,] ... despite the motion, vitality, energy and erotic fission imagined to be at the heart of the primitive. ... [Primitive glamour allowed for self-assertion so that the primitive role] offered something more than crippled self-expression: primitive glamour [relied] ... on the use of personae, impersonation, or a kind of eclipse of the human subject, ... [which although perilous] also offered substantial creative results ... [so] rather than silencing artists with the gag of stereotype or the limitations of the market, [Primitive glamour] often enabled the merging of the subject and object" questioning perceptions of who and what it was to be 'primitive', creating the formation of early Black glamour aesthetics in 1920's Europe, much as in [[Primitivism]] aesthetics.<ref>Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form, Judith Christine Brown, 2009 p.126</ref> For instance in her "primitive" shoot with ''Harper's Bazaar'' dressed in animal print in 1965, Luna "construct[s] and perform[s] an oppositional Black glamour" by using the provided clothes or "[tangible] things ... [to] interpellate [her audience] in specific ways, combining narrative with history and [[Materiality (social sciences and humanities)#Communication studies|materiality]] to structure specific gestures and movements ... [in] working with her own effective engagement with the material as "dances with things", undoing the work of glamour as a white racial project", thus creating an aspirational lifestyle for potential Black audiences.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> And with "her gesticular poses in print magazines emphasized her angular frame, while her assertive body language—including a powerful stare called "the Look" by fashion magazines and later described as "ocular assault" ... became her signature [pose]" used to entrance her audience, Freeman used "Donyale" to create an altogether new image or [[aesthetic]] of what constituted ''Black glamour'', a new beauty paradigm for [[African-American art|African-American visual imagery]] and B''lack subject [[Agency (sociology)|agency]]''; developed from Baker's era of primitive glamour; into previously white spaces.<ref name="vice.com"/><ref>Richard J. Powell; "Who's Zoomin' Who?: The Eyes of Donyale Luna". ''Nka'', November 1, 2016; pp. 14–21</ref>
Brown notes that, in the early 20th century, "the expression of primitive glamour by self-consciously urban sophisticates such as Baker ... could equally be produced as a reimagining of subject-object relations, a paradoxical critique and deployment of pleasures[,] ... despite the motion, vitality, energy and erotic fission imagined to be at the heart of the primitive. ... [Primitive glamour allowed for self-assertion so that the primitive role] offered something more than crippled self-expression: primitive glamour [relied] ... on the use of personae, impersonation, or a kind of eclipse of the human subject, ... [which although perilous] also offered substantial creative results ... [so] rather than silencing artists with the gag of stereotype or the limitations of the market, [Primitive glamour] often enabled the merging of the subject and object" questioning perceptions of who and what it was to be "primitive", creating the formation of early Black glamour aesthetics in 1920's Europe, much as in [[Primitivism]] aesthetics.<ref>Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form, Judith Christine Brown, 2009 p.126</ref> For instance in her "primitive" shoot with ''Harper's Bazaar'' dressed in animal print in 1965, Luna "construct[s] and perform[s] an oppositional Black glamour" by using the provided clothes or "[tangible] things ... [to] interpellate [her audience] in specific ways, combining narrative with history and [[Materiality (social sciences and humanities)#Communication studies|materiality]] to structure specific gestures and movements ... [in] working with her own effective engagement with the material as "dances with things", undoing the work of glamour as a white racial project", thus creating an aspirational lifestyle for potential Black audiences.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> And with "her gesticular poses in print magazines emphasized her angular frame, while her assertive body language—including a powerful stare called "the Look" by fashion magazines and later described as "ocular assault" ... became her signature [pose]" used to entrance her audience, Freeman used "Donyale" to create an altogether new image or [[aesthetic]] of what constituted ''Black glamour'', a new beauty paradigm for [[African-American art|African-American visual imagery]] and B''lack subject [[Agency (sociology)|agency]]''; developed from Baker's era of primitive glamour; into previously white spaces.<ref name="vice.com"/><ref>Richard J. Powell; "Who's Zoomin' Who?: The Eyes of Donyale Luna". ''Nka'', November 1, 2016; pp. 14–21</ref>


She was believed to have met the artist [[Mati Klarwein]] (who made psychedelic album covers for artists like [[Jimi Hendrix]]) through [[Sam Rivers (jazz musician)#Blue Note era|Sam Rivers]], at an "occupational gathering" for [[Miles Davis]] in New York in 1964 where her likeness appears in his painting ''Time'', of a circle of gold leaf surrounded by scimitars representing the earth and sky. In the circle sits a 'polymorphous figure ... an aggregate of fire, water, multiple faces of beautiful women, female breasts, male genitalia, rainbow patterns, animal heads, skulls derived from Tibetan and Hindu religious imagery ... topped off by Donyale Luna's trimorphic head', also being portrayed in 1967 as in a self-portrait.<ref>See external links</ref> "Klarwein dedicated Milk n' Honey (1973), his book of reproduced paintings".<ref>Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture</ref>
She was believed to have met the artist [[Mati Klarwein]] (who made psychedelic album covers for artists like [[Jimi Hendrix]]) through [[Sam Rivers (jazz musician)#Blue Note era|Sam Rivers]], at an "occupational gathering" for [[Miles Davis]] in New York in 1964 where her likeness appears in his painting ''Time'', of a circle of gold leaf surrounded by scimitars representing the earth and sky. In the circle sits a "polymorphous figure ... an aggregate of fire, water, multiple faces of beautiful women, female breasts, male genitalia, rainbow patterns, animal heads, skulls derived from Tibetan and Hindu religious imagery ... topped off by Donyale Luna's trimorphic head", also portrayed in 1967 as in a self-portrait.<ref>See external links</ref> "Klarwein dedicated Milk n' Honey (1973), his book of reproduced paintings".<ref>Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture</ref>


In Europe she was also a part of the 'rock music scene', having been featured in the Italian music video for [[Patty Pravo]]'s song ''Michelle'' (1969).<ref>The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, p 85 (also see external links)</ref>
In Europe she was also a part of the "rock music scene", having been featured in the Italian music video for [[Patty Pravo]]'s song ''Michelle'' (1969).<ref>The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, p 85 (also see external links)</ref>


In her 1975 Playboy interview, she held the belief that beauty was 'something not physical but something beyond that', she also noted that children were more readily accepting of her form of 'beauty'.
In her 1975 Playboy interview, she held the belief that beauty was "something not physical but something beyond that", she also noted that children were more readily accepting of her form of "beauty".
She reported to the Argentinian Press in 1969: "Beauty is something else, something inexplicable that each person carries inside. This form of beauty related to Her visions. There's a great division coming about on this planet. There are going to be a lot of people who will die because they just don't know how to live. They don't know what life's about, they don't know how to give, how to love - nor do they want to. And those who are beautiful enough - I don't mean physically but something beyond that - they will have the chance to learn how to fly, to be beautiful, to rise above the level of the normal human - to be superior beings first and eventually gods and goddesses."<ref>"La belleza es otro cosa, algo inexplicable que cada uno lleva dentra.", Cueto, Rúa, Hamak, Morduchowicz y Consultores Asociados, 1969, Análisis</ref>
She reported to the Argentinian Press in 1969: "Beauty is something else, something inexplicable that each person carries inside. This form of beauty related to Her visions. There's a great division coming about on this planet. There are going to be a lot of people who will die because they just don't know how to live. They don't know what life's about, they don't know how to give, how to love - nor do they want to. And those who are beautiful enough - I don't mean physically but something beyond that - they will have the chance to learn how to fly, to be beautiful, to rise above the level of the normal human - to be superior beings first and eventually gods and goddesses."<ref>"La belleza es otro cosa, algo inexplicable que cada uno lleva dentra.", Cueto, Rúa, Hamak, Morduchowicz y Consultores Asociados, 1969, Análisis</ref>


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==Personal life==
==Personal life==


===Racial Identity===
===Racial identity===
Throughout her life and career, Luna claimed to be of various, mixed ethnic backgrounds, often playing down her African American ancestry since being a teenager in Detroit.<ref name="goff" /> Later on in her life she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous Mexican and of Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator, however, the historical accuracy of this is questionable.<ref>[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=e9I_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZuEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,1650834&dq=princeton+cass+technical&hl=en Parade] - ''[[The Modesto Bee]]''</ref> She would also claim to be of 'Polynesian' descent in high school as the common practice at the time was for immigrants and [[ethnic minority|minority groups]] to 'give themselves makeovers to better assimilate into modern [American] society.'<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 15"/> She often made up tall tales to make her seem more grandiose, part of the character of Donyale Luna she began in her teenage years, including beguiling stories designed to shock or amuse such as losing her parents in a car accident and being adopted, or replying to the question of her heritage with the line "I'm from the moon darling" which some have construed to mean she denied her heritage as a Black woman.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> With 'her penchant for wearing blue contact lenses, was seen by some as race betrayal ... [it] was probably part of a process of reinvention that had begun in her teenage years. In fact constructing a new identity [as Donyale Luna]'.<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/>
Donyale Luna identified as multi-racial. Throughout her life and career, Luna claimed to be of various mixed ethnic backgrounds, often playing down her African American ancestry as early as her teenage years.<ref name="goff" /> Later in life she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was of Indigenous Mexican and Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator; however, the historical accuracy of this is questionable.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120712082428/http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=e9I_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZuEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,1650834&dq=princeton+cass+technical&hl=en Parade] - ''[[The Modesto Bee]]''</ref> She would also claim to be of "Polynesian" descent in high school. She often made up tall tales to make her seem more grandiose, part of the character of Donyale Luna she began in her teenage years, including beguiling stories designed to shock or amuse such as losing her parents in a car accident and being adopted, or replying to the question of her heritage with the line "I'm from the moon darling" which some have construed to mean she denied her heritage as a Black woman.<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> While 'her penchant for wearing blue contact lenses, was seen by some as race betrayal ... [it] was probably part of a process of reinvention that had begun in her teenage years. In fact constructing a new identity [as Donyale Luna]'.<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/>


Dream Cazzaniga on her mother leaving Detroit for New York writes of the likelihood of employment as a model how 'there were virtually no modeling opportunities for non-white faces anywhere other than dedicated African-American publications such as Ebony. ... [Finding it amazing how Luna] was to leave home for Manhattan at that point in history, with no clear plans or steady income - just a telephone number hastily written down by a stranger.'<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> The only other industries which used models of color included the soft drinks industry such as Coco-Cola in 1957 or the Tobacco industry.<ref>Finkelman, Paul (2009). Finkelman, Paul (ed.). ''Encyclopedia of African American History'': 5-Volume Set, Volume 1. 1. Oxford University Press, p. 351.</ref> Due to the prejudices of a white dominated industry where white was the default and Black the other, with racist language, dress, and behavior used toward her in work and everyday life in New York, she moved from North America to Europe "where she likely found an audience more accepting of her skin color", describing herself as "multi-ethnic".<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> Europe at the time was seen as more accepting of ''white-passing'' Black models such as, [[Ophelia Devore]], who had modeled herself and had her own agency's models working in Paris such as [[Dorothea Church]] in the 1950s and unmistakably African-American models like {{ill|Dolores Francine Rhiney|it}}, who was the first Black model to walk on the European [[catwalk]]. Darker models such as [[Helen Williams (model)|Helen Williams]] later became more accepted by the 1960s.<ref>"Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion", Marcellas Reynolds, 2019, p. 17.</ref><ref>Wilson, Eric (July 23, 2006). "Dorothea T. Church, 83, Pioneering Model, Dies". ''The New York Times''. Retrieved October 12, 2010.</ref> In ''[[the Sunday Times Magazine]]'' in 1966, [[Harold Carlton]] hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro".<ref name="Stone"/>
Dream Cazzaniga on her mother leaving Detroit for New York writes of the likelihood of employment as a model how 'there were virtually no modeling opportunities for non-white faces anywhere other than dedicated African-American publications such as Ebony. ... [Finding it amazing how Luna] was to leave home for Manhattan at that point in history, with no clear plans or steady income - just a telephone number hastily written down by a stranger.'<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> The only other industries which used models of color included the soft drinks industry such as Coca-Cola in 1957 or the Tobacco industry.<ref>Finkelman, Paul (2009). Finkelman, Paul (ed.). ''Encyclopedia of African American History'': 5-Volume Set, Volume 1. 1. Oxford University Press, p. 351.</ref> Due to the prejudices of a white dominated industry where white was the default and Black the other, with racist language, dress, and behavior used toward her in work and everyday life in New York, she moved from North America to Europe "where she likely found an audience more accepting of her skin color", describing herself as "multi-ethnic".<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> Europe at the time was seen as more accepting of ''white-passing'' Black models, such as [[Ophelia Devore]], who had modeled herself and had her own agency's models working in Paris, or [[Dorothea Church]] in the 1950s and unmistakably African-American models like {{ill|Dolores Francine Rhiney|it}}, who was the first Black model to walk on the European [[catwalk]]. Darker models such as [[Helen Williams (model)|Helen Williams]] later became more accepted by the 1960s.<ref>"Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion", Marcellas Reynolds, 2019, p. 17.</ref><ref>Wilson, Eric (July 23, 2006). "Dorothea T. Church, 83, Pioneering Model, Dies". ''The New York Times''. Retrieved October 12, 2010.</ref> In ''[[the Sunday Times Magazine]]'' in 1966, [[Harold Carlton]] hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro".<ref name="Stone"/>


