Bethann Hardison Invisible Beauty film



Bethann Hardison Invisible Beauty film

Tickets booked!

Bethann Hardison’s documentary film, Invisible Beauty is showing at the Tribeca Film Festival next week and Londoners will get their turn in July.

It promises to be a fantastic treat as she has codirected the film with Frédéric Tcheng (of Halston and Dior and I fame). If you haven’t heard of Hardison, she’s an ex-model and fashion advocate, perhaps best known for starting the Black Girl’s Coalition, celebrating and promoting Black models.

In the last couple of years, she’s become an even bigger figurehead for diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry. But for creatives, she’s also known for her tomboyish style as the muse for New York designer Willi Smith and assistant to Stephen Burrows. On September 7th, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn will open an exhibition dedicated to her.

For a little more back story on Bethann, here’s the extended version of my interview with her from my 2021 book, Face Values*.

Growing up, there was no such thing as fashion for me. The first magazine I laid eyes on at the age of 9, that I really needed to have, was Seventeen magazine. Mostly because of this blonde girl with big blue eyes, Carol Lynley. She was the first model that I found so beautiful, so I used to follow her – she used to be on every cover of Seventeen. But that was still nothing to do with fashion, that was just a lifestyle magazine.

I was always interested in how clothes are made and how they get out to people. I went to the garment district and wound up getting a job at a custom button factory called Cabot. I came dressed well, like you do when you go for an interview and he thought I was dressed way too well. He told me he’d hire me, but to tone it down. Even when I toned it down he said, you’re not toned down enough! So, he decided to send me out to deliver the buttons and go back and forth between the design companies, the designers and our office. So that was my every day, walking round the garment district, running into beautiful models. We had a Black model named Helen Williams. Back then models had to bring their own accessories – stockings, shoes – she was carrying a heavy bag and I knew it was her. I was so smitten, I went after her and said, “can I please help you?” She looked at me, she said, “oh my dear, can you?”

I stayed in the garment business and went into low-end dresses. That’s where I learnt everything. Then I went to a junior dress company where my Jewish women mentors put me in the showroom. You never saw anyone Black showing you the line, so they put me in the showroom and taught me how to do that. And then the designer Willi Smith discovered me. He thought I was a designer because he’d seen me in the garment district, so he had someone find out who I was and had a meeting with me. I became his muse. Every time he saw me, he liked what I was wearing. I was very thin, but also many people in the garment business would say, “how you doing Willi?” They thought I was Willi!

I always had a full-time job as I modelled, and Willi asked me if I would consider working with him from time to time, because he oftentimes got calls to show his collection somewhere. I went to my mentor ladies, my family, and they were so excited. Anything that happened to me, it was so exciting. They said yes to everything, “oh yes of course!”

My first runway show was for a merchandising executive called Bernie Ozer. He used to do a very big Broadway-type show and I went to deliver the dresses. I went up to Bernie and said; “you know if you want to have a great show, you’d have me in it!” That took courage but also desire. The man looked at me and said, “who are you? Where are you from?” I said, “Bethann. I’m from Ruth Manchester.” He said, “OK, thank you”. By the time I go to my office, my Jewish ladies, they were so excited. “Bernie wants you to be in his shows. He just called us!”

Runway models serviced the entire industry when it came down to designers. So they could be fitting models, girls who dressed in the showroom, presenting. You could hire a girl to show clothes to a buyer or editors. They were not the print girls. Print girls were girls who only worked for editorial, catalogue, advertising – they were not runway models. But Calvin Klein who was a great marketer, woke up one day and decided to put the print girl on the runway in his clothes, so that the editor had the full vision of how it should be. So him doing that is how it began with the fashion model. The girl who was the runway model eventually became eliminated because suddenly everybody started to use these girls.

Runway girls at that time were white girls, a couple of Asian girls and definitely numerous girls of colour. I created the Black Girls Coalition in the late 80s to celebrate so many models of colour beginning to work. That was the great move of Regis Paginez, who was sent to New York from French Elle’s publishing company Filipacchi, to start American Elle. And thank God because he just saw girls that he liked, and they were of colour. Conde Nast and Hearst, they never had any girls [of colour] inside the magazines. But when he started doing it, it pushed them, because Elle became one of the most successful magazines. So those girls started to work more. I was a model agency owner by then and because I was a Black owner too, I related.

