New York Mature Women Models Agency

New York Mature Women Models Agency

As a young girl making her way through New York's modeling industry in the late 1970s, Cheryl Wadlington remembers meeting mature women Naomi Sims, America's first African American cover girl.

"She was wearing all white; it was her signature look," said Wadlington, who, when models agency was a young model in New York, heard Sims speak. Now she runs a fashion etiquette camp in Philadelphia for teenage girls. Sims "wore a button-up top and a pair of exquisite linen pants. She never was wrinkled and she had the most beautiful chocolate skin. . . ."

At a time when black women were told they were too dark to even think about being mature women cover girls, Sims became the first to do so when she landed the cover of Ladies' Home Journal in 1968. She died Saturday of breast cancer at her home in Newark, N.J. She was 61.

Sims was one of the first models to become an entrepreneur. After a five-year hip hop career as one of Halston's top models, she launched a wig line and her own skin-care products. She also penned several books about African American beauty, including one of the most popular, How to Be a Top Model (Doubleday, 1979).

"She represented elegance, dignity, and beauty when her kind of beauty model agency was not the standard," said Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley, who last saw Sims in May at Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball. As a teenager, Talley had taped to his bedroom wall a photograph of Sims on the cover of Life magazine in 1969. "She broke all the barriers being a dark-skinned woman without light features."

In style circles, she was a heavy hitter.

"She was the Jackie Robinson of the models agency fashion world," said Tina King, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers, a historically black fashion group. It was as if she represented the beauty side of the black-power movement, King said.

Her combination of lean long limbs with chiseled features and hair pulled back is a familiar image, even if you can't quite place it. It's a look that's elegant and graceful, focusing on natural beauty.

 

LA Models Agency for Fitness & Mature Modeling

From the sure-eyed gait of a few of the catwalkers stomping underneath Mark Di Suvero's orange steel sculpture at NorthPark Center on Saturday, you'd never know they were unsigned models agency models. Sullen, vacant, and with enough attitude to fill an episode of The Tyra Banks Show, some applicants for the 2009 Fashion Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search had done their homework before the casting event at the mall's north court.

Joy Vaillancourt took her turn on the models agency catwalk during the Fashion Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search at NorthPark Center on Saturday.

"Modeling is definitely more present in everyday culture thanks to America's Next Top Model," said Ali Michael, a top fitness modeling herself, explaining the swagger the 14- to 22-year-olds brought. The Search's 2005 winner and Teen Vogue cover girl served as runway judge for the day. Her blue eyes focused on a lithe raven-haired teenager. "I like her," Michael said under her breath, barely audible over Lady Gaga, adding the lucky girl's number to her very short list of favorites.

One by one, more than 600 potential posers made their way down the white-washed mature modeling catwalk, the third part of a four-step process to enter the search. After dropping off their applications, hopefuls were photographed by fashion photographer Larry Travis. Heading down the escalator, the entrants were briefly schooled in runway rigor by former model and current fashion show producer Jan Strimple.

Hitting the end of the runway and staring into the photo gallery Web cam set up by CW 33, which streamed live on the TV station's site, each entrant took one last photo on the adjacent red carpet. These shots are now posted at CW33.com, where viewers can push one applicant through to the semifinals.

Dallas native Lauren Moody, the first fitness modeling person in line Saturday morning, was into networking, not catwalking. "I think you need to know the right people to make it in modeling," the blond 19-year-old said with assurance, looking back at the long line. "This is all so intimidating. But not as much as doing the catwalk."

Post-runway, post-red carpet, Moody headed to her car with mature modeling friends. "You tore it up," one told her. "Very Tyra." Want to enter? There's still time. Applications must be postmarked by today.