As for the United States, "until the advent of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s the fashion industry operated its own kind of apartheid, which entirely excluded non-white models from its magazines, advertising and catwalk shows."<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> Luna could work alongside models like [[Jean Shrimpton]] and [[Veruschka]] and command the same salary, but was thought of as exotic, becoming a victim of [[Other (philosophy)#The subaltern native|Othering]] (also see [[Dominance hierarchy]]) first by white then later the Black community; compounded as both the "[[Girl next door|girl-next-door]]" and "[[Familiar stranger|exotic]]" negro model type.<ref>Fashioning Models:Image, Text and Industry, Joanne Entwistle, Elizabeth Wissinger, 2012</ref> With the advent of the civil rights movement in the United States 'so too did society's fascination with the "exotic" and "alien". ... Almost against her own will, she became a symbol. Some people declared her a Masai warrior, Gauguinesque, Nefertiti reborn. Others claimed she was another species entirely - or from outer space!'. ''Time'' in 1966 called her a 'creature of contrasts. One minute sophisticated, the next fawnlike, now exotic and faraway'.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Racialist language such as being 'from outer space' was routinely used and was adopted by Luna in her Donyale character in a bid to overcome the boundaries this language created towards her as a Black body in the American public eye, and evolved other time to accommodate this prejudiced language. She said in late 1966 to a reporter that "Fashion photographers saw me as something different but I'm certain it has nothing to do with my color. I never think of myself as a brown girl".
As for the United States, "until the advent of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s the fashion industry operated its own kind of apartheid, which entirely excluded non-white models from its magazines, advertising and catwalk shows."<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> Luna could work alongside models like [[Jean Shrimpton]] and [[Veruschka]] and command the same salary, but was thought of as exotic, becoming a victim of [[Other (philosophy)#The subaltern native|Othering]] (also see [[Dominance hierarchy]]) first by white then later the Black community—compounded as both the "[[Girl next door|girl-next-door]]" and "[[Familiar stranger|exotic]]" negro model type.<ref>Fashioning Models:Image, Text and Industry, Joanne Entwistle, Elizabeth Wissinger, 2012</ref> With the advent of the civil rights movement in the United States 'so too did society's fascination with the "exotic" and "alien". ... Almost against her own will, she became a symbol. Some people declared her a Masai warrior, Gauguinesque, Nefertiti reborn. Others claimed she was another species entirely - or from outer space!'. ''Time'' in 1966 called her a 'creature of contrasts. One minute sophisticated, the next fawnlike, now exotic and faraway'.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> Racialist language such as being 'from outer space' was routinely used and was adopted by Luna in her Donyale character in a bid to overcome the boundaries this language created towards her as a Black body in the American public eye, and evolved other time to accommodate this prejudiced language. She said in late 1966 to a reporter that "Fashion photographers saw me as something different but I'm certain it has nothing to do with my color. I never think of myself as a brown girl".


Due to the color barrier, by then "the prestige of her modeling jobs had now shifted, from photo editorial work for Harper's Bazaar to the secondary ... advertising market [in ''Ebony'' magazine]".<ref>Cutting a Figure, Richard Powell, 2009, p 96</ref> The so-called secondary market, however, was worth an estimated $15 billion and white advertisers who began working in the market preferred Luna's "otherworldy features" (her long limbs, "oval-shaped face and almond eyes") not being traditionally readily associated with Black women,<ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 8 {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}</ref> as they alienated other African-Americans, and provided white advertisers with a manufactured sense of [[White Supremacy|racial superiority]] and which may be considered as [[tokenism]] on the behalf of the advertising agencies involved. Jane Hoffman described the evolution of the ''acceptable negro'' from white-passing models (first used in 1950s advertisements in magazines like Jet) to the 1960s replacement, the ''exotic negro'', who was 'the Negro girl you'd think of as something else. She wasn't even beautiful-just a weird creature, some kind of space thing, She had to be so bizarre that no [Black person] could identify with [them]'. This typecasting of Black models limited Hoffman's own chances because she was "not Negro enough" to be Black under the respectability politics of white industry standards for Black models at that time. White American society preferred 'exotic' Luna over women like Hoffman as they provided an existing false narrative which fuelled their preexisting media biases about Blackness and its otherness, reinforced existing stereotypes, excluded Black women, and narrowed the definition of what Black beauty could take the appearance of how an ''acceptable negro'' would appear, in opposition to whites who would be seen as the default of acceptability and whose appearance would not be called into question so easily.<ref name="evettedionne.com">{{Cite web|url=https://evettedionne.com/2013/07/11/do-you-know-donyale-luna/|title=Do You Know Donyale Luna?|first=Evette|last=Dionne|date=July 11, 2013}}</ref>
Due to the color barrier, by then "the prestige of her modeling jobs had now shifted, from photo editorial work for Harper's Bazaar to the secondary ... advertising market [in ''Ebony'' magazine]".<ref>Cutting a Figure, Richard Powell, 2009, p 96</ref> The so-called secondary market, however, was worth an estimated $15 billion and white advertisers who began working in the market preferred Luna's "otherworldy features" (her long limbs, "oval-shaped face and almond eyes") not being traditionally readily associated with Black women,<ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 8 {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}</ref> as they alienated other African-Americans, and provided white advertisers with a manufactured sense of [[White Supremacy|racial superiority]] and which may be considered as [[tokenism]] on the behalf of the advertising agencies involved. Jane Hoffman described the evolution of the ''acceptable negro'' from white-passing models (first used in 1950s advertisements in magazines like Jet) to the 1960s replacement, the ''exotic negro'', who was 'the Negro girl you'd think of as something else. She wasn't even beautiful-just a weird creature, some kind of space thing, She had to be so bizarre that no [Black person] could identify with [them]'. This typecasting of Black models limited Hoffman's own chances because she was "not Negro enough" to be Black under the respectability politics of white industry standards for Black models at that time. White American society preferred 'exotic' Luna over women like Hoffman as they provided an existing false narrative which fuelled their preexisting media biases about Blackness and its otherness, reinforced existing stereotypes, excluded Black women, and narrowed the definition of what Black beauty could take the appearance of how an ''acceptable negro'' would appear, in opposition to whites who would be seen as the default of acceptability and whose appearance would not be called into question so easily.<ref name="evettedionne.com">{{Cite web|url=https://evettedionne.com/2013/07/11/do-you-know-donyale-luna/|title=Do You Know Donyale Luna?|first=Evette|last=Dionne|date=July 11, 2013}}</ref>


Indeed, they infantilized "Black women [who] could be sexy, sinuous, glamorous ... marvellous entertainers ... [b]ut when it came it fashion ... magazines and advertising, ... [they] simply not exist. They were not considered to have the necessary spending power that publishers and agencies wanted to exploit." All fashionable images of Black women were made through the primitivist lens which Baker herself used so successfully to create a new beauty standard in 1920s France. Until 1965, when Luna broke the color barrier as a model and created new media content which showed an African American woman for the first time in high fashion magazines within visible beauty standards, an African-American woman wearing scant clothing was "the stuff of the white man's sexual fantasies ... [and until Luna the] kind of image a black girl could strive for; ... [that or to] never fall back on imitating whatever the current white style of beauty happened to be as the standard begins with Black beauty from the beginning. For years, [Black] girls [had] literally been through torture in their efforts to achieve the full creative range of hairstyles ... [using] dangerous hot combs ... or chemical solutions like sodium hydroxide or lye which could burn the hair away ... [or] styles of wigs that Black women wore in order to enhance their beauty in a myriad of ways beyond any limitations of tradition or culture. The same thing applied to cosmetics. ... [[The Supremes]] [then being] a perfect example of how Black girls built their glamour around their own ideals stemming from their own natural, rich and glorious beauty ... and so theirs was the look longed for by blacks from [[Brixton]] to [[Harlem]]: there was simply no one else you ''could'' try to imitate."<ref name="Brigid Keenan 1977, pp.173-178"/> Prevailing beauty standards made African-American women into Black bodies subject to jealousy based on the prevailing negative beauty standards of the day, a tightrope of racialized worldviews of white fashion photographers and beauty which Luna had to walk to create this new content.


In the factor of race, she further stated: "Most of my publicity has been because I'm dark-skinned. But I think the reaction would have been the same if I were white because of my [body] features" referring to her uncommon height and bodily proportions which these companies regarded as ''exotic''.<ref name="evettedionne.com"/><ref>''Detroit Free Press'', Colleen O'Brien, 1966.</ref> Although claims are often made that comments like this is a sign that Luna was attempting to shift away from her African-American heritage, she would go on to carry out a public [[Campaign Against Racial Discrimination|anti-racial-discrimination campaign]] alongside David Anthony (of ''[[The Touchables (film)|The Touchables]]'' fame) with clothing designed by Mary Quant, being shot by David Bailey.<ref>Daily Mirror, Wednesday 15 June 1966, page 11</ref> When she was denied service in 1968 in a Mayfair hotel, she also filed a complaint for racial discrimination with the board of [[Race Relations Board|racial discrimination]]. The American print journalist [[Judy Stone (journalist)|Judy Stone]] wrote a now-infamous profile of Luna for ''The New York Times'' in 1968, describing Luna using racialist language such as "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage—exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African". Luna responded that "the civil-rights movement has my greatest support, but I don't want to get involved racially".<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> Dazed reporter Phillipa Burton notes how it today "makes for uncomfortable reading; the interviewer's obsessive probing of her multiracial lineage jarring with Luna's obvious displeasure at talking about it."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of Black actresses, Luna replied, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less"<ref name="Stone"/><ref name="cocoandcreme"/> which are indicative of the limited and poor quality of jobs and opportunities available to Luna at the time in an environment which seemingly only accepted models who passed the [[Brown Paper Bag Test|brown paper bag test]].
In the factor of race, she further stated: "Most of my publicity has been because I'm dark-skinned. But I think the reaction would have been the same if I were white because of my [body] features" referring to her uncommon height and bodily proportions which these companies regarded as ''exotic''.<ref name="evettedionne.com"/><ref>''Detroit Free Press'', Colleen O'Brien, 1966.</ref> Although claims are often made that comments like this is a sign that Luna was attempting to shift away from her African-American heritage, she would go on to carry out a public [[Campaign Against Racial Discrimination|anti-racial-discrimination campaign]] alongside David Anthony (of ''[[The Touchables (film)|The Touchables]]'' fame) with clothing designed by Mary Quant, being shot by David Bailey.<ref>Daily Mirror, Wednesday 15 June 1966, page 11</ref> When she was denied service in 1968 in a Mayfair hotel, she also filed a complaint for racial discrimination with the board of [[Race Relations Board|racial discrimination]]. The American print journalist [[Judy Stone (journalist)|Judy Stone]] wrote a now-infamous profile of Luna for ''The New York Times'' in 1968, describing Luna using racialist language such as "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage—exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African". Luna responded that "the civil-rights movement has my greatest support, but I don't want to get involved racially".<ref name="fashion.telegraph.co.uk"/> Dazed reporter Phillipa Burton notes how it today "makes for uncomfortable reading; the interviewer's obsessive probing of her multiracial lineage jarring with Luna's obvious displeasure at talking about it."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of Black actresses, Luna replied, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less"<ref name="Stone"/><ref name="cocoandcreme"/> which are indicative of the limited and poor quality of jobs and opportunities available to Luna at the time in an environment which seemingly only accepted models who passed the [[Brown Paper Bag Test|brown paper bag test]].


