Everybody loves Bethann Hardison former international model and founder of Bethann Hardison modeling agency. Ms. Hardision is credited with discovering the first black male supermodel, TYSON BECKFORD and remains our favorite tireless fashion activist. Lately, she has been hosting Town Hall meetings around the nation to discuss the shameless lack of diversity in the fashion world!On February 13, 2009, Bethann Hardison was presented with the first Arise/ThisDay Icon of Style Award by Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, Chairman of THISDAY Newspapers! BRAVO!In celebration of this stellar achievement, we decided to visit to the VAULT in search of an interview with Bethann Hardision conducted in March 2004 at her beautiful home in NYC. Bethann Hardison was presented with the first annual Style Maven Award in 2004 at the Washington, DC
Capital Catwalk event held at the Four Seasons Georgetown to benefit the
High Tea Society mentoring program for girls.
Photo from 2007 Capital Catwalk Event featuring Stephen Burrows, Bethann Hardison and Andre Leon Talley.EXCERPT FROM 2004 BETHANN INTERVIEW
Simone Butterfly (SB): Growing up in Brooklyn, what impact did fashion have on you as a child?
Bethann Hardision (BH): Style had an enormous impact…fashion is a word it is a way to make planned industry have purpose…style is natural especially for people of color because it existed in exuberant people, whether blacks or latinos…everyone has a certain passion for culture and for how they express themselves; surely in the black community you always have women around you who exhibit natural style like my – like my mother had natural style. She was a jitterbugger and so that alone is style. Anyone who can have a man throw you over their head and through their legs and catch you at the other side …that takes style. Her and my father both…they were jitterbug partners and they went to all the balls Savoy ball room and all around them I always saw a lot of things around me too-people you know….you notice, even when you are a kid the shoe that a man has on even when you are seven years old you notice what a woman is wearing; someone wears a glove…someone else wears a jewel over her glove…it’s the details. IT’s the The layers within yourself.
SB: What about the magazines, did they have an impact on you?BH: When I was nine years old, what I considered to be truly a fashion magazine was Seventeen Magazine. There was a model named Carol Langley, white girl, round face, long straight blond hair…She was my favorite, She was everyone’s favorite at that moment. She was beautiful. Each time I would tell my mother, I have to get the magazine. My mother would look at me and say to me..you’re only nine? And I would look at her like she was witless…I always thought of my mother like she was my little sister. I always though I was smarter than her…and in many ways I was…but in many ways of course I wasn’t. But I wanted it. And I’d get it because I was an only child and a latch key kid too, so she’d get the magazine. But she never understood why I had such a passion for it. And it was immediate and I remember 9, 10, 11 I got every issue of Seventeen. There are Fashion Mag, eve mom the ear;u days that give you entertainment…don’t dictate how you dress…just entertain you.
SB: Do you think the magazines had an impact on your self esteem….the fact that the images did not look like you?
BH: I never had a problem with that-but you have to remember too, coming up in the 50’s and 60’s, there was less media exposure. I come from Bed Stuy. And what’s interesting, coming from a place like that you have so much blackness around you, you have a community that even if there’s media exposure, you look at it like well, that’s them and this is us. SO it is much easier for us to have come from a time period where there was so much layer of culture than there is now. Now there is a bleed and it is very difficult for young people. But for me, I could look at Carol Lindley and think that she was truly an extraordinary girl having nothing to affect my own self esteem. My inspiration were performers like Gene Kelly and Fred Estaire. So for me, every dance that they did, every performance I watched…every film. I saw every musical …everything that came on television and I was completely inspired and I knew I could do that! I was a child tap dancer and was quite well known and by seeing white magazines, white perfomers…what white did for me and my background…it allowed me to believe that I could do. It never made me think I was less than. It was inspiration.
It never made me think…let me get this fixed up…or get that pushed up…
When women are in the neighborhood it is much easier to see your own self progression. You have less worries about…wanting to look like some other person because the only other person is looking very much like you. So anything outside your neighborhood.
