
Born 1948 in Oxford, Mississippi, American model, businesswoman and author Naomi Sims became one of the first successful black models while still in her teens, and achieved worldwide recognition from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, appearing in popular fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vogue Italia, and Cosmopolitan. She also frequently collaborated with photographers Anthony Barboza, Richard Avedon, Francesco Scavullo, Irving Penn, and William Helburn and Berry Berenson.
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Naomi Sims, photo Yale Joel, 1974 |
By 1972, Hollywood took an interest in Sims as a potential actress and offered her the title role in the movie Cleopatra Jones, but when Sims read the script, she was appalled by the racist portrayal of blacks in the movie and turned it down. Sims ultimately decided to go into the beauty business for herself.
Sims retired from modeling in 1973 to start her own business, which created a successful wig collection fashioned after the texture of straightened black hair. It eventually expanded “into a multimillion-dollar beauty empire and at least five books on modeling and beauty”.
Sims authored several books on modeling, health, and beauty, including All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman, How to Be a Top Model and All About Success for the Black Woman, as well as an advice column for teenage girls in Right On! magazine.
Sims was the first African-American model to appear on the covers of Ladies’ Home Journal and Life. She died of breast cancer in 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey. Take a look at these stunning photos to see portraits of young Naomi Sims as a model in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Naomi Sims outside Metropolitan Museum, photo by Gosta Peterson, New York Times, 1967 |
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Naomi Sims, photo Anthony Barboza, 1968 |
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