After her death, Luna's widower Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga said that Luna self-identified as a "[[Mulatto|mulatta]]" and that she "felt rejected by the Black community and the white one".<ref name="goff" /> Her daughter notes "people longed for her to become a symbol of the African-American resistance; a role she struggled with as someone who identified as mixed race."<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/chapter-4-the-multiracial-experience/|title=Th Multiracial Experience|website=pewsocialtrends.org|date=June 11, 2015}}</ref> Penultimately with regards to the racism she faced in the US, Luna believed that [[Ethnic identity development|questions surrounding her Blackness]] and how she [[Intersectionality|fit into American society]] being "[[One-drop rule|a quarter Black]]" were "America's problem", often attempting to escape labels major publications placed on her, replying to the Times: "Yeah, I'm an American on Black and white, but I'm me, I'm me"<ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="vice.com"/> in an attempt to reject American notions of race and to establish herself a more fully rounded human being.
Comments such as those have meant that she has been widely forgotten in favor of Beverly Johnson, while revealing the complex dynamics that she refused to be defined by in being [[typecasting|typecast]] in the roles such as [[Diana Ross]] in the film [[Mahogany (film)|Mahogany]]; a media portrayal that may have been a cause for conflict in her identity as a Black woman and someone in the public eye; such as when the protagonist of Mahogany is referred to as an ''inanimate object'' and the misogyny of the modeling industry in the film which as a "Black body" altered how Luna was to be both remembered and perceived in the short and long term, placing more value on her as a body (valuing looks and the profit involved from her modeling) than Freeman as a person, thus disregarding her full worth and [[Objectification|objectifying]] Luna.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_the_strong_black_woman_identity_both_helps_and_hurts|title=How the "Strong Black Woman" Identity Both Helps and Hurts|website=Greater Good}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://chicago.suntimes.com/2015/8/21/18470937/in-1975-s-mahogany-diana-ross-timeless-but-the-attitudes-aren-t|title=In 1975's 'Mahogany,' Diana Ross timeless, but the attitudes aren't|website=chicago.suntimes.com|date=August 21, 2015}}</ref> After her death, Luna's widower Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga said that Luna self-identified as a "[[Mulatto|mulatta]]" and that she "felt rejected by the Black community and the white one".<ref name="goff" /> Her daughter notes "people longed for her to become a symbol of the African-American resistance; a role she struggled with as someone who identified as mixed race."<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/chapter-4-the-multiracial-experience/|title=Th Multiracial Experience|website=pewsocialtrends.org|date=June 11, 2015}}</ref> Penultimately with regards to the racism she faced in the US, Luna believed that [[Ethnic identity development|questions surrounding her Blackness]] and how she [[Intersectionality|fit into American society]] being "[[One-drop rule|a quarter Black]]" were "America's problem", often attempting to escape labels major publications placed on her, replying to the Times: "Yeah, I'm an American on Black and white, but I'm me, I'm me"<ref name="thecut.com"/><ref name="vice.com"/> in an attempt to reject American notions of race and to establish herself a more fully rounded human being.

By 1974 having not found full acceptance in Europe either, she was "caught between the insinuating effects of racial/cultural renunciation [and] sexual stereotype ... Luna's response was to wear the mask [of one of Giacometti's skeletal sculptures] and ... to become a negligible component of life, hovering between existence and nothingness" in Italy in the public eye. From this time on, she had problems figuring out who she was as a Black woman eventually becoming a "soul on ice": an entity encased and obscured by its own false image, which only hinted at the naked power and creative potential that lay beneath the surface", or a shell of the former aspirations she held in her identity in youth.<ref>T''he Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', p. 86.</ref> From a heady time when "Luna had skipped modelings apprenticeship stage of endlless castings and rejections from racist fashion magazines, and come straight in at the top ... [having] made the cover of a top fashion magazine, worn the world's most expensive dresses, and commanded a day rate of up to $100-an-hour - all by the age of 19".<ref>Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 10, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref>


===Romantic relationships===
===Romantic relationships===
In the mid-1960s, Luna was married to an anonymous German actor for ten months.<ref name="Time"/> Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor [[Maximilian Schell]], then to an unnamed Danish photographer and Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's ''Necropolis'') and with the [[Living Theatre]].<ref name="Stone"/> She would frequently stop "short of making any lasting commitment to her suitors" though may have had this history as her history with men was checked, model Geraldine Smith recalled that in 1967, "Donyale had this crazy boyfriend who came in last night and smashed her over the head with a beer bottle" for instance.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 13">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 13, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref><ref>''POPism: The Warhol Sixties'', Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, 2006.</ref>
In the mid-1960s, Luna was married to an anonymous German actor for ten months.<ref name="Time"/> Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor [[Maximilian Schell]], then to an unnamed Danish photographer and Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's ''Necropolis'') and with the Living Theatre.<ref name="Stone"/> She would frequently stop "short of making any lasting commitment to her suitors" though may have had this history as her history with men was checked, model Geraldine Smith recalled that in 1967, "Donyale had this crazy boyfriend who came in last night and smashed her over the head with a beer bottle" for instance.<ref name="Beauty's Enigma 2012, p 13">''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 13, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref><ref>''POPism: The Warhol Sixties'', Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, 2006.</ref>


In 1968, Luna was purportedly dating the Australian [[pop art]]ist [[Martin Sharp]].<ref>Sharpest, Lowell Tarling, [2017]2021, Vol.2, p.139, Australia</ref>
In 1968, Luna was purportedly dating the Australian [[pop art]]ist [[Martin Sharp]].<ref>Sharpest, Lowell Tarling, [2017]2021, Vol.2, p.139, Australia</ref>
Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor [[Klaus Kinski]], however, the relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome concerned that their drug use could damage his career.<ref>Christian David: ''Kinski: Die Biographie.'' Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 194–195.</ref>
Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor [[Klaus Kinski]]; however, the relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome, concerned that their drug use could damage his career.<ref>Christian David: ''Kinski: Die Biographie.'' Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 194–195.</ref>


She would later move to Italy and continue her acting career there.<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> By September 1969 she had met her next partner, Luigi Cazzaniga at a fashion show in Rome. The Italian press said she was dating the Dominican actor [[Juan Fernández de Alarcon|Juan Fernandez]] whom she met around 1969, and is thought to have been dating in 1972 when filming ''Salome''. Luna later married Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga after having met him at a party in Italy. For the first two months of their relationship they could not speak to each other as Cazzaniga only knew how to speak Italian, he noted he "liked ... her [for] her love of creativity and for everything that wasn't square." They eventually married in California in 1976 and in 1977 they had a daughter, Dream Cazzaniga.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 23, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref> Dream's name was inspired by [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s famous "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> The couple eventually separated and, while still legally married, were estranged at the time of Luna's death of heroin overdose.<ref name="telegraph">{{cite web|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna|last=Arogundade|first=Ben|date=November 11, 2012|newspaper=The Telegraph|access-date=February 26, 2013}}</ref>
She would later move to Italy and continue her acting career there.<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/> By September 1969 she had met her next partner, Luigi Cazzaniga at a fashion show in Rome. However, she was then rumored by the Italian press to be dating the Dominican actor [[Juan Fernández de Alarcon|Juan Fernandez]] whom she met around 1969, and is thought to have been dating in 1972 when filming ''Salome''. Luna later married Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga after having met him at a party in Italy. For the first two months of their relationship they could not speak to each other as Cazzaniga only knew how to speak Italian, he noted he "liked ... her [for] her love of creativity and for everything that wasn't square." They eventually married in California in 1976 and in 1977 they had a daughter, Dream Cazzaniga.<ref>''Beauty's Enigma'', Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 23, {{ISBN|978-0-9569394-4-9}}.</ref> Dream's name was inspired by [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s famous "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech.<ref name="vogue.co.uk"/> The couple eventually separated and, while still legally married, were estranged at the time of Luna's death of heroin overdose.<ref name="telegraph">{{cite web|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9658276/The-tragic-tale-of-Donyale-Luna.html|title=The tragic tale of Donyale Luna|last=Arogundade|first=Ben|date=November 11, 2012|newspaper=The Telegraph|access-date=February 26, 2013}}</ref>


=== Religion ===
=== Religion ===
Line 194: Line 208:
Luna's reputation as one who often rejected type-cast labelling, has led to the promulgation of [[Social invisibility|erasure]] of her achievements in the fashion industry. Phillipa Burton wrote in 2009, how "clean-cut models like Beverly Johnson and [[Iman (model)|Iman]], whose lives were not to end murkily through an overzealous use of heroin, were louder and prouder ambassadors of the "Black is beautiful" message. Their more palatable versions of Black womanhood loom large in the public consciousness today. Eccentric Luna, on the other hand, who was eternally cagey about her racial identity, waxed lyrical about LSD in interviews and had an endearing habit of not wearing shoes, has, for the most part, been forgotten ... depressingly, the biggest triumph of Luna's career – her groundbreaking ''Vogue'' cover of 1966 – represents a war that is very much still being waged. Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm model agency ... grimly admits that a Black model gracing the cover of a mainstream publication is 'still unusual'" and it has been noted she may have been part of the [[tokenism]] of advertising agencies to lure in Black consumers."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> This being consistent with the fact that over time, the loss of African-American history has prompted the creation of [[List of African-American firsts|first lists]]. Her career has thus been described as a "meteoric ascent to fame and freefall into anonymity [which] frequently morphs into bodily speculation and social isolation".<ref name="The Migrant's Time pp. 81 - 82"/>
Luna's reputation as one who often rejected type-cast labelling, has led to the promulgation of [[Social invisibility|erasure]] of her achievements in the fashion industry. Phillipa Burton wrote in 2009, how "clean-cut models like Beverly Johnson and [[Iman (model)|Iman]], whose lives were not to end murkily through an overzealous use of heroin, were louder and prouder ambassadors of the "Black is beautiful" message. Their more palatable versions of Black womanhood loom large in the public consciousness today. Eccentric Luna, on the other hand, who was eternally cagey about her racial identity, waxed lyrical about LSD in interviews and had an endearing habit of not wearing shoes, has, for the most part, been forgotten ... depressingly, the biggest triumph of Luna's career – her groundbreaking ''Vogue'' cover of 1966 – represents a war that is very much still being waged. Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm model agency ... grimly admits that a Black model gracing the cover of a mainstream publication is 'still unusual'" and it has been noted she may have been part of the [[tokenism]] of advertising agencies to lure in Black consumers."<ref name="dazeddigital.com"/> This being consistent with the fact that over time, the loss of African-American history has prompted the creation of [[List of African-American firsts|first lists]]. Her career has thus been described as a "meteoric ascent to fame and freefall into anonymity [which] frequently morphs into bodily speculation and social isolation".<ref name="The Migrant's Time pp. 81 - 82"/>


However the designer Stephen Burrows also noted "[Luna] was ahead of the Black model thing. There weren't too many around [in the US in the 1960s]" when commenting on Lunas' extravagant outlook and attitude towards her own career opportunities.<ref name="thecut.com"/> Due in part to the timing of the "Black is beautiful" movement only gaining traction towards the end of Luna's career as "Black models didn't truly enjoy their coming out until the seventies" and her New Age beliefs, models such as [[Beverly Johnson]] now feature more prominently on Black-firsts lists, even though Luna's cover in 1966 predates Johnson's by eight years.<ref name="thecut.com"/> Luna is usually today therefore regarded as "a key player in the mid- to late 1960s fashion, film, and experimental theater scenes" who by the 1970s was "unable to move beyond the external and self-imposed limitations for someone of her idiosyncratic temperamental and tenuous lifestyle ... [which] united to diminish and obscure her once impressive figure, which then led to her public [[Social invisibility|erasure]]".<ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, p, 88.</ref>". Thus Luna leaves behind a mixed legacy as a model who both broke the colour barrier and as an underground actress, best remembered for her 1966 Vogue cover.
However, the designer Stephen Burrows also noted "[Luna] was ahead of the Black model thing. There weren't too many around [in the US in the 1960s]" when commenting on Lunas' extravagant outlook and attitude towards her own career opportunities.<ref name="thecut.com"/> Due in part to the timing of the "Black is beautiful" movement only gaining traction towards the end of Luna's career as "Black models didn't truly enjoy their coming out until the seventies" and her New Age beliefs, models such as [[Beverly Johnson]] now feature more prominently on Black-firsts lists, even though Luna's cover in 1966 predates Johnson's by eight years.<ref name="thecut.com"/> Luna is usually today therefore regarded as "a key player in the mid- to late 1960s fashion, film, and experimental theater scenes" who by the 1970s was "unable to move beyond the external and self-imposed limitations for someone of her idiosyncratic temperamental and tenuous lifestyle ... [which] united to diminish and obscure her once impressive figure, which then led to her public [[Social invisibility|erasure]]".<ref>''The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora'', Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, p, 88.</ref>". Thus Luna leaves behind a mixed legacy as a model who both broke the color barrier and as an underground actress, best remembered for her 1966 Vogue cover.


