Vintage Black Glamour

Model Adrienne Fidelin with her lover, the iconic photographer Man Ray in the 1930s.

From The New York Times:

The story begins in Paris around 1936, when a young dancer from Guadeloupe named Adrienne Fidelin met Man Ray. He was 46 and, judging from pictures of her at the time, she was in her mid-20s. An enchanting, high-spirited beauty, Fidelin — who was known as Ady — became Man Ray’s lover, model and muse. The exact circumstances of their meeting, as with many details of her life, remain elusive. What is known is that she was dancing with a French company with ties to Guadeloupe and that the two were inseparable. Fidelin met Man Ray at the height of the Surrealist movement and was quickly embraced by his close-knit circle of artist and writer friends.
Man Ray/Telimage. © 2007 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS) , New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Adrienne Fidelin in the mid to late 1930s.

From The New York Times:

Fidelin and Man Ray parted ways in 1940, when he fled France for the States during the Nazi occupation while she chose to remain in Paris to care for her family. She later married, and the last thing on record is that she was dancing at a “Negro” club on the Champs-Élysée. It was not until the postwar years that black models appeared with any frequency in fashion magazines. Even then, they appeared almost exclusively in black publications like Ebony, which was founded in 1945. The American fashion industry was particularly reluctant to use black models. Early successes like Dorthea Towles Church had to flee to Paris to get work. Vogue did not put a black model — Beverly Johnson — on its cover until 1974. And Naomi Sims, considered the first black supermodel, didn’t even start modeling until 1967.

Adrienne Fidelin in a look from the Man Ray series ‘‘La Mode au Congo.’’

Adrienne Fidelin, photographed by Man Ray for the September 1937 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. This makes her the first black model to appear in a major fashion magazine.

Model Adrienne Fidelin with her lover, the iconic photographer Man Ray in the 1930s.

From The New York Times:

The story begins in Paris around 1936, when a young dancer from Guadeloupe named Adrienne Fidelin met Man Ray. He was 46 and, judging from pictures of her at the time, she was in her mid-20s. An enchanting, high-spirited beauty, Fidelin — who was known as Ady — became Man Ray’s lover, model and muse. The exact circumstances of their meeting, as with many details of her life, remain elusive. What is known is that she was dancing with a French company with ties to Guadeloupe and that the two were inseparable. Fidelin met Man Ray at the height of the Surrealist movement and was quickly embraced by his close-knit circle of artist and writer friends.