More than 50 years after starting her modeling career, Pat Cleveland is still being asked to walk down runways, appear in iconic fashion magazines, allow the use of her face on the front of clothing produced by major fashion houses and tell her story in books like Walking with the Muses, her memoir.
At 67, she’s as much a force as ever, and as beautiful as ever. It’s one of the reasons she’s being honored by the Fashion Legacy Association for Industry Recognition, or FLAIR, a non-profit organization, which honors the contributions of African Americans in all things art and fashion. During their upcoming two-day fashion events on July 21-22 in downtown Los Angeles, they will honor Pat Cleveland at the FLAIR 2017 fashion show, which showcases the work of emerging Black designers.
In preparation for that, we had the chance to talk with Cleveland, who is a ball of good energy and giggles, about paving the way, returning to the runway in her sixties, still being called upon by the bigwigs of fashion, and whether or not she truly believes things have improved for models in terms of diversity and opportunity.
MadameNoire: Models like yourself, Donyale Luna and Naomi Sims, really opened the door for models of color. Knowing that you all gained fame and came up around the same time, how does it feel to be the only one still alive and still being honored by organizations and people like FLAIR for paving the way?
Pat Cleveland: I’m here now and they’re gone off to another planet. It’s not like they’re not here, it’s like their memory still inspires us. I’m glad I’m here to talk about how wonderful these people were in my life too and how they inspired me. I was inspired by Donyale Luna and Naomi Sims was my contemporary and those were some fine girls. They were fine in their attitude, their stylishness and the things they wanted to do. They had goals, they had dreams. It was a very fanciful time. The fantasy that we had about ourselves and what we could do in the world. It may not have been exactly what was around us in reality, but it was something we all had in common, so we developed friendships. Donyale Luna, I lived with her in Rome for a while and I was really close with Naomi because we were working with Halston. These wonderful ladies, they were so well-mannered and so beautiful.
Speaking of influences, you started modeling at a time when there weren’t many models before you. So who inspired your walk and your persona on the runway?
I think I just grew up with wonderful people. My aunt was a dancer with Katherine Dunham. Eartha Kitt and Marlon Brando were in a dance class and I was the mascot monkey hanging off of the bars [laughs]. I remember them dancing across the room and the drums playing. It was amazing, just being in this artistic environment growing up. And my mother being a painter, Lady Bird [Cleveland] painting at night and me sitting next to her and seeing the colors and her style. She made all of her clothes, she and my aunt, and they would make these clothes and go to costume balls and win the prize. Our living room was always covered in feathers and sparkly things. I would run through the room and try to be a part of it but I was just too little to support the clothes. So the minute I grew up, I was making my own clothes so that I could wear them [laughs]. I started walking in high heels at a very young age because they were available. And my godmother was Marian Anderson, the opera singer, and the way she carried herself, her posture, her voice — they were just artists. They were wrapped up in some sort of inspiration. So looking at them and watching them create something out of nothing really inspired me to be the same way.
You mentioned that you used to make clothing and I know that’s what you initially studied to do. After all these years as a model, would you ever consider designing a line?
Well, you never know. If I just don’t have enough designers hanging around and giving me things I might just have to say, “Okay, boys. I’ll show you how to do it!” But you know, I’m just so wrapped up in everything that everybody’s doing around me. I’m so fascinated with the young designers and they say, “Can you wear this?” or “Will you wear that?” and I think, “Yeah, I can go have some fun in that. It looks pretty good to me.” But these days, I make hats. I make little things. Now I’m just painting a lot. I have these things on Fine Art America and you can get some of my things there. There might be some paintings, or some bags, shower curtains, covers for beds, cups — everything you can get with my designs on it. But you know, I do that because that’s just something I do. It’s just like breathing. Everything that you enjoy, you never know how far it’s going to go. So just keep enjoying stuff and see where it goes. Know what I mean? And sure, I’ll do a line — if somebody asks me [laughs].
When you returned to the runway and modeling a few years ago, now in your 60s, how was that for you?
