An exciting account of the international adventures of fashion model Pat Clevelandâone of the first black supermodels during the wild sixties and seventies.
âTaking her reader through fifty years of fashion from the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement, the disco era's decadence, and the grandeur of Hollywoodâs late 70s renaissance, Cleveland provides a glimpse at some of designâs most important momentsâand her own personal history.â âVogue
âPat Cleveland is to fashion what Billie Holiday is to the blues; a muse for all ages.â âEssence
Chronicling of the glamorous life and adventures of Pat Clevelandâone of the first black supermodelsâthis compelling memoir evokes the bohemian lifestyle and creative zeitgeist of 1970s New York City and features some of todayâs most prominent names in fashion, art, and entertainment as they were just gaining their creative footage.
New York in the sixties and seventies was glamorous and gritty at the same time, a place where people like Warhol, Avedon, and Halston as well as their muses came to pursue their wildest ambitions, and when the well began to run dry they darted off to Paris. Though born on the very fringes of this world, Patricia Cleveland, through a combination of luck, incandescent beauty, and enviable style, soon found herself in the center of all that was creative, bohemian, and elegant. A âwalking girl,â a runway fashion model whose inimitable style still turns heads on the runways of New York, Paris, Milan, and Tokyo, Cleveland was in high demand.
Ranging from the streets of New York to the jet-set beaches of Mexico, from the designer drawing rooms of Paris to the offices of Vogue, here is Clevelandâs larger-than-life story. One minute sheâs in a Harlem tenement making her own clothes and dreaming of something bigger, the next sheâs about to walk Halstonâs show alongside fellow model Anjelica Huston. One minute sheâs partying with Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson, the next sheâs sharing the dance floor next to a man with stark white hair, an artist the world would later know as Warhol. In New York, she struggles to secure her first cover of a major magazine. In Paris, sheâs the toast of the town. And through the whirlwind of it all, she is forever in pursuit of love, truth, and beauty in this âriveting, celeb-drenched account of her astonishing life in fashionâ (Simon Doonan, author of The Asylum).