Popular Chicago model Cordie King (center) is featured in this December 10, 1955 Chicago Defender article on a benefit she presented (showcasing Parisian-influenced hairstyles) at the Morrison Hotel’s Terrace Casino “in her debut as a song stylist.” The models showing off looks from the show are (clockwise) Loretta Conley, Edwina Baltazar, Vivian Pryor and Francis Wilson.
Iman in a 1976 Avon advertisement. She is wearing a dress by Giorgio Sant’ Angelo.
When I first told my dad about Vintage Black Glamour, he had one question: “Is Freda Payne in the book?” Why yes, Dad. Yes she is. This photo by Terry O’Neill (via Getty) is from the early 1970s.
Hilda Simms, the pioneer Minnesota-born actress best known for her starring role in the first all-black production of Anna Lucasta on Broadway, in a glam shot circa 1947. You are not going to believe the awesome pictures I have found of her for the book! Photo: Denis De Marney/Getty Images.
I thought I’d share one of the first pictures that inspired me to create Vintage Black Glamour. The caption from Corbis on this circa 1920s picture reads “Photo shows Thelma and Bonnie, called the “Graceful Creoles,” posing coyly for the photographer at the Lido. The Lido is in Venice, Italy. And you thought you just loved “Thelma and Louise”… :)
Sarah Vaughan, born on this day in 1924 in Newark, NJ, in her dressing room in Chicago, 1948. I wonder which fragrance she was using? Photo: Ted Williams.
A 1970s Ultra Sheen advertisement.
A model in 1954, showing off the continuing popularity of the bikini. This photo actually appeared in the November 1965 issue of EBONY in a story about fashion tastes over twenty years (as in 1945-1965). Some things never change, right?
Sade, born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, turns 54 today! In this 1985 photo (Gered Mankowitz/Redferns) she is at a recording studio on Willesden High Road in London.
Jazz singer Joya Sherrill, on tour with Benny Goodman in 1962, sits under a hair dryer with with women in Russia. Ms. Sherrill also performed with Duke Ellington and was one of the first African Americans to host a children’s television show. She died in 2010 at the age of 85. Photo via LIFE magazine.
Diana Ross, pregnant with her daughter, @TraceeEllisRoss, in 1972. Photo via Tracee Ellis Ross’s Pinterest page.
Four African beauty queens pose at their London hotel before the 1967 Miss World beauty contest. From left to right: Teresa Shayo, Miss Tanzania; Rosemary Salmon, Miss Uganda; Rosalind Balogun, Miss Nigeria and Araba Vroon, Miss Ghana. Photo: Leonard Burt. Hulton Archives/Getty Images.
