The model as a muse feels in modern times symbiotic to the design process but wasn’t naturally the case throughout fashion history. The general model policy was usually “be seen and not heard” until the mid-century 60s boom that provided many of the historical figures we now know as essential to the industry. Designer, writer, and cultural critic José Criales-Unzueta has gone in-depth on model and designer history numerous times via his Instagram account @eljosecriales and bi-weekly podcast on fashion and culture called Biased with José Criales-Unzueta. Born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, and currently based in Brooklyn, NY, José serves as a rising authority on fashion’s documented past, present, and future while working as both a ready-to-wear and handbag designer. Oh, he’s even in the Gossip Girl cinematic universe. Here for International Women’s Day, he gives his curatorial perspective on five of fashion’s muses and how they evolved from background characters to the stars of the show.
by José Criales-Unzueta
Introduction | Managing Editor – Irene Ojo-Felix
It was the father of haute couture, Charles Frederick Worth who first hired Marie Vernet in the 1850s to appear at Parisian social gatherings dressed in his collections. Having served as both model and muse to Worth for the fashions of the many women he dressed, including Empress Eugénie and the ladies of the court of Napoleon III, Vernet (who later married Worth) is considered to be one of the first professional fashion models. Since then, the idea of the muse has evolved and transformed into what it is now.
Early on models, especially in France, were seen as quiet, utilitarian figures – true mannequins. Paul Poiret, in fact, was once quoted telling a reviewer at a live-model presentation to “not speak to the girls, they are not there.” Models have since become personalities, vessels to not only carry fashion but embody a designer’s fantasy. They are now figures working in their own right as tastemakers in the industry, as integral to fashion as the fashion itself.
Muses serve as more than faces of brands, they also symbolize the ideal of beauty of their time. Think of women like Twiggy in the ‘60s, Gia Carangi in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, or practically any Supermodel in the 90s–especially the big six (Kate, Naomi, Linda, Cindy, Claudia, and Christy)–; these women embodied the zeitgeist and were as telling of the beauty principles of their time as the fashion they wore.
Pat Cleveland
Harlem-born Cleveland’s model career started in 1966 when the assistant to Carrie Donovan –then fashion editor at Vogue– noticed her on a subway platform and invited her to tour the Vogue offices. She had hoped to become a fashion designer, and Vogue published a feature on her as an up-and-coming designer. This led to Ebony inviting her to work as a model for Ebony Fashion Fair tour, which she accepted, and the rest is history.
Soon enough Pat was working with the greatest, including Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, and Andy Warhol. Over the years, though, she grew disillusioned with America’s treatment of people of color and despite her success, couldn’t get on the cover of Vogue. “The photographers were all very upset because they’d shoot covers of me and sometimes the editors said: ‘Wow! This is the cover!’ Then they’d replace me with a caucasian girl. I just got fed up,” she told The Guardian in 2020. She left for Paris in 1971 –at the suggestion of illustrator Antonio Lopez– and made a vow to not return to the U.S. until there was a Black model on the cover of American Vogue.
In Paris, she modeled for Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, and Christian Dior, but more defining was her relationship with Karl Lagerfeld. She met Karl and became a muse and house model at Chloé, a relationship that lasted several years while she lived in Paris and long after that. The most iconic moment of her career, though, is arguably the 1973 Battle of Versailles, where five French designers (Marc Bohan, Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, and Emanuel Ungaro) faced off against five American designers (Halston, Anne Klein, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, and Stephen Burrows) in a fashion showdown. Pat was one of 36 models who were cast for the show and also one of 10 Black models, which was unprecedented for the time. In 1974 when Beverly Johnson became the first Black model to cover American Vogue, Pat returned to the U.S. As one of the legendary Halstonettes and a fixture at Studio 54, she embodied the glamour of the 70s like few others.
