Donyale Luna was out of this world.
The first black woman to appear on the cover of a Vogue Magazine (the British edition — Beverly Johnson covered American Vogue in 1974), Luna posed with one hand coquettishly covering a kohl-rimmed eye in 1966. In a blink, the world was caught in her orbit.
Born Peggy Anne Freeman, Luna was the youngest of three children from a working-class family in Detroit. Tall and lithe with extraordinary looks, she had hoped to become an actress, but caught the eye of photographer David McCabe. Luna moved to New York, and within three months, she was on her way to supermodel status.
Her modeling debut was on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar. She was also technically on the cover, albeit as a sketch drawn with a pinkish skin tone. Luna began working with photographer Richard Avedon, but after moving to London, her career really took off. Whether on the cover of Vogue, on the runway, or in real life, Luna was bold. She sometimes crawled or walked robotlike down the catwalk. Off duty, she sported blue contact lenses. When she was cast in films by Andy Warhol and Federico Fellini, she became the actress she wanted to be.
But in America, times were turbulent and Luna refused to wear the mantle of civil rights. Famously cagey about her ethnicity, she bristled at society’s need to define her. “Back in Detroit, I wasn’t considered beautiful or anything, but here I’m different,” she said in a 1966 Time Magazine story titled “The Luna Year.”
At 33, Luna died of a reported accidental drug overdose in Rome, leaving behind her estranged husband, an 18-month-old daughter and a legacy as a fashion trailblazer.
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