Sims was suddenly in high demand, modeling for top designers like Halston, Teal Traina, Fernando Sánchez and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, and standing at the vanguard of a fashion movement for black models that would give rise to runway stars of the 1970s, including Pat Cleveland, Alva Chinn and Beverly Johnson. “After it was aired, people wanted to find out about me and use me.” Sims told Ladies’ Home Journal the following year, when she appeared on its cover, the first time a black model was featured so prominently in a mainstream women’s publication. “It helped me more than anything else because it showed my face,” Ms. Sims was earning $1,000 a week and had been hired for a national television campaign for AT&T, which showed her and two other models - one white and one Asian - wearing fashions by Bill Blass. (Photo by Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Yale Joel / Time & Life Pictures The cover of Life magazine features a portrait of African American fashion model Naomi Sims as she poses, topless, with a elaborate hairstyle that winds around her neck, accompanined by the headline Black Models Take Center Stage, October 17, 1969. Cooper could have a commission if anyone called back. Sims, showing a dash of enterprise that would later define her career, told Wilhelmina Cooper, a former model who was starting her own agency, that she would send out copies of the magazine to advertising agencies with Ms. The agencies were still not interested, so Ms. Gosta Peterson, a photographer for The Times, agreed to photograph her for the cover of its August 1967 fashion supplement, then called Fashions of The Times. Sims decided to approach photographers herself. But every agency she approached turned her down, some telling her that her skin was too dark. Sims, with her heart-shaped face and long limbs, was encouraged by classmates and counselors to give it a try.
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