Pat Ast
Speaking of the Halstonettes, coined by the late André Leon Talley to describe Halston’s entourage of models, there are few more legendary than Pat Ast. Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Pat was a fixture in the Fire Island party scene. This is where she first met Halston, who noticed her and was so enchanted by her persona that he hired her to work at his boutique. She did more than sell to his clients, though, as she became a friend and muse to him, always walking his runways in one of his perfectly draped caftans, with a fan in hand. Such was the love Halston had for this muse that he gave her the grand finale at his Coty Awards show in 1972 when he wheeled a massive cake out of which Pat popped.
Pat’s existence on the runways at the time was a one-off occurrence. She didn’t look like any of the other models at the time, including her fellow Halstonettes, as she was five-foot-eight and weighed over 200 pounds. She was also an actress, appearing in films like Andy Warhol’s Heat(1972) and Joel Schumacher’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman(1981). Pat was synonymous with the energy and persona that made Halston the icon he is today.
Farida Khelfa
Farida is inarguably one of the ultimate Azzedine Alaïa’s muses and the first Arab model to walk for some of fashion’s biggest names. She was born in Lyon to Algerian immigrant parents and left home for Paris at the age of 15 to try her luck. She worked at Les Bains Douches, the iconic Parisian nightclub, as a doorwoman and nightlife is where she met some of her closest friends to date, including Christian Louboutin when she arrived in Paris and photographer Jean-Paul Goude during a night out in Paris in 1982. Goude was the first photographer to work with her as a model, she was his muse and partner of several years. He brought her into the fashion world and eventually introduced her to Alaïa. She became Alaïa’s muse, confidant, and close friend, and even became his studio director between 1966 and 2003 after many years of walking his runways.
Khelfa also served as muse to her now close friend Jean Paul Gaultier. She was one of the industry-wide muses to what she describes as the African Decade in the ‘80s, when a new generation of models coming from North and Subsaharan Africa came to Paris and inspired many designers and artists including Gaultier, Goude, Yves Saint Laurent, and Thierry Mugler.
Sara Stockbridge
Few models have epitomized an era for a designer better than Sara Stockbridge for Vivienne Westwood. With her blonde, Marylin Monroe-esque pin-up looks, she embodied Westwood’s arguably most iconic and recognizable time period as the face of her brand and work from 1985 until 1991. Such is the attachment of her image to the brand that many still equate her to Vivienne Westwood. She became the image of the irreverence and playfulness of her earlier collections, energy that still carries through today.
Her first show for Westwood was the legendary SS85 Mini Crini, and she went on to be a fixture of her runway shows, embodying the outrageousness of Westwood’s work with a playful innocence that to this day is associated with the brand. She also fronted Westwood’s Choice, a musical project conducted by the designer.
Connie Fleming
An icon of New York City nightlife, Connie Fleming was a fixture of the fashion scene of the late 80s and 90s. She worked in nightlife in the 80s as a performer and doorwoman, and eventually, decided to transition to modeling and started working at Patricia Field’s store while modeling occasionally for Steven Meisel.
She went on to become one of the late Thierry Mugler’s muses, who she met at Susanne Bartsch’s first Love Ball in 1989. About this first encounter, she told Interview: “I don’t remember what I said to him that first time. I had on the highest heels, the tiniest waist, and the tightest ponytail. And he was like, ‘Oh, that’s what they are talking about.’ He invited me to Paris next year. That was my first show with him.” Connie walked several shows for Mugler, most notably in a glitzy red cowgirl look for his SS92 collection. She went on to walk for Vivienne Westwood and appeared in George Michael’s Too Funky video. As a Black trans woman, she became one of the faces of an era of fashion that saw queer and drag become central to the industry.
Her journey in the industry wasn’t easy, though. In Paris once a reporter asked Westwood if she “had a man in her show” and was asked transphobic questions by reporters, which she would avoid answering. Eventually, her agent told her that people didn’t want to work with her because she was deemed “difficult” for not engaging with these questions. “It was that feeling of ‘Leave and get out,’ because you weren’t wanted anymore,” Fleming told The Standard.
