From the beginning, modeling was always meant to be a business proposition, not a flight of fancy or a personal indulgence. And so, fashion was a remarkable, lucrative ride for the woman who came to be known simply as Iman: the model whose swan’s neck made a world-weary editor swoon, the Black woman who dominated a runway with a walk that was more grace than va-va-voom, the refugee who arrived in New York from 7,000 miles away — an African woman wrapped in the sexist, racist and absurdist cliches that this country still attaches to the multitudes from the continent, the Middle East or our southern border.
“I was a refugee. I had family to take care of,” Iman recalls. “Get me the damn advertising. And that’s what I got. At my height, I was one of the top models with the most advertising campaigns. That’s what I wanted. That’s where my head was. I didn’t care if I had Vogue.” But, of course, she had Vogue covers, too. Virtually every international iteration. “It allowed me to not only take care of myself, but to take care of my parents, take care of my brothers, make sure they got a good education.”
Iman Abdulmajid hadn’t been a young girl who dreamed about high heels, fanciful clothes and cover shoots for glossy magazines, but rather one who envisioned a life in politics or international relations, which would have had her following in the footsteps of her father, who recently died and who was a diplomat. Instead, world events intervened, a roving photographer took her picture and made up a silly (but troublesome) story, and in 1975 the doors of the fashion industry swung wide to welcome a Black woman who decision-makers deemed enticingly exotic even as those same doors cracked open only grudgingly for Black girls from down the block or around the corner.
For years, Iman, 67, encapsulated the gnarly complexity of identity, diversity and representation. The fashion industry — and the wider culture — continues to sort through these issues with only modest success. Sometimes, it has seemed as though the forward trajectory of the past has stalled or simply been forgotten and we find ourselves celebrating the same victory over and over again.
In 1994, Iman launched a cosmetics brand with a color palette that catered to customers with skin tones in the many shades of almond, coffee and chocolate that the big firms ignored. In 2007, she took her style aesthetic, one influenced by her global travels, to shopping television and online. She involved herself in philanthropy in her birthplace of Somalia, as well as in the United States. And for the past decade, she has championed diversity in a fashion industry that had become more homogenous since her heyday in the 1980s. She did these things before Rihanna launched her Fenty line of cosmetics, before Kim Kardashian and her siblings built an aesthetic empire rooted in Black culture and before a host of celebrities and corporations began posting black squares on social media. Iman wasn’t necessarily the first in all the arenas in which she played, but she was foundational.
Her history is part of the larger story of Black models which is the subject of “Supreme Models,” a six-part documentary series on YouTube based on Marcellas Reynolds’s 2019 book. Premiering Monday, the documentary puts the history of Black models — Karen Alexander, Veronica Webb, Joan Smalls, among many — on the record. They are as influential as the writers, musicians or actors who shape our understanding of who we are, but their impact is often overlooked.
“Fashion is important,” Reynolds says simply.
“Iman was the great ambassador for Africa, especially back then when we didn’t really see African people except in a National Geographic way,” he says. “And here was Iman, with her beautiful, accented English and speaking five languages. She opened the door for every African model who followed.”
Iman helped the culture shift its attitudes about beauty. She nudged it along. She signed on to “Supreme Models” as an executive producer to help ensure that people remember that Black beauty is political, powerful and ever-present.
“My image is my currency,” Iman says. “I have to