In her role as the first Black model the cover of a major print magazine, Luna has had "renewed interest" in her modeling career on social media, fashion bloggers, and among Black business owners. With the promotion of editors at British Vogue such as [[Edward Enninful]] in 2017, British Vogue covers starring Black models have also increased. She has also appeared in the 2008 all-Black ''Vogue'' issue and was recognized by [[Naomi Campbell]] in her CFDA acceptance speech in 2019,<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/><ref name="rootstein.com"/><ref name="meikmag.com"/> and [[Nan Goldin]] dedicated the Exhibit Sirens for her. She was also the inspiration for [[Pat McGrath (make-up artist)|Pat McGrath]] for her sixth edition of her Mothership makeup palette.<ref>Stephenetta (isis) Harmon, [https://www.hypehair.com/116942/a-new-pat-mcgrath-mothership-palette-is-landing-soon/ "A New Pat McGrath Mothership Palette Is Landing Soon"], ''Hype Hair'', August 26, 2019.</ref> The [[Afro-Brazilian]] TV personality Thelma Assis has also recreated the ''Twen'' photoshoot on the July 2020 cover of ''Harper's Bazaar Brazil''.<ref>ILCA MARIA ESTEVÃO, [https://www.metropoles.com/colunas-blogs/ilca-maria-estevao/thelma-assis-do-bbb20-surge-de-cabeca-raspada-em-capa-de-revista-de-moda "Thelma Assis, do BBB20, surge de cabeça raspada em capa de revista de moda"], ''METRÓPOLES'', July 15, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020. In Brazilian Portuguese</ref> In November 2020, actress [[Zendaya]] appeared in a photoshoot inspired by Luna for the 50th anniversary of ''[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://people.com/style/zendaya-channels-60s-supermodel-donyale-luna-on-the-cover-of-essence/|title = Zendaya Channels Iconic Black Supermodel Donyale Luna in Gorgeous Essence Cover Shoot}}</ref>
In her role as the first Black model on the cover of a major print magazine, Luna has had "renewed interest" in her modeling career on social media, fashion bloggers, and among Black business owners. With the promotion of editors at British Vogue such as [[Edward Enninful]] in 2017, British Vogue covers starring Black models have also increased. She has also appeared in the 2008 all-Black ''Vogue'' issue and was recognized by [[Naomi Campbell]] in her CFDA acceptance speech in 2019,<ref name="eu.usatoday.com"/><ref name="rootstein.com"/><ref name="meikmag.com"/> and [[Nan Goldin]] dedicated the Exhibit Sirens for her. She was also the inspiration for [[Pat McGrath (make-up artist)|Pat McGrath]] for her sixth edition of her Mothership makeup palette.<ref>Stephenetta (isis) Harmon, [https://www.hypehair.com/116942/a-new-pat-mcgrath-mothership-palette-is-landing-soon/ "A New Pat McGrath Mothership Palette Is Landing Soon"], ''Hype Hair'', August 26, 2019.</ref> The [[Afro-Brazilian]] TV personality Thelma Assis has also recreated the ''Twen'' photoshoot on the July 2020 cover of ''Harper's Bazaar Brazil''.<ref>ILCA MARIA ESTEVÃO, [https://www.metropoles.com/colunas-blogs/ilca-maria-estevao/thelma-assis-do-bbb20-surge-de-cabeca-raspada-em-capa-de-revista-de-moda "Thelma Assis, do BBB20, surge de cabeça raspada em capa de revista de moda"], ''METRÓPOLES'', July 15, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020. In Brazilian Portuguese</ref> In November 2020, actress [[Zendaya]] appeared in a photoshoot inspired by Luna for the 50th anniversary of ''[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://people.com/style/zendaya-channels-60s-supermodel-donyale-luna-on-the-cover-of-essence/|title = Zendaya Channels Iconic Black Supermodel Donyale Luna in Gorgeous Essence Cover Shoot}}</ref> The [[HBO Max]] documentary ''Donyale Luna: Supermodel'' was released in September 2023, co-produced by her daughter Dream Cazzaniga.<ref>[https://www.hbo.com/movies/donyale-luna-supermodel Donyale Luna: Supermodel]</ref>


==Filmography==
==Filmography==
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| Alternative title: ''Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo?''
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[[Category:Cass Technical High School alumni]]
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[[Category:Deaths by heroin overdose in Italy]]
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Latest revision as of 12:49, 17 December 2024

Donyale Luna
Luna, in a 1966 Twen shoot
Born
Peggy Ann Freeman

(1945-08-31)August 31, 1945
DiedMay 17, 1979(1979-05-17) (aged 33)
Rome, Italy
Cause of deathHeroin overdose
Occupation(s)Model, actress
Spouse
Luigi Cazzaniga
(m. 1976)
Children1
Modeling information
Height6 ft 2 in (1.88 m)[1]
Hair colorBlack
Eye colorBrown

Peggy Ann Freeman (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979), known professionally as Donyale Luna, was an African-American model and actress who gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s.[2][3] Generally cited as "the first Black supermodel",[4][5] Luna was the first Black model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, in March 1966.[6][7]

Luna made several underground films with Andy Warhol beginning in 1965, and following the experimental film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966), she appeared in Otto Preminger's Skidoo (1968) and Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969).

Early life

[edit]

Peggy Ann Freeman was born in Detroit, Michigan to working-class parents Nathaniel Freeman and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog) in 1945.[8] She was one of three daughters, Lillian, Peggy Ann, and Josephine.[9] Her father had moved to Detroit from Georgia as part of the Great Migration.[10] Her father, of African-American heritage, worked in production at the Ford plant, and her mother, of African-American and German heritage, worked as a secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association and had been given the nickname "Big Peggy" to differentiate her from Peggy-Ann, who was "Little Peggy". Luna's parents married and divorced on four separate occasions due to their "headstrong characters" and Nathaniel's relatives’ alcoholism. Luna and her sisters had a "financially stable upbringing in a middle-class neighbourhood of Detroit" on Scotten Avenue. As a child, her father frequently took her on trips to local cinemas, and, in summer, to swim at the "Kronk Gym" in Detroit.[11][12]

Luna attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit

She attended the Detroit High School of Commerce, where she studied data processing, and Cass Technical High School, where she studied journalism, performing arts and languages, and was in the school choir. Outside of school, she participated in local community theater and the experimental Concept East Theater.[13][11][14] It was during this time, at age 18, that she began calling herself "Donyale George Luna.” This was thought to have "been her way of dealing with a turbulent home life" when her mother began raising the family as a single parent. She was also said to have spoken "not with a broad A or a French R, but in an accent she'd invented". Her mother said its tone "was like she was singing".[15][16][17][14] The name Luna has been speculated to have been chosen for its "symbolic dimensions, reflecting her yearning for complete, far-flung autogeny", or a reference to the Space Race. At this time she wanted to pursue a career in acting.[11] Luna's sister later described her as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream.” She routinely created fantasies about her background or "origins" and herself. She was known then as an aspiring actress. An early boyfriend, Sanders Bryant, III, recalled first meeting her writing a play at lunchtime. She took roles such as Cherry in Paint Your Wagon, Ariel in The Tempest, Chastity in Anything Goes and Jean in Stage Door. After rehearsals, inspired by the beatniks, she visited coffeehouses near the Wayne State University campus with her boyfriend, dressed in head to toe black. On weekends, she often crossed the bridge to neighboring Windsor, Ontario, or traveled to other nearby parts of Canada. She became known to Roland Sharette, the managing director of the Detroit Civic Center Theatre, as a "kook" because she had a habit of walking around barefoot "even down the street.” During the 1963 run of Paint Your Wagon she fed popcorn to pigeons when they rehearsed outdoors.[18]: 88  [19][14]

Contrasting her time in Detroit with her time in Europe modeling, she later noted: "Back in Detroit I wasn't considered beautiful or anything."[2] A fellow student at Cass Technical, Verna Green, noted "She was such a striking image, I couldn't forget her. . . . She looked like an oddball to the run-of-the-mill student. Not enough people had told her how strikingly beautiful she was."[20] She was not a "fashion-conscious" student; her attire mostly consisting of "simple black skirts and long loose sleeved tops.” She stated that in her time in Cass Technical, she "wasn't accepted because I talked funny, I looked funny, and I was a weirdo to everyone. I grew up realizing I was strange."[14]

In October 1964, she moved to New York to pursue acting and modeling, and found work as a junior secretary at an "electronic cabling firm on Varick Street." After joining an actors’ union, she moved into an apartment on Broadway, sharing the space with a roommate. Her sister Lillian later recalled "she packed so little it seemed like she was going on an overnight trip rather than to live in New York.”[21]

In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive, coming to Luna's childhood home drunk and threatening her mother "just steps away from the family home.” Lillian witnessed the incident, acknowledging the shooting to be accidental.[21] Luna received the news three months after the fact, and stayed in New York, which is said by psychologists to be a common coping mechanism for familial loss and trauma.[18]: 92 [22][23] In 1966, she reported to a journalist, "My mother is worried about me. She doesn't know that I have already been hurt."[24]

For the next five years, Luna divided her time between Europe and North America. She professed during the filming of Salome in 1971 that she wished to quit modeling and focus on acting, and that she "professo la magia y el'amore e vivo en el mondo vio, deliziomente surreale" (speaks of magic and love, living in a deliciously surreal world) having become heavily influenced by Surrealism and New Age thought by this time; however, she continued accept modeling work in the 1970s.[25] By 1972, when she had moved to Rome, she was working for Danish photographer Gunnar Larsen [fr], modeling for the couturier Ted Lapidus alongside Veruschka and Jean Shrimpton on the streets of Paris, earning "$1000 ... for the day" ($6,250 in 2020).[26]

Modeling career

[edit]

Detroit and New York

[edit]

In 1963, near Detroit’s Fisher Building, Luna met English photographer David McCabe.[11] McCabe suggested she move to New York City to pursue modeling. Her mother initially discouraged this plan, suggesting that she become a nurse instead. Luna persisted, and her mother facilitated her moving in with an aunt near the New York Harbor in New Jersey.[27][15]

In October 1964, Luna contacted McCabe, and he sent out her photographs to various agencies. McCabe introduced her to Harper's Bazaar editor Nancy White, fashion photographer Richard Avedon, and senior fashion editor China Machado; White signed her to an exclusive contract for the remainder of 1964, while Avedon served as her manager.[22][28][2][29][30] Her first job as a model was a shoot for Mademoiselle starring Woody Allen. In November 1964, Luna moved out of her aunt's apartment and into an apartment on Broadway in New York City, sharing the space with a roommate.[31]

Periana, a Black model in Paco Rabanne in 1971. Luna modeled for Rabanne in 1964, bringing derision from American journalists.