It’s like finding a dinosaur bone and cleaning it up [laughs]. They found something in me that maybe inspired them to look forward or backwards or do something — I don’t know. But it just seems I’ve been working with a lot of young designers like Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs and Zac Posen. I like that they still use me. Designers like Kenzo will do a whole collection with my face on it and I think, “This is so strange [laughs].” You feel just honored because you actually kind of grew up with some of the designers who’ve been around for a while, but the new designers were like the interns. They remember you from history. They want to feel what it feels like to have that old bottle of champagne [laughs].
Knowing this journey you’ve been on as a model and the ups and downs of it, were you ever nervous about your daughter, Anna, pursuing a modeling career?
No. It’s better than swimming with sharks. It’s pretty much the same thing with everything — there’s going to be the bad things and the good things. But because she kind of grew up in that — When she was 10 days old she was already in a magazine wearing the pearls of the Duchess of Windsor, sucking on them [laughs]. And so I think she has a taste for it and a talent for it so what am I nervous about? Just keep going I tell her and enjoy it, because the people in the art world are much more forgiving than people in other professions. It’s a beautiful world, for girls especially. The clothes and dressing up. There is a business aspect, of course you have to learn that part, but that’s just the extra part.
I have heard and read about the racism you experienced early on in your career when you modeled as part of the Ebony Fashion Fair shows in the ’60s and buses were being targeted down South. Seeing that both of your children model or have tried to, how important was it for you to let them know about those type of experiences? What was that time like?
Can you believe it? Well, their grandmother and great-grandmother are African American, so they know the stories of what it was to be in Georgia in the South and my mother coming to New York at an early age to get away from it all. No matter where you are there’s going to be bigotry or something — somebody against somebody. But the hatred behind it, we were experiencing that kind of thing in contrast with what was happening with the Ebony Fashion Fair, which was a philanthropic thing. This adventure we were on was to raise money for college kids to go to school in the African-American community. We had the most beautiful clothes in the world by American and European designers in the bottom of the bus. And to stop somewhere and have people with bigotry hate us for no reason whatsoever, it’s not something I hadn’t experienced early in my life. When I was a child and I was in Georgia, I remember having rocks thrown at me and my cousins. It’s just ridiculous. That’s one reason I moved to Europe back then, so that I could be understood as a mixed-race person. You just didn’t want to always be reminded that you weren’t respected. And so for those things to still be happening, it’s just ridiculous. It’s like ignorance has a hard time dying. In that time, the beauty was there. And Mrs. Johnson was the entrepreneurial spirit bringing the fashion and discovering new designers. Halston hats and Yves Saint Laurent dresses weren’t even that popular and she bought them. But it was so wonderful that Ebony was the Bible of Black society. It was so necessary because there was no way to honor our heroes, people who had goals and reached them. So it was very important, that Fashion Fair show.
So all of these years later, after being on runways with only Black people as well as being one of the few Black faces in shows all over the world during your career, would you say diversity in the fashion world has improved? Because there are still complaints about the diversity on the runway, as well as conversations about makeup artists and stylists who don’t have the tools or knowledge to work with Black skin and hair.
They’re behind the times. It’s just too late for that conversation. Those people don’t know what’s going on if they haven’t created or obtained things for the entire pallet. That’s like only painting in black and white when we’ve gone to technicolor. Politics and the way things are in the world and who’s selling what in what country, has a lot to do with why they hire 20 Russians and one Black or 20 Blacks and one Caucasian. It’s all politics and selling. That’s what it is. Trying to create a “trend.” I used to own a modeling agency so I know all about trend. And I’ll tell you, it’s all about numbers. But there’s so many more opportunities for African Americans. There’s more outlets. There’s more of an audience that’s able to participate, so it’s better now than before. But in the seventies it was hard. In the middle of the seventies it was like, “Okay, let’s have some African-American girls!” Well, they called us some different names [laughs]. We were called “The walking girls” because we could walk. We had a certain kind of sexuality and attitude. Just like Picasso loved the African statues, it’s the art of it. We provide that.
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