In the end, some of the girls started working with different modelling agencies, so I wanted to celebrate it while at the same time I wanted to find a way to benefit the homelessness that was going on in my city. Homelessness was really running rampant in the 80s, and children were double victimised because their families fell into homelessness. So I wanted to find an organisation that was supporting these people and children specifically and to see what we could do. I used that as my excuse to get the girls together, because women in general aren’t known for supporting each other. But we eventually had to go up against the advertising industry, because they were not reflecting their consumer. You never saw anyone Black drive a car. Any time you saw anybody of colour was if they were doing something domestic – washing detergent or something. That was towards the end of the coalition activities and meanwhile they were just beautiful girls, we were celebrating them and also teaching them how to use their celebrity in a very smart way.

By 1996, once I’d closed my model agency and moved to Mexico, the models of colour disappeared. Eastern Europe started to open up and casting directors wanted to have nondescript girls who all looked alike. Ten years went by and I did my first press conference, to defy the notion that that was alright. It had to stop because we had already climbed that hill. In 2007 Franca Sozzani published the all-Black issue of Italian Vogue, which helped change the perception of the girl of colour.

Now these girls are working, they’re all shades, all colours. But the real objective was to see how I could affect society’s visual subliminally mental mind, because that was my remit, something that I knew well, that industry. People would instead notice colour as being very normal, because once you start seeing it, it doesn’t seem such an odd thing. Now the only thing left to do, is to get more people that can do the job behind the scenes as well.

Tickets for Invisible Beauty in New York are available here and in London (on 7th and 8th July) are available here.

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Bethann Hardison
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links* and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



Wear It Well by Allison Bornstein



Cover of book Wear It Well by Allison Bornstein

I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t heard of Allison Bornstein but I’m following her now. She’s a stylist, wardrobe consultant and TikTok wardrobe whisperer who makes helpful shop-your-closet videos. But the big news is she’s publishing a how-to styling book and it sounds great.

Wear It Well: Reclaim Your Closet and Rediscover the Joy of Getting Dressed* is based on methods and systems of making your wardrobe work harder while retaining the pleasure of expressing your style.

There doesn’t seem to be much online about it yet (it comes out in September) but from what I’ve seen it will emulate the contemporary, collage-y visual style of Bornstein’s social media posts. Style how-to books can be tricky as fashion changes so quickly, but her advice seems to be rooted in the classics, which is always a good starting point.

Wear It Well book

Wear It Well: Reclaim Your Closet and Rediscover the Joy of Getting Dressed is available for pre-order here* and here*.

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Wear It Well by Allison Bornstein
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links* and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



On my radar: Fara Homidi Beauty



Fara Homidi Beauty by Zoe Ghertner

Proof that today’s beauty is nothing without branding, this new ‘slow beauty’ make-up launch caught my eye. It’s rare that I’m tempted to buy stuff on Instagram, but this one just hit the spot. Fara Homidi is an NYC make-up artist whose brand Fara Homidi Beauty sits in the Westman Atelier and La Bouche Rouge bracket of ‘clean’ products, superior textures, classic ‘suits-all’ colours and luxe packaging with an anti-hype feel.

There are only a few products (for now) and the photography, casting and beauty styling are superb, if you like that sexy-minimal Self-Service aesthetic. (Clearly, I do.)

Zoe Ghertner for Fara Homidi Beauty

The Essential Lip Compacts* are the hero product (someone called them ‘make-up macarons’), like little palm sized delicacies containing half-balm-half-colour to slip in your pocket or purse. Homidi started her career on the Prescriptives counter and sees products that combine prep with finish in a single ‘system’ as the next evolution of cosmetics. The formulations look and sound beautiful and their Instagram is stunning. Consider me influenced.

Fara Homidi Beauty is currently available directly from farahomidi.com or from Violet Grey* and Dover Street Parfums Market. Plans are afoot to launch in the UK later in the year, so watch this space.

Fara Homidi Beauty Lip compact
Fara Homidi Beauty lip pencils

NOW CLICK BELOW TO SHOP THE POST (I MAY EARN A COMMISSION ON THE BASKET VALUE OF ITEMS BOUGHT*)…

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Zoe Ghertner and Hanna Tveite for Fara Homidi Beauty
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links* and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



The watch that thinks it’s a necklace



Hermes Kelly sautoir - rose gold - black alligator

‘Secret’ watches are my thing. The Hermès Medor is my favourite, but the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso* is the gold standard.

The story goes that a 1930s businessman and watch collector was tasked with creating a watch for polo players to wear that would withstand the rough and tumble of the game. The result was the sleek JLC Reverso whose case was engineered to flip over to protect the watch face – and back again after the game. 90 years later, there’s a market for mind-bendingly intricate paintings on that smaller-than-postage-stamp caseback, with limited editions models selling for €80,000. (more…)