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.[32]

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. However, Luna was portrayed as ethnically ambiguous.[33] The sketch was her first work for Harper's Bazaar, and included six other illustrations in the January 1965 issue.[33] Denzinger described drawing "a total of 40 brush-and-ink studies for that session, in a one-room studio apartment on Lexington Avenue. . . . I remember that the Bazaar editors came to the apartment with the clothes, and that uniformed cops watched while Donyale modeled and I drew her."[34]

In the April 1965 edition she was again photographed by Avedon in the "What's Happening" editorial, along with Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, and Ringo Starr.[19] The piece included a description of her as showing "The tall strength and pride of movement of a Masai Warrior." This description was picked up in an article by the Sarasota Herald Tribune. Finding the language and comparison deeply prejudiced and racialized, Herald Tribune writers explored and wrote of work prospects of African-American women.[22][2][27][35][36][37] In the same month, Luna received news of her father's death but decided against returning to Detroit home for his 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".[38]

Luna's career began to slow down when she met with the color bar of print publishing at the time. Southern U.S. 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 Hearst Communications had stopped Avedon working with Luna after her contract expired.[11][37][19] Richard Avedon believed that he was no longer allowed to work with Luna due to "racial prejudice and the economics of the fashion business.” [22][28] McCabe later stated he believed that "the magazine world really wasn't ready for photographing beautiful Black women”.[28]

Black models were shown only through "a racial script that brought together both primitivism and modernity as the material precondition for participation within the industry,"[19] in an exotic noble savage role which required Black models to present only as outsiders from primitive African cultures. Brigid Keenan wrote that Luna "until then any Black person who appeared in a fashion picture was usually there because they'd been popped into the background as a kind of prop" such as Bani Yelverton, who was in 1958 placed "on the far right of the foldout, so she could be easily torn out of the magazine by [offended] readers".[39] Keenan further wrote how the othering "exotic Black model trope" perpetrated by white media creators that "Luna's breakthrough into the glossy magazines meant that from then on a Black model might actually have some sort of career in front of her ... yet extraordinary as she was, Ms. Luna did not have a style that other women could adopt. "She looked more like she was going to attack you," wrote one Black girl. White fashion editors used her and immediate successors for impact, as freakish clothes-horses on which they could photograph their outrageous garments. [Her] acceptance ... no doubt boosted the morale of the Black community, but she could not give them a look of their own."[40]

Following the death of her father and a short-lived marriage of 10 months in New York, Luna 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."[30] 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".[11]

Avedon (who had moved over to the American Vogue in 1966) requested Luna again for a shoot around Northern Japan featuring furs, telling 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," deftly conflating African culture, and employing the prescribed primitive racial script of the exotic Black model which Luna had been portrayed in her shoots with him in Harper's Bazaar which compared Luna to an animal as she was dressed in animal print. Diana Vreeland, along with Alexey Brodovitch, prevented Avedon from using Luna as the only model in the shoot and suggested Veruschka instead for the 27-page Great Fur Caravan shoot published in October 1966.

ABC Jean Shrimpton

However, in 1966, American Vogue named her the Model of the Year.[41] Living in London, she was described in Jet magazine as "the most photographed girl of 1966 ... challenging Jean Shrimpton for position (and bankroll) as the model most in demand in Europe's haute couture houses."[42]

By 1966, Luna had become an internationally recognized model and in November 1966, Luna appeared in Cosmopolitan. In April 1967 Donyale also frequented Trude Heller's discotheque in Greenwich Village and covered a number of albums for Blue Note Records such as Lush Life, Mustang, A New Conception, Let 'em Roll and Easy Walker.[43] Luna appeared in American Vogue in August 1969 and in 1970 in an advertisement for a colored contacts company which she often wore, it was reported she "changes her eyes to match her moods as she flits through Rome's posh parties while picture making for Carlo Ponti."[44]

Move to London

[edit]

Luna arrived in London in December 1965.[15] London is where she made her name as a model, emerging in Swinging London, as a growing youth cultural revolution was drawing international attention. Elements included Beatlemania and Mary Quant's miniskirts with other models of color, including Kellie Wilson and Hazel Collins wearing the stylized bobs of Vidal Sassoon, Mods, Teddy Boys and bright colors and patterns and fashions such as those sold in shops including Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba or seen in the street culture of Carnaby Street or Chelsea.[11][45][19] She was photographed in London by David Bailey, William Klein, Helmut Newton, Charlotte March (image in infobox, above) and William Claxton. Keen to join the London arts scene, she became friends with Mick Jagger, Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Iain Quarrier and Yul Brynner.[22][28] She rented an apartment near the Thames River and bought a pet Maltese dog she named Christianne.[46]

An artists rendition of the March 1966 cover

In March 1966, about three months after having arrived in London, she appeared on the cover of British Vogue, becoming the first African-American model to appear on the cover of any Vogue magazine,[15] her image [47] captured by photographer David Bailey, who described her as "extraordinary-looking, so tall and skinny, ... She was like an illustration, a walking illustration." Shooting her for the cover, Bailey noted "I didn't care what she was—she could have been a fucking Martian for all I cared." He thought the editorial staff at Vogue House were pleased with their selection of a Black cover model, but observed that "the sales people always had a problem [with using her]."[15] She was chosen by Beatrix Miller, then the editor of British Vogue, for "her bite and personality.” Miller described Luna as "[happening] to be a marvelous shape . . . All sort of angular and immensely strange and tall".[29] The shot composition was inspired by Spanish surrealist Picasso's ocular-centric portraiture with "one of Luna's eyes peered suggestively from between her fingers.” She wore wearing a Chloé dress and Mimi de N earrings in the shot. In the editorial images she was dressed in Christian Dior silk tunics, Mod-style dresses by Pierre Cardin, and a silver Yves Saint Laurent dress.[28][2][22][11]

In popular internet lore such as on blogs, it has been speculated that the shot was angled so "Luna's face, most notably her lips and nose, are . . . obscured on her British Vogue cover, also somewhat hiding her race," a proponent of featurism coded in privilege and Eurocentric beauty standards.[2][48][49][50] However, in 2019, her family revealed the shot was chosen as "a single heavily lined eye . . . visible through her fingers, which form a V for Vogue".[11]

In March 1966, she appeared in a jewelry spread in the German magazine Twen, photographed by Charlotte March. Fellow model and friend Pat Cleveland noted: "She had no tits, but lots of presence; we'd walk down the street and men's mouths would drop open in awe. When we walked into restaurants, people would stop eating and stand up and applaud. She was like a mirage, or some kind of fantasy."[20][22]

Luna also went on to work for French Vogue. Bethann Hardison stated of Luna that "No one looked like her. She was like a really extraordinary species."[28] Time magazine in an article titled "The Luna Year" (1966), described her as: "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain's Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue."[51] She also appeared in London Life, a monthly fashion magazine, in a shoot as a shop window display model at a Wallis department store in London.[52]

Yves Saint Laurent 1965; Donyale wears a blue version in Vogue in 1966 [1]
Models in the Mod Style by Cardin (1966)

In April she appeared again in Vogue UK, shot by David Bailey in a feature called This Summer's dancing patterns in mod-styled luxury brands. She then appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar UK in June 1966. Her features and skin color had not been obscured in this cover, shot by Bill King.

In the October 15 edition of British Vogue, she was featured in a Klein shoot with Audrey Hepburn.

In 1967, the world-leading fiberglass mannequin designer Adel Rootstein released a model based on Luna's statuesque figure. The previous figure been the popular model Twiggy. Jet described the Luna-inspired mannequins as "unmistakeably Negro, excellently sculpted and posed, and dressed in the London Mod styles" and reported that Adel Rootstein had paid Luna to pose for the work at $105 per hour ($830 per hour today).[53][15][54] She was also noted to be working in New York for a short period in September 1967, but her flatmates "thought they were all going to get kicked out soon because Donyale was making about $500 worth of calls to Europe every month".[55] Another mannequin model was made by Lester Gaba, who made both a black and white version.[56] She was also shot in Rabanne by Peter Knapp for The Sunday Times.

On the March 27, 1968, she appeared on the cover of the British magazine Queen in a headwrap.

In November 1968, Luna and a party of five, including Iain Quarrier and Mia Farrow, went for breakfast at the Mayfair Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn Street, St James's, London, and, at 4 a.m., were asked to leave, with the men, who were not wearing ties, being informed they were "not properly dressed.” When Quarrier noted that other seated men were not wearing ties, Luna asked the managers if it was because she was colored. Eventually, all five were denied service in the hotel restaurant and were removed by police for causing a disturbance. In her usual extravagance, Luna "arrived in a maroon-coloured Rolls-Royce, wearing a yellow coat of Mongolian lamb’s wool . . . [and] knee-high blue suede boots ... [where] Luna accused the police of lying, but her claims went unheard.” Quarrier defended Luna in the London Bow Street court, noting when the judge, Kenneth Harrington, said: "I am quite sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with Miss Luna's colour" Quarrier shouted from the dock in the courtroom "that is not true[!]." Quarrier would eventually be charged £10 for disturbing the peace.

Luna later summarized the event for the American press, saying that "rowdiness" had occurred, and that her party was asked to leave "because I am colored. It was a nightmare. The hotel staff and police were pushing me around. The hotel refused to tell us why we were being thrown out."[57][58][59][60][61]

In the same month she was shot for British Vogue again by Harry Peccinotti.

By 1969, she was again being paid "$1,000 a week" ($7,000 in 2020).[62]

Paris

Guy Laroche Mini-dress (1968)

Luna was initially supposed to cover Vogue Paris before British Vogue when she arrived in Europe in December 1965. Edmonde Charles-Roux who had fostered the talent of William Klein, had shot Luna for the cover, but prior to release, the cover was changed overnight to that of two white models, in an effort to avoid offending readers for its capacity to "shock" because Luna was a woman of color.[63] She was put forward for the cover by the French editor Charles-Roux who was subsequently fired on the charge of Si Newhouse for attempting to put a Black model on the cover, a feat which would take another 22 years when Naomi Campbell was put on the cover, but even then only on the grounds that YSL would otherwise withdraw advertising revenue.[64]

By 1966, of her modeling, she was quoted as saying "Being what I am, I can get what I ask".[65] Paco Rabanne had her model in his "debut Paris show, entitled '12 Unwearable Dresses'" designed for dancing in, in which fellow London based model Kellie Wilson also appeared, working in the spring of 1966 she was modeling for Paris Match who had 11 different photographers doing shoots for the magazine including on "the landing gear of an airborne helicopter" and underwater with "her robe streaming behind her". She was shot for Guy Laroche for Match on a skating rink and by Charles Courrière (b.1928) in Emanuel Ungaro for the Spring/Summer collection.[66][67][68][69]

She appeared on the cover of Elle for July 1966 shot by Ronald Traeger in a long toga dress by Galeries Lafayette and in beach shoot with Jill Kennington.[70]

Sydney

Pop-art paper dress (1967)

In 1967, in Sydney, she modeled several paper dresses for the store Paraphernalia, paper dresses having been a fad popular with teenage girls.[68]

She appeared on a catwalk in Sydney for the "Donyale Luna spectacular" fashion walk.[71]

Italy

Luna appeared in the Italian magazine Amica in a number of animal print and fur coats in 1966 and Vogue Italia shot by Gian Paolo Barbieri. She modelled later in a number of camera advertisements in 1968. She bought an apartment in Italy in 1970, and drove around in her Cinquenta car, and "fold herself into like an accordion, squeezing her knees up to her chin" to get to new modeling shoots.[72] In January 1970, she appeared in the Italian adult magazine Playmen in a number of fishnet-style outfits, in a multiple-page spread. In this time she was reportedly thrown out by Italian police for not having the correct paperwork to reside in Italy, but her husband recalled later that she was harassed for her skin color in Rome.[73]