SB: What were you like in high school?BH: I was something else. I accomplished great things, first of all I was supposed to go to a performing arts school. But a man, George Wyngate came from a school called George Wyngate in Brooklyn. He came to talk about the Banjo School and that we should consider coming. This was the same time as busing, only I did not know. For some reason the school sounded really interesting to me. It seemed like it was the place I was supposed should go. So I cancelled going into the Performing Arts (even though it was really a big thing to get into the Performing Arts school) and I go to this regular high school with all of these white kids and a few black kids from PS 35. I get into the school for my sophomore year. By my junior year, I made the cheerleading squad, the first black girl on the cheerleading. I got elected to organize the spring festival…Then I was in the choir and chorus. I had a great time. It was wonderful. We left there so much better all of us white and blacks.
Some black kids would say, Oh she thinks she’s white….
You can see already how if you begin to achieve and you become a bit exceptional all of a sudden you are not apart of the cool norm. If you are true about yourself you may have to straighten people out because you can see how that opportunity is so much greater than where you come from. It is the ride…the ride of life…it’s the beginning.
I am glad you asked that.
SB: Coming out of HS Did you think that you would have a career in fashion? BH: No not at all- I think from HS …18 up until the age I am now, I never really knew what I was going to do. I didn’t think that. I thought I would go to college because everyone said that you have to go. And I was on my way to do that but I wound up not finishing college (I went to FIT for 1 year; NYU Art school for 6 mos) but at the end of the day I took a job in the garment district. It seemed more natural. But, I didn’t think about it because I needed a job.
SB: Tell me about the first job.BH: The first woman I worked for Ruth Manchester. She was a Jewish woman. and Sylvia, her sister. (I have to be very specific about cultures, etc. because it helps to define your expression and your understanding ...it is very important to me I always speak black white because I like to distinguish. It helps because it is all about relationships and how those relationships work together. When my grandmother and my mother were domestics and they worked for Jewish families that was my exposure to them.
But these [jewish] women really helped me in my career and really helped set me on the road. They believed in me, especially Sylvia. She let me work as an assistant. She taught me how to sell. I was one of the first blacks ever in a showroom to sell to whites in the garment district. And when I would go out to talk to him they would say…OH NO go get Sylvia. At that time I thought it was because I was black and young. Now I know it was the combination they would rather deal with who they know. But, Sylvia would say…Well I am not going out there…they better deal with you.
And that is a big thing! She would risk the loss of a sale because so they would have to deal with me. So I could have that experience and so I could become better at my job. I went back out there and they had to deal with me. And that was a great thing and that’s how I started modeling coming out of that same showroom. They sent me to take sample garments to Bernie Older who used to head Federated Junior Department. And he would put on a fashion show to show all of the buyers things that would become very important in the season from the different manufactures.
I saw they were putting on a show. I gave him the garments and I said you should put me in the show, I am a great performer….He said yeah really. Why should I put you in my show. I said, I’m telling you, I am a great perfomer. See, he really put on a show. He had actors from Broadway. And I was like a kid in a candy store. I could dance, I do shows. So I went back and I got to my office and Sylvia and Ruth said, What did you say to Bernie? He just called up here. And I said, Oh I’m Sorry. Tell us what you said. Well he called you and he wanted you to be in the show. And they let me be in the show. That was nice because you know they could have said, No you can’t do that…you’re working. It was like I was there daughter and they wanted me to achieve this.
Everything turned very nicely in my life. The garment district taught me well.
SB: How did you meet Willie Smith?
BH: Willie used to see me always going into 1407 Broadway and he thought I was a designer. He was always attracted to my style and my look. And one day, one of the junior buyer’s assistant came into the showroom (they used to come in to drop off garments) she said I need to talk to you- there is a guy Willie Smith who is a designer who is asking about you. He wants to meet you. He called me and I met with him. He thought I was a designer. HE asked me if I would consider being his model. Because he had no one
Many people in the garment district used to confuse us the way we both dressed.
Unbeknownst to each other sometimes I would walk by and people would say, hello Willy. The way I dressed and the way he dressed…
He was just starting to come up just getting press in WWD. And they were so proud of me.
