Black Models Celebrated As Runway Revolutionaries : NPR: ...But as important as those ladies were, the event was transformed by the presence of several African-American models. According to Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, at the evening's end, fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, who'd dreamed up the event, described it this way: 'It was as if, on this cold night, all the windows of Versailles had been blown open.'
Around 200 people will gather Monday at the Costume Institute to celebrate these black models whose work that night made American fashion a contender on the world stage.
Koda says many people he interviewed who were at Versailles said the event nearly 40 years ago was special.
"And what made the presentation of the Americans so riveting, magical and overwhelmed the presentation of the French was the presence of African-American models," he says.