When Luna moved to Italy in 1974 she was a collaborator with her husband in photographic shoots and other media such as a "hand-illustrated fairy tale, avant-garde film scripts and beautiful coloured prints" which remain unpublished. She was said to be the most creative as a content creator of art in this period of her life.[11] However, historians have also noted she is said to have felt a deep sense of "existential aloneness" in this period. In a short prose piece entitled LUNAFLYLABY, she wrote a self-aware "part confessional [work which] alludes to an insular and at times stifling childhood, the excitement and challenges Luna experienced in the fashion world [and] her move to Europe" and how as a biracial woman, these "societal forces conspired to render Black women INVISIBLE" versus her VISIBLE LIFE, which is heavily present throughout the work in the motifs of VISIONS (her spiritual visions as other Black women in history in her writings she refers to as Future Visioning) and "succumbing to VISUAL MISTAKES" (her desire to achieve her own form of beauty which she considered her art, such as modeling photographs or films) due to her conflicting position as a biracial woman in her environment in her career.[74][75] She also modeled for artist Peter Beard in 1977.[76]

Return to North America

[edit]

She would return for a year between 1973 and April 1974, with her work later published and returning again between October 1974 and June 1975, to the US to do runway modeling in New York and California and Toronto.[77] She appeared on the cover of Warhol's magazine Interview for October 1974.[78] Luna then appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of Playboy, photographed by her husband Luigi Cazzaniga. In the shoot she depicts herself as "characters of her own devising - as an angel soaring over the Los Angeles skyline or as a mermaid perched on a rock by the Pacific Ocean". Powell notes, "Although fulfilling Playboy's prerequisite for female nudity, the photographs were far from titillating or sexually explicit. Luna seemed not only at ease with her nudity, but completely beyond societal structures and moral rectitude." She was also noted for defying the usual body type portrayed in the magazine of more "voluptuous" women with her smaller build, placing more emphasis on her spiritual "visions" which occurred on her photography shoots such as in Playboy.

Mary Quant model at a show in 1969 in a miniskirt

[11][79]

By this time, however, Luna's modeling career began to decline due to a variety of factors, including a shift in her career from modeling into acting and a negative reception from mainstream popular media, which chastised her "dependency on drugs like heroin, LSD, pot and her eccentric behavior" (see Artistry section).[80][20] A designer for whom Luna once worked said, "She took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills".[81] Beverly Johnson in 1974 was asked about how her Vogue cover had been won by other Black women like Luna, said "[Luna] doesn't wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she's from—Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn't show up for bookings. She didn't have a hard time, she made it hard for herself."[82][80] Johnson later acknowledged in 2016 that Luna had "made it possible for models like me and others" and that "Luna is one of several Black models everyone needs to know" being "one of those legends in our industry; one of the shoulders I stood on."[20]

In June 1975 she attended a Zandra Rhodes show at the Circle in the Square in New York where she was seen "posing in a veiled harem outfit".[83][84]

Luna's walk

[edit]

Luna did have a regular walk for the catwalk, defined as "a free-form, hip-popping strut", but she was also known among the high fashion circles for her unconventional walking styles still used by models like Pat Cleveland. Luna was known for her eccentricity since childhood which derived from her time in acting doing local and experimental theater in Detroit.[85] She was often drawn to "radical creatives", avant-garde artists such as Dali and Warhol and she extended these influences to her model career. In a method she developed based on method acting known in internet lore[clarification needed][citation needed] as method modeling, she developed her own theatrical style of catwalk walks such as "crawling like a lion, grooving to the music or suddenly freezing and making direct eye contact with journalists", "walking like a robot, stopping abruptly midway through a promenade, crawling on all fours", "like a stalking animal", "sometimes slither like a snake" or simply having "laid down and rolled from one end of the runway to the other". Method modeling employs techniques "within one's individual consciousness ... [and] technical skills in body movement are combined with camera awareness and artistic freedom" which allowed an audience to view the model's body as a work of 3D or visual art, like considering how a sculptor considers dimensions in sculpting the human form, or using more vivid body language to express a wider function related to a theme to sell a product.[86] Luna's Method modeling background was more rooted in theater technique, and as such was a derivative of performance art. Bill Cunningham described watching the experience as how "Her body moves like a panther, her arms, the wings of an exotic bird, the long neck suggests a black trumpet swan. ... The audience responds with shattering applause - for the model's performance rather than the designer's clothes. It is the birth of a new fashion era - that of the spectacular show that rivals any on Broadway." "The coterie of international designers for whom she often modeled (André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, Rudi Gernreich, Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne) encouraged such displays, equating them to their own exuberant designs and to the rebellious conduct of their youthful ... clientele".[11][87][15][32][88][89]

Covers

1965 - 1974

Acting career

[edit]

Luna had initially planned to work in theater, having acted in Detroit after school hours, including bit parts in Detroit's repertory theaters.[29][30] When she joined theater camp in 1964, she was remembered by her acting tutor David Rambeau as "warm and naive", he recalled.[88] "I never planned to be a model when I was in Detroit," she told a reporter in 1966. "I wanted to be a starving actress in New York."[11] She soon also began moving in circles associated with experimental theater like The Living Theatre.[90][91]

On British TV she appeared on Late Show London on March 14 and The Eamonn Andrews Show on May 1, 1966.[92][93] On December 12, 1966 (11:15pm – 1:00am), she appeared on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.[94]

Luna appeared in several films produced by Andy Warhol, including his series of short Screen Tests in 1965. Among the "stars" Warhol engaged for these short films, each roughly four minutes, Luna is notable as one of four African-Americans in the series.[95][15][96] Critic Wayne Koestenbaum described Luna in the Screen Tests as "pure diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism".[97]

Luna also appeared in the feature length Camp in 1965, Warhol's "satire of his own world" where she dances to the Ramsey Lewis Trio instrumental "The 'In' Crowd" wearing a backless dress and fur stole.[11] She is the eponymous star of Warhol's Donyale Luna (1967), a 33-minute color film in which she plays Snow White, wearing blue contacts.[83]

In 1966 upon having moved to London, she appeared in Michelangelo Antonionis Blowup (1966), a satire of fashion photography. Luna also appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1968) as the assistant of a circus performer's fire-eater act.[11]

In the French film Who are you Polly Magoo? (1966) she played a model dressed in conical and "almost unwearable" abstract silver dress constructions shot by William Klein.[98]

Luna's only mainstream Hollywood film was the 1968 Otto Preminger comedy Skidoo, in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by Groucho Marx. Preminger also signed her with MGM for 3 years after she secured the role at a party for Twiggy. By this period, she had sold her apartments in London and Paris to live full-time in Italy and focus on acting.[99] In 1969 she appeared as a background character in a television set in the film Dillinger is Dead.[100]

In the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon, an Italian film portraying the fall of Ancient Rome, she portrayed the witch Oenothea, who according to one commentator, "in a trade-off with a wizard long ago ended up with fire between her legs. And it's real fire too, because Fellini shows us a scene in which a long line of foolish-looking peasants wait with unlit torches at Oenothea's bed. When their time comes, each devoutly places his torch between her legs to her sex, and, Poof."[101]

She then appeared in the 1970 Happening documentary film Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí, a biography narrated by Orson Welles for French TV. Luna's last acting role was the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé, directed by Carmelo Bene.

In May 1973 at the Cannes Film Festival, considering herself as an international star, she pitched her life story to European and American film production company executives, like Berry Gordy, who was at Cannes supporting Diana Ross in promoting her new film Lady Sings the Blues. Interest was sparked in relation to The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show, but the pitch was never taken any further. In an interview for the Italian publication Panorama, Luna claimed that Gordy based the 1975 film Mahogany on this pitch.[38]

Death

[edit]

During the early morning hours of May 17, 1979, Donyale Luna died from a heroin overdose in a clinic in Rome at age 33. Luna was survived by her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga, and her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.[102][103]

Artistry

[edit]

Luna was known to be a muse of Salvador Dalí, and acted in many of the ways Dali did in accord with the philosophy of Surrealism. The American photographer William Claxton introduced Luna to Dalí when he met her in Catalonian village of Cadaqués, becoming Dali's lifelong muse whom he would refer to as "the reincarnation of Nefertiti".[11] Artworks show how she would stand on a half-submerged piano which Dali has submerged himself for her to stand on, Claxton shooting "Dali drawing impromptu traceries on Luna's body" (a line art piece on a cream dress) while she wore it or emerging from a human-sized egg full of red paint which made into an 1 hour long surrealist film being "a scriptless series of happenings, all centred on images of birth and creativity" in plastic costumes designed by Paco Rabanne.[104] She could be found "lying on a bed of fresh fish" in Dali's home.[11][105][106] She was also known to carry around a $1 million check according to the supermodel Pat Cleveland, "a legitimate cheque from her model agency" which she never took out and would try to pay with for a single meal, or her "entourage of boys who followed her everywhere" behind her in file, and because "she'd never sat in chairs, she'd always lounge" while her entourage would lay at her feet and with her penchant for going barefoot everywhere, Luna became known as an eccentric.[107]

Bust of Nefertiti
Noire et Blanche; of Alice Prin by Man Ray, 1926
Josephine Baker Poster from 1931

The eccentric character of Donyale Luna can be seen as both a hyperbolic alter-ego and an extension of a fake it until you make it persona which Luna may have thought of as a "metamorphosis". Luna used camp to give off a larger than life character, using hairpieces, lengthened eyelashes, and "a collection of blue, green, yellow, purple and orange [colored contacts] ... which she changed like underwear" to play fast and loose with defined boundaries she may have had as Peggy-Ann. She would both employ others and use her own designs for her clothes, experimenting with bindis on her third eye, and often wearing loose-fitting or flowing garments. These two (Peggy-Ann and Donyale) were succinctly distinct to Freeman, however; she spoke of viewing "Donyale" in photographs: "If I had seen something like me in a magazine as a child, I would have died laughing, or been scared ... I find my own photographs weird, terribly sophisticated and different".[108]

Josephine Baker performing in Amsterdam in 1960

The alter ego of Donyale Luna was created in what Freeman termed future visioning, a New Age approach culminating when she attended Central High Theater in Detroit. This technique drew from pantomime, experimental dance, and acting, and allowed the individual to create an altogether new identity by drawing on traits seen in "visions" from a desired individual like Baker. Luna would alter her attire, appearance, social circles, mannerisms, and paralinguistic features such as the pitch in her voice, to create the character of Donyale, crafting subtle bodily perceptions to alter or shift the viewer's perception of her as a Black body.[citation needed][109][110][111][112]

Exemplified in a 1966 advertisement for a polyester peasant blouse for Ebony magazine, the iconography work was said[by whom?] to evoke the black and white images of Man Ray, acknowledging the shift of the early 20th century "visual modernism" morphed into the "disjuncted body", a moving away from the classical Western notion of what a body should be to one of "distorted corporeal forms" originating in African Arts, Expressionism and Cubism, as well as the body language of Josephine Baker which Luna emulates in the advertisement to create a more "dynamic" image of herself and African-American visual imagery.[113] "Luna's referencing of [Baker and Nefertiti] within the European context signaled her identification with them", as Black women "heroines and tropes" which Luna used as a model to emulate what Black success could be presented as in an environment which responded to both figures by "primitivizing, sexualizing and ultimately dehumanizing [them in] ... exotic or erotic roles that did not provide occupational transitions to more fulfilling, post spectacle lives".[114]

