The Life and Legacy of Donyale Luna
- Abby Henry
- Feb 24, 2024
- 4 min read
In March of 1966, Peggy Ann Freeman, known professionally as Donyale Luna, was the first model of color to be featured on the cover of British Vogue. In the cover photo, Luna’s hand covers most of her face, leaving only a v-shaped space around her heavily-lined eye and brow, an attempt, according to writer Tansy E. Hoskins, to hide her ethnicity entirely.
Luna was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1945 to parents Nathaniel and Peggy Freeman. She spent much of her childhood in both the cinema and the theatre, watching films and acting in various plays. She was Ariel in “The Tempest,” Chastity in “Anything Goes,” and Cherry in “Paint Your Wagon.”
Luna’s homelife, however, was extremely turbulent. Her parents divorced and remarried multiple times; her mother raised Luna and her sisters almost entirely on her own; her father was an alleged abuser. In 1965, Luna’s mother shot and killed her father in self-defense. Though Luna would go on to experience great success, she was understandably haunted by the traumas of her childhood and suffered from intense anxiety as a result.
In an essay by Luna’s daughter, Dream Cazzaniga, Luna is said to have been scouted by fashion photographer David McCabe in 1963. “[McCabe] felt compelled to let [Luna] know that if she was ever interested in modeling, she should come to Manhattan and he would help her,” Cazzaniga wrote.
Luna took him up on this a year later; she moved to Manhattan at just 19 years old. McCabe stayed true to his offer, introducing Luna to fashion editors and sending her pictures to several agencies. She was contracted to work with Richard Avedon, photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Elle, and became known, almost immediately, as “the first Black star model.”
“There were virtually no modeling opportunities for non-white faces anywhere,” Cazzaniga wrote. “I’m still amazed at how brave my mother was to leave home for Manhattan at that point in history … As a girl of color at that time, simply believing in her own worth and following her true calling were great revolutionary acts.”
In New York, Luna became an icon of the 1960s: she worked with Andy Warhol, partied with Sammy Davis Jr. and attended dinners with Miles Davis. Despite the glamor of her celebrity, however, Luna became a symbol to the public, her body an object and hardly anything more.
In “Body Design, Variable Realisms: The Case of Female Fashion Mannequins,” Sara K. Schneider wrote that Luna, “perhaps even more than Twiggy, ignited a revolution in poses.” She became known for her “clawlike fingers” and “prowl” and was often purposefully photographed to represent the “exotic other.” She was the model and the mannequin, a symbol of unparalleled beauty and of bodily perfection. She was an ideal.
Luna’s symbology did not end here, however. She became a political object, something which, according to her daughter, was not intentional. “People longed for her to become a symbol of the African-American resistance – a role she struggled with as someone who identified as mixed race,” Cazzaniga wrote. Conversely, advertisers pulled funding from and patrons canceled their subscriptions to the magazines she appeared in. Eventually, Avedon was asked to stop photographing her entirely.
In an attempt to sidestep American backlash, Luna was extremely cryptic about her racial identity. “She encouraged people to see her as racially ambiguous,” Charlotte Collins wrote in an article for W. “She took measures to make herself more marketable, or palatable, to a racist audience of Americans.”
Luna moved to London in December 1965. When asked later about this decision, she said she’d chosen London to escape America’s vitriolic racial politics.
“I wouldn’t have to be bothered with political situations when I woke up in the morning; I could live and be treated as I felt, without having to worry about the police coming along,” Luna said.
In London, Luna reclaimed her identity, returning to her theatrical roots and appearing in films such as “Blow-Up” and “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”
A few months later, she made history on the cover of British Vogue.
It was then that Luna rose to international prominence. 1966 was “the Luna Year” according to Time. She walked for Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino; she was photographed for Playboy. According to her daughter, some of Luna’s most spectacular work has been left unpublished, only cherished by those closest to her.
“Even now,” Cazzaniga wrote, “when I look at those objects, their creativity strikes me, and I can hear her heartbeat reverberating down through the decades.”
Luna died in 1979, but her impact on the fashion industry was not lost. She helped normalize non-white models in print; she opened doors for many other women of color, especially those in the mid-to-late-20th century. In recent years, there have been several efforts to memorialize Luna, a woman “ahead of her time.” In 2020, Zendaya appeared in a Luna-inspired shoot for Essence honoring Black resistance, and Thelma Assis recreated one of her shoots for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Brazil.
In September of 2023, the documentary “Donyale Luna: Supermodel” debuted on HBO. Co-produced by her daughter, the film explores the many intricacies of Luna’s life, addressing themes of both identity and performance.
Luna’s impact on the fashion industry will never be lost; her legacy has survived her. She is now met with open arms, her story accepted and cherished and told by those who knew her best. In her daughter’s words, “I will be hoping that the world is finally ready to celebrate a young African-American girl from Detroit who didn’t let others define her.”
Comments