SB: What was your style like?BH: I don’t know. I see pictures of myself and I say ooh I sure had style. Now…people get lazy when they get old. Maybe some people don’t. I looked at bag women. And I think to myself, I could be that woman. Some of the bag women looked so chic to me. Yeah, the first time I went to the Commes de Garcoin fashion show in Paris I thought that ____ really to me designed like she was designing for bag women. Because everything seemed not together but together. The way they wore hats, sitting on the ground especially before NYC got rid of the homeless. I always gave great kudos to them. Because in a snap you could be homeless. And that was the reason why we formed Black Girls Coalition. We wanted to get these girls together…but it was about the coalition helping…we were having a crisis but those women on the streets had such style. For me, what I wore them…may be moment in time, you don’t remember what you wore but for someone to recognize it and say you have great style. You had it and when I look back in pictures, I see it. And now, you could care less. Your life is always constantly about the quality of your life. Everything is too designer anyway. You have to look through too many stores. SO much to look for. Etc.
SB: Tell me about modeling abroad. BH: Walking down the runway…I will always remember that moment…because the runways in Paris were so very long. And when you get to the very end. All the cameramen would click their cameras at the same time. All the lights would hit. It was the most exhilarating moment. It was more than anything I have ever felt in my life. You just think, God, You are right there at the end of that runway and at that moment when all the lights hit you think…woah.
SB: How did you get into fashion show production? BH: Issey Miyake saw such strength in me. I worked with him for so many years. And I helped produce his shows in Japan and America.
SB: How did you start working with Calvin Klein?BH: Calvin would call when Stephen [Burrows] and I were working on our collection. He loved my style so he would ask me what I thought.
I was the one who told Calvin…and this is the factual truth…I am going to lead my own parade on this one…because if I don’t no one will ever know. Wearing high heels with jeans was me. Calvin was basically sitting around and coming out with a jeans line. And my idea was, “Why don’t you put it with a pair of high heels?” And I talked him into it. And it was the biggest thing. In every mall..every crazy little girl was walking around in jeans and heels and they still are. No one ever did that before.
SB: Gong back a step..to ‘70’s ….to the Battle of Versailles…I read so much about it. How did it come about?BH: Francois de la Renta, who is now the former wife of Oscar de la Renta, had an idea to create this union—the French designers with the American designers, to benefit the Marie Antoinette theater, a very small little theater. They wanted to raise money for construction. It was a benefit show.
It was only supposed to be a friendly benefit but it turned into a Battle. The French press kept going on about the Americans, saying, “they don’t design clothing they create sportswear.” And instead of the American press defending their designers, they began repeating what the French said. Soon, the American press were no longer enthusiastic about the show. Only a few American press attended. The one person who was there was Bill Cunningham with his camera. Only about 3 or 4 editors from newspapers wound up attending because everyone thought we were going to embarrass ourselves.
Of course the designers fought and hated each other. Poor Anne Klein would talk to me all the time saying that she was having the hardest time because she was the only woman. Anne Klein never used black people, but then she went and got me because her whole collection was based on scenes from Africa. So she got me to help her find black girls. Black girls were really popular then because the black girls were the ones that made the fashion shows something to go look at. They were very, very successful. The black models were….Pat Cleveland, Billie Blair, Bethann Hardison Alva Chin, Norma Jean Darden. They called us the “strutting stallions.” We really were something. They really had to incorporate us in the Versailles show because the black models really made you feel like you were having a show.
We went over there and we changed Europe. We changed how French designers thought. Besides that, “We Won!” Josephine Baker was there and she was so proud of us. She came backstage (she was performing for the French.)
It was my moment, too…They kept saying..“You do it for us!”….They kept getting me so pumped up…and everytime, I would do rehearsals…they’d say that was good, but they could tell…they did not see the Bethann they wanted. But, when that moment came, when I had to deliver..and I only had that one dress..Man, I came down there and all Bill Cunningham said…IT WAS WATTS IN THE HOUSE! IT WAS WATTS IN THE HOUSE!