Brown notes that, in the early 20th century, "the expression of primitive glamour by self-consciously urban sophisticates such as Baker ... could equally be produced as a reimagining of subject-object relations, a paradoxical critique and deployment of pleasures[,] ... despite the motion, vitality, energy and erotic fission imagined to be at the heart of the primitive. ... [Primitive glamour allowed for self-assertion so that the primitive role] offered something more than crippled self-expression: primitive glamour [relied] ... on the use of personae, impersonation, or a kind of eclipse of the human subject, ... [which although perilous] also offered substantial creative results ... [so] rather than silencing artists with the gag of stereotype or the limitations of the market, [Primitive glamour] often enabled the merging of the subject and object" questioning perceptions of who and what it was to be "primitive", creating the formation of early Black glamour aesthetics in 1920's Europe, much as in Primitivism aesthetics.[115] For instance in her "primitive" shoot with Harper's Bazaar dressed in animal print in 1965, Luna "construct[s] and perform[s] an oppositional Black glamour" by using the provided clothes or "[tangible] things ... [to] interpellate [her audience] in specific ways, combining narrative with history and materiality to structure specific gestures and movements ... [in] working with her own effective engagement with the material as "dances with things", undoing the work of glamour as a white racial project", thus creating an aspirational lifestyle for potential Black audiences.[19] And with "her gesticular poses in print magazines emphasized her angular frame, while her assertive body language—including a powerful stare called "the Look" by fashion magazines and later described as "ocular assault" ... became her signature [pose]" used to entrance her audience, Freeman used "Donyale" to create an altogether new image or aesthetic of what constituted Black glamour, a new beauty paradigm for African-American visual imagery and Black subject agency; developed from Baker's era of primitive glamour; into previously white spaces.[33][116]

She was believed to have met the artist Mati Klarwein (who made psychedelic album covers for artists like Jimi Hendrix) through Sam Rivers, at an "occupational gathering" for Miles Davis in New York in 1964 where her likeness appears in his painting Time, of a circle of gold leaf surrounded by scimitars representing the earth and sky. In the circle sits a "polymorphous figure ... an aggregate of fire, water, multiple faces of beautiful women, female breasts, male genitalia, rainbow patterns, animal heads, skulls derived from Tibetan and Hindu religious imagery ... topped off by Donyale Luna's trimorphic head", also portrayed in 1967 as in a self-portrait.[117] "Klarwein dedicated Milk n' Honey (1973), his book of reproduced paintings".[118]

In Europe she was also a part of the "rock music scene", having been featured in the Italian music video for Patty Pravo's song Michelle (1969).[119]

In her 1975 Playboy interview, she held the belief that beauty was "something not physical but something beyond that", she also noted that children were more readily accepting of her form of "beauty". She reported to the Argentinian Press in 1969: "Beauty is something else, something inexplicable that each person carries inside. This form of beauty related to Her visions. There's a great division coming about on this planet. There are going to be a lot of people who will die because they just don't know how to live. They don't know what life's about, they don't know how to give, how to love - nor do they want to. And those who are beautiful enough - I don't mean physically but something beyond that - they will have the chance to learn how to fly, to be beautiful, to rise above the level of the normal human - to be superior beings first and eventually gods and goddesses."[120]

She anticipated a (spiritual) "armageddon" she called "The Great Division" due to her perception that other peoples lack of understanding between themselves would lead to this great divide (based on superficial issues like physical beauty) in the future which she foresaw.[121]

Personal life

[edit]

Racial identity

[edit]

Donyale Luna identified as multi-racial. Throughout her life and career, Luna claimed to be of various mixed ethnic backgrounds, often playing down her African American ancestry as early as her teenage years.[4] Later in life she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was of Indigenous Mexican and Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator; however, the historical accuracy of this is questionable.[122] She would also claim to be of "Polynesian" descent in high school. She often made up tall tales to make her seem more grandiose, part of the character of Donyale Luna she began in her teenage years, including beguiling stories designed to shock or amuse such as losing her parents in a car accident and being adopted, or replying to the question of her heritage with the line "I'm from the moon darling" which some have construed to mean she denied her heritage as a Black woman.[22] While 'her penchant for wearing blue contact lenses, was seen by some as race betrayal ... [it] was probably part of a process of reinvention that had begun in her teenage years. In fact constructing a new identity [as Donyale Luna]'.[15]

Dream Cazzaniga on her mother leaving Detroit for New York writes of the likelihood of employment as a model how 'there were virtually no modeling opportunities for non-white faces anywhere other than dedicated African-American publications such as Ebony. ... [Finding it amazing how Luna] was to leave home for Manhattan at that point in history, with no clear plans or steady income - just a telephone number hastily written down by a stranger.'[11] The only other industries which used models of color included the soft drinks industry such as Coca-Cola in 1957 or the Tobacco industry.[123] Due to the prejudices of a white dominated industry where white was the default and Black the other, with racist language, dress, and behavior used toward her in work and everyday life in New York, she moved from North America to Europe "where she likely found an audience more accepting of her skin color", describing herself as "multi-ethnic".[20] Europe at the time was seen as more accepting of white-passing Black models, such as Ophelia Devore, who had modeled herself and had her own agency's models working in Paris, or Dorothea Church in the 1950s and unmistakably African-American models like Dolores Francine Rhiney [it], who was the first Black model to walk on the European catwalk. Darker models such as Helen Williams later became more accepted by the 1960s.[124][125] In the Sunday Times Magazine in 1966, Harold Carlton hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro".[35]

As for the United States, "until the advent of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s the fashion industry operated its own kind of apartheid, which entirely excluded non-white models from its magazines, advertising and catwalk shows."[22] Luna could work alongside models like Jean Shrimpton and Veruschka and command the same salary, but was thought of as exotic, becoming a victim of Othering (also see Dominance hierarchy) first by white then later the Black community—compounded as both the "girl-next-door" and "exotic" negro model type.[126] With the advent of the civil rights movement in the United States 'so too did society's fascination with the "exotic" and "alien". ... Almost against her own will, she became a symbol. Some people declared her a Masai warrior, Gauguinesque, Nefertiti reborn. Others claimed she was another species entirely - or from outer space!'. Time in 1966 called her a 'creature of contrasts. One minute sophisticated, the next fawnlike, now exotic and faraway'.[11] Racialist language such as being 'from outer space' was routinely used and was adopted by Luna in her Donyale character in a bid to overcome the boundaries this language created towards her as a Black body in the American public eye, and evolved other time to accommodate this prejudiced language. She said in late 1966 to a reporter that "Fashion photographers saw me as something different but I'm certain it has nothing to do with my color. I never think of myself as a brown girl".

Due to the color barrier, by then "the prestige of her modeling jobs had now shifted, from photo editorial work for Harper's Bazaar to the secondary ... advertising market [in Ebony magazine]".[127] The so-called secondary market, however, was worth an estimated $15 billion and white advertisers who began working in the market preferred Luna's "otherworldy features" (her long limbs, "oval-shaped face and almond eyes") not being traditionally readily associated with Black women,[128] as they alienated other African-Americans, and provided white advertisers with a manufactured sense of racial superiority and which may be considered as tokenism on the behalf of the advertising agencies involved. Jane Hoffman described the evolution of the acceptable negro from white-passing models (first used in 1950s advertisements in magazines like Jet) to the 1960s replacement, the exotic negro, who was 'the Negro girl you'd think of as something else. She wasn't even beautiful-just a weird creature, some kind of space thing, She had to be so bizarre that no [Black person] could identify with [them]'. This typecasting of Black models limited Hoffman's own chances because she was "not Negro enough" to be Black under the respectability politics of white industry standards for Black models at that time. White American society preferred 'exotic' Luna over women like Hoffman as they provided an existing false narrative which fuelled their preexisting media biases about Blackness and its otherness, reinforced existing stereotypes, excluded Black women, and narrowed the definition of what Black beauty could take the appearance of how an acceptable negro would appear, in opposition to whites who would be seen as the default of acceptability and whose appearance would not be called into question so easily.[129]

Indeed, they infantilized "Black women [who] could be sexy, sinuous, glamorous ... marvellous entertainers ... [b]ut when it came it fashion ... magazines and advertising, ... [they] simply not exist. They were not considered to have the necessary spending power that publishers and agencies wanted to exploit." All fashionable images of Black women were made through the primitivist lens which Baker herself used so successfully to create a new beauty standard in 1920s France. Until 1965, when Luna broke the color barrier as a model and created new media content which showed an African American woman for the first time in high fashion magazines within visible beauty standards, an African-American woman wearing scant clothing was "the stuff of the white man's sexual fantasies ... [and until Luna the] kind of image a black girl could strive for; ... [that or to] never fall back on imitating whatever the current white style of beauty happened to be as the standard begins with Black beauty from the beginning. For years, [Black] girls [had] literally been through torture in their efforts to achieve the full creative range of hairstyles ... [using] dangerous hot combs ... or chemical solutions like sodium hydroxide or lye which could burn the hair away ... [or] styles of wigs that Black women wore in order to enhance their beauty in a myriad of ways beyond any limitations of tradition or culture. The same thing applied to cosmetics. ... The Supremes [then being] a perfect example of how Black girls built their glamour around their own ideals stemming from their own natural, rich and glorious beauty ... and so theirs was the look longed for by blacks from Brixton to Harlem: there was simply no one else you could try to imitate."[40] Prevailing beauty standards made African-American women into Black bodies subject to jealousy based on the prevailing negative beauty standards of the day, a tightrope of racialized worldviews of white fashion photographers and beauty which Luna had to walk to create this new content.

In the factor of race, she further stated: "Most of my publicity has been because I'm dark-skinned. But I think the reaction would have been the same if I were white because of my [body] features" referring to her uncommon height and bodily proportions which these companies regarded as exotic.[129][130] Although claims are often made that comments like this is a sign that Luna was attempting to shift away from her African-American heritage, she would go on to carry out a public anti-racial-discrimination campaign alongside David Anthony (of The Touchables fame) with clothing designed by Mary Quant, being shot by David Bailey.[131] When she was denied service in 1968 in a Mayfair hotel, she also filed a complaint for racial discrimination with the board of racial discrimination. The American print journalist Judy Stone wrote a now-infamous profile of Luna for The New York Times in 1968, describing Luna using racialist language such as "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage—exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African". Luna responded that "the civil-rights movement has my greatest support, but I don't want to get involved racially".[22] Dazed reporter Phillipa Burton notes how it today "makes for uncomfortable reading; the interviewer's obsessive probing of her multiracial lineage jarring with Luna's obvious displeasure at talking about it."[15] When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of Black actresses, Luna replied, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less"[35][47] which are indicative of the limited and poor quality of jobs and opportunities available to Luna at the time in an environment which seemingly only accepted models who passed the brown paper bag test.

Comments such as those have meant that she has been widely forgotten in favor of Beverly Johnson, while revealing the complex dynamics that she refused to be defined by in being typecast in the roles such as Diana Ross in the film Mahogany; a media portrayal that may have been a cause for conflict in her identity as a Black woman and someone in the public eye; such as when the protagonist of Mahogany is referred to as an inanimate object and the misogyny of the modeling industry in the film which as a "Black body" altered how Luna was to be both remembered and perceived in the short and long term, placing more value on her as a body (valuing looks and the profit involved from her modeling) than Freeman as a person, thus disregarding her full worth and objectifying Luna.[132][133] After her death, Luna's widower Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga said that Luna self-identified as a "mulatta" and that she "felt rejected by the Black community and the white one".[4] Her daughter notes "people longed for her to become a symbol of the African-American resistance; a role she struggled with as someone who identified as mixed race."[11][134] Penultimately with regards to the racism she faced in the US, Luna believed that questions surrounding her Blackness and how she fit into American society being "a quarter Black" were "America's problem", often attempting to escape labels major publications placed on her, replying to the Times: "Yeah, I'm an American on Black and white, but I'm me, I'm me"[2][33] in an attempt to reject American notions of race and to establish herself a more fully rounded human being.

