Pat Cleveland

Patricia Cleveland (born June 23, 1950) is an American fashion model who initially attained success in the 1960s and 1970s and was one of the first African-American models within the fashion industry to achieve prominence as a runway model and print model.

Cleveland was born in New York City in 1950 to Johnny Johnston, a jazz saxophonist of Irish and Swedish ancestry, and Lady Bird Cleveland, an artist of African-American, Native-American and Irish-Scottish ancestry.

Her parents separated when she was young and she was raised by her mother in Harlem.

She studied performing arts at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and studied design at New York's High School of Art and Design and hoped to become a fashion designer.

Some of her earliest photographs as a youngster were taken by Carl Van Vechten, who was among her mother's coterie of artist friends.

Cleveland noted in her book Walking with the Muses: A Memoir that her first photographs were taken when she was fourteen by Van Vechten's friend Adelaide Passen, one of the first women employed as a press photographer in the United States.

Cleveland's career as a model began in 1966 when she was on a subway platform with a friend en route to class and was noticed by the assistant to Carrie Donovan, fashion editor at Vogue.

Donovan, impressed by Cleveland's fashionable clothing, invited her to tour the Vogue offices and the magazine subsequently published a feature on her as an up-and-coming young designer.

The article led to her being approached by Ebony which asked Cleveland if she would perform as model for its Fashion Fair national runway tour.

Cleveland agreed and decided she would place her aspirations to be a designer on hold and try her luck as a fashion model.

Following her tour with Ebony, in which she experienced acts of violent racism in the Southern United States, Cleveland caught the attention of designers such as Jacques Tiffeau and Stephen Burrows.

At age 18, she was signed to Wilhelmina Models after designer Oleg Cassini initially recommended her to Eileen Ford.

Cleveland has stated that Ford had rejected her based on her race.

Soon she was meeting and working with many of the fashion industry's top enterprising people of the era, including Diana Vreeland and being photographed by Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, Richard Avedon, Christopher Makos, and Andy Warhol and briefly became a muse to Salvador Dalí.

She made her first appearance as a fashion model in American Vogue in June 1970, photographed by Berry Berenson and the same year, appeared in the very first issue of Essence magazine.

Despite her early success, Cleveland grew disillusioned with America and what she perceived to be its racist attitudes towards black models.

During the 1970s, she modeled for designers such as Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Diane von Furstenberg and Christian Dior.

With Karen Bjornson, Anjelica Huston, Alva Chinn, Elsa Peretti, and Pat Ast, among others, she became one of Halston's favoured troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes.

From the early to late 1970s, she appeared on the covers of: Vanity Fair, Interview, Essence, Harper's, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Wear Daily, L'Officiel, The Sunday Times Magazine, GQ, Vogue Paris, W, and Elle.

During the mid to late 1970s, she became a fixture at New York City's exclusive discothèque Studio 54, often in the company of friends Halston, Jerry Hall, Grace Jones, Andy Warhol and Sterling St. Jacques.

After raising two children, Cleveland sporadically returned to modeling.

She relocated to Paris by suggestion of fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez in 1971 and soon became a house model for Karl Lagerfeld, who was the main designer at Chloé.

Cleveland vowed not to return to the United States until a black model appeared on the American cover of Vogue.

The pinnacle of her success in Europe was her participation in the November 28, 1973 Battle of Versailles Fashion Show; a gala event initially conceived as a publicity stunt and fundraiser held at Théâtre Gabriel for the then-dilapidated Palace of Versailles.

The gala, which pitted five French designers: Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro and Christian Dior's Marc Bohan, against five American designers: Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Anne Klein, Halston and Stephen Burrows in a fashion showdown.

The event became an international fashion extravaganza with style writers and society columnists, wealthy socialites, royalty, tycoons and politicians in attendance.

Cleveland was one of 36 models to walk the runway for the event.

Of the 36 models, ten were black, an unprecedented number for the era.

After Beverly Johnson became the first black model to appear on the cover of American Vogue in August 1974, Cleveland returned to the United States and continued her modeling career.

In 1995, she started her own modeling agency in Milan.

In 2003, Cleveland and her daughter Anna walked for Chanel at Paris Fashion Week.

In 2010, she appeared in the documentary Ultrasuede, In Search of Halston and the same year appeared as a guest judge on the reality television series and interactive competition America's Next Top Model.

In 2012, she appeared in two more fashion documentaries, Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' About Face: Supermodels Then and Now.

In 2013, she made an appearance on The Face, a modeling-themed reality television show hosted by model Naomi Campbell and in 2013 appeared in an ad campaign for MAC Cosmetics with models Jerry Hall and Marisa Berenson that was launched in dedication of fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, who died of AIDS in 1987 and who had been close friends with all three models and instrumental in their early careers.

In 2014, she walked the runway for Moschino's Spring Collection in Milan and appeared on the cover of Numéro Russia, shot and styled by Tom Ford.

The gala later was chronicled in the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History by Robin Givhan.

In 2015, she returned to New York Fashion Week to walk the runway for Zac Posen, who also hired her and her daughter Anna to showcase his June 2015 resort collection, appeared in Vogue Japan and appeared in an ad campaign for Barneys New York.

Both Cleveland and her daughter Anna were chosen for a 2015 ad campaign for French multinational high fashion house Lanvin.

In 2016, she walked the runway for H&M during Paris Fashion Week and appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia with her family.

In 2019, she was one of many of his former models to be interviewed for the documentary film Halston.