By 1974 having not found full acceptance in Europe either, she was "caught between the insinuating effects of racial/cultural renunciation [and] sexual stereotype ... Luna's response was to wear the mask [of one of Giacometti's skeletal sculptures] and ... to become a negligible component of life, hovering between existence and nothingness" in Italy in the public eye. From this time on, she had problems figuring out who she was as a Black woman eventually becoming a "soul on ice": an entity encased and obscured by its own false image, which only hinted at the naked power and creative potential that lay beneath the surface", or a shell of the former aspirations she held in her identity in youth.[135] From a heady time when "Luna had skipped modelings apprenticeship stage of endlless castings and rejections from racist fashion magazines, and come straight in at the top ... [having] made the cover of a top fashion magazine, worn the world's most expensive dresses, and commanded a day rate of up to $100-an-hour - all by the age of 19".[136]

Romantic relationships

[edit]

In the mid-1960s, Luna was married to an anonymous German actor for ten months.[51] Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell, then to an unnamed Danish photographer and Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's Necropolis) and with the Living Theatre.[35] She would frequently stop "short of making any lasting commitment to her suitors" though may have had this history as her history with men was checked, model Geraldine Smith recalled that in 1967, "Donyale had this crazy boyfriend who came in last night and smashed her over the head with a beer bottle" for instance.[137][138]

In 1968, Luna was purportedly dating the Australian pop artist Martin Sharp.[139] Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor Klaus Kinski; however, the relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome, concerned that their drug use could damage his career.[140]

She would later move to Italy and continue her acting career there.[20] By September 1969 she had met her next partner, Luigi Cazzaniga at a fashion show in Rome. However, she was then rumored by the Italian press to be dating the Dominican actor Juan Fernandez whom she met around 1969, and is thought to have been dating in 1972 when filming Salome. Luna later married Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga after having met him at a party in Italy. For the first two months of their relationship they could not speak to each other as Cazzaniga only knew how to speak Italian, he noted he "liked ... her [for] her love of creativity and for everything that wasn't square." They eventually married in California in 1976 and in 1977 they had a daughter, Dream Cazzaniga.[141] Dream's name was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.[11] The couple eventually separated and, while still legally married, were estranged at the time of Luna's death of heroin overdose.[102]

Religion

[edit]

Luna converted to Catholicism as an adolescent, from her family's Presbyterian roots.[142]

Legacy

[edit]

Since her death, Donyale Luna's 1966 Vogue cover has been hailed as opening doors for Black models and normalising the inclusion of African-American and African-Europeans on magazines previously catering to majority white demographics.[143] Pat Cleveland noted Luna as her own inspiration who (along with Naomi Sims) opened doors for other women of color in the 1960s.[144] Thus leading to more appearances for women, such as Sims 1967 New York Times fashion supplement cover and Beverly Johnsons American Vogue 1974 cover for example. This continued with British Vogue using Black models Gail O'Neill in March 1986, Naomi Campbell 5 times between December 1987 - August 2002, and Jourdan Dunn in November 2015 as solo cover models under Anna Wintour, Elizabeth Tilberis and Alexandra Shulman's tenures.[145][146]

Luna's reputation as one who often rejected type-cast labelling, has led to the promulgation of erasure of her achievements in the fashion industry. Phillipa Burton wrote in 2009, how "clean-cut models like Beverly Johnson and Iman, whose lives were not to end murkily through an overzealous use of heroin, were louder and prouder ambassadors of the "Black is beautiful" message. Their more palatable versions of Black womanhood loom large in the public consciousness today. Eccentric Luna, on the other hand, who was eternally cagey about her racial identity, waxed lyrical about LSD in interviews and had an endearing habit of not wearing shoes, has, for the most part, been forgotten ... depressingly, the biggest triumph of Luna's career – her groundbreaking Vogue cover of 1966 – represents a war that is very much still being waged. Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm model agency ... grimly admits that a Black model gracing the cover of a mainstream publication is 'still unusual'" and it has been noted she may have been part of the tokenism of advertising agencies to lure in Black consumers."[15] This being consistent with the fact that over time, the loss of African-American history has prompted the creation of first lists. Her career has thus been described as a "meteoric ascent to fame and freefall into anonymity [which] frequently morphs into bodily speculation and social isolation".[77]

However, the designer Stephen Burrows also noted "[Luna] was ahead of the Black model thing. There weren't too many around [in the US in the 1960s]" when commenting on Lunas' extravagant outlook and attitude towards her own career opportunities.[2] Due in part to the timing of the "Black is beautiful" movement only gaining traction towards the end of Luna's career as "Black models didn't truly enjoy their coming out until the seventies" and her New Age beliefs, models such as Beverly Johnson now feature more prominently on Black-firsts lists, even though Luna's cover in 1966 predates Johnson's by eight years.[2] Luna is usually today therefore regarded as "a key player in the mid- to late 1960s fashion, film, and experimental theater scenes" who by the 1970s was "unable to move beyond the external and self-imposed limitations for someone of her idiosyncratic temperamental and tenuous lifestyle ... [which] united to diminish and obscure her once impressive figure, which then led to her public erasure".[147]". Thus Luna leaves behind a mixed legacy as a model who both broke the color barrier and as an underground actress, best remembered for her 1966 Vogue cover.

In her role as the first Black model on the cover of a major print magazine, Luna has had "renewed interest" in her modeling career on social media, fashion bloggers, and among Black business owners. With the promotion of editors at British Vogue such as Edward Enninful in 2017, British Vogue covers starring Black models have also increased. She has also appeared in the 2008 all-Black Vogue issue and was recognized by Naomi Campbell in her CFDA acceptance speech in 2019,[20][53][3] and Nan Goldin dedicated the Exhibit Sirens for her. She was also the inspiration for Pat McGrath for her sixth edition of her Mothership makeup palette.[148] The Afro-Brazilian TV personality Thelma Assis has also recreated the Twen photoshoot on the July 2020 cover of Harper's Bazaar Brazil.[149] In November 2020, actress Zendaya appeared in a photoshoot inspired by Luna for the 50th anniversary of Essence.[150] The HBO Max documentary Donyale Luna: Supermodel was released in September 2023, co-produced by her daughter Dream Cazzaniga.[151]

Filmography

[edit]
Year Title Role Notes
1965 Camp
1966 Screen Test #3 Herself Uncredited
1966 Screen Test #4 Herself Uncredited
1966 Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Mannequin/Model Alternative title: Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo?
1967 Donyale Luna Snow White
1968 Skidoo God's Mistress Credited as Luna
1969 Fellini Satyricon Enotea Alternative title: Satyricon
1969 Dillinger is Dead Background role Uncredited
1970 Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali Herself
1972 Salomé Salomè
1976 Il Festival del proletariato giovanile al Parco Lambro Herself
1996 The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus Herself Lovely Luna
Released posthumously (filmed in 1968)

References

[edit]
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  8. ^ While some sources give her birth name as Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Pegeon Freeman, the name on her birth certificate is Peggy Ann Freeman.
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  12. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 14 ISBN 978-0-9569394-4-9
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  55. ^ POPism: The Warhol Sixties, Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, pp. 299, 1980.
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  70. ^ Elle Magazine, July 7, 1966, see also http://www.doucementlematin.com/archives/tag/elle/index-38.html in French.
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  73. ^ LA FAMOSA MODELO DONYALE LUNA SE CASARA A PRINCIPIOS DE 1974, Spain, 1974/
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  86. ^ Method Modeling, Valerie Cragin, 1980, ISBN 0-8227-4045-1
  87. ^ Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 2009, p 108
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  95. ^ Richard Powell, 2009 Cutting a Figure
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  98. ^ Powell (2009), Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, p. 108.
  99. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, pp. 23–24.
  100. ^ https://mubi.com/films/dillinger-is-dead/cast (Accessed 25 November 2020)
  101. ^ David R. Ignatius, "The Moviegoer: Fellini Satyricon at the Cheri 3", The Harvard Crimson, 6 April 1970
  102. ^ a b Arogundade, Ben (November 11, 2012). "The tragic tale of Donyale Luna". The Telegraph. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  103. ^ "Black fashion model dies". The Spokesman-Review. May 19, 1979. p. 10. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  104. ^ Cavalier Men magazine, 1967
  105. ^ Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Richard Powell, 208 p 108
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  109. ^ The 'Black Body' is a modern term to refer to the corporeal theoretical paradigm of stereotypes placed on African-Americans, and how this can reduce their value in society as individuals and human beings.
  110. ^ "African American identity and the concept of the black body are tragically intertwined through what the residue of slavery has left behind in the form of "body economics" – a fixation on power over the black body is woven into identity, agency and power over your own body, as well as social and political powers over the body.", Deconstructing the Body: Identity and Power in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, Zoe Lloyd-Williams, 17th October 2017
  111. ^ "the black body does not describe the actual appearance of any real person or group of people." Embodying Black Experience : Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body, Young, Harvey, 1975–2010, p. 7.
  112. ^ "the black body comes prejudged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy. ... You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street", https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/black-body-re-reading-james-baldwins-stranger-village "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'", Teju Cole, The New Yorker, August 19, 2014.
  113. ^ Powell, Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture. University of Chicago Press. p. 86
  114. ^ The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell.
  115. ^ Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form, Judith Christine Brown, 2009 p.126
  116. ^ Richard J. Powell; "Who's Zoomin' Who?: The Eyes of Donyale Luna". Nka, November 1, 2016; pp. 14–21
  117. ^ See external links
  118. ^ Richard J. Powell (2009). Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture
  119. ^ The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, p 85 (also see external links)
  120. ^ "La belleza es otro cosa, algo inexplicable que cada uno lleva dentra.", Cueto, Rúa, Hamak, Morduchowicz y Consultores Asociados, 1969, Análisis
  121. ^ Playboy, April 1975.
  122. ^ Parade - The Modesto Bee
  123. ^ Finkelman, Paul (2009). Finkelman, Paul (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American History: 5-Volume Set, Volume 1. 1. Oxford University Press, p. 351.
  124. ^ "Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion", Marcellas Reynolds, 2019, p. 17.
  125. ^ Wilson, Eric (July 23, 2006). "Dorothea T. Church, 83, Pioneering Model, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
  126. ^ Fashioning Models:Image, Text and Industry, Joanne Entwistle, Elizabeth Wissinger, 2012
  127. ^ Cutting a Figure, Richard Powell, 2009, p 96
  128. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p 8 ISBN 978-0-9569394-4-9
  129. ^ a b Dionne, Evette (July 11, 2013). "Do You Know Donyale Luna?".
  130. ^ Detroit Free Press, Colleen O'Brien, 1966.
  131. ^ Daily Mirror, Wednesday 15 June 1966, page 11
  132. ^ "How the "Strong Black Woman" Identity Both Helps and Hurts". Greater Good.
  133. ^ "In 1975's 'Mahogany,' Diana Ross timeless, but the attitudes aren't". chicago.suntimes.com. August 21, 2015.
  134. ^ "Th Multiracial Experience". pewsocialtrends.org. June 11, 2015.
  135. ^ The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, p. 86.
  136. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 10, ISBN 978-0-9569394-4-9.
  137. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 13, ISBN 978-0-9569394-4-9.
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  141. ^ Beauty's Enigma, Ben Arogundade, 2012, p. 23, ISBN 978-0-9569394-4-9.
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  143. ^ London's Working-Class Youth and the Making of Post-Victorian Britain, 1958-1971, Felix Fuhg 2021, p.263
  144. ^ "Pat Cleveland On Rooming With Donyale Luna, Having Marian Anderson As A Godmom And Her Iconic Modeling Career". Madame Noire. July 20, 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  145. ^ See List of British Vogue cover models
  146. ^ "All The Times A Black Model Covered British Vogue". Refinery 29. November 13, 2017. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  147. ^ The Migrant's Time, Rethinking Art History and Diaspora, Saloni Mathur, Richard Powell, 2009, p, 88.
  148. ^ Stephenetta (isis) Harmon, "A New Pat McGrath Mothership Palette Is Landing Soon", Hype Hair, August 26, 2019.
  149. ^ ILCA MARIA ESTEVÃO, "Thelma Assis, do BBB20, surge de cabeça raspada em capa de revista de moda", METRÓPOLES, July 15, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020. In Brazilian Portuguese
  150. ^ "Zendaya Channels Iconic Black Supermodel Donyale Luna in Gorgeous Essence Cover Shoot".
  151. ^ Donyale Luna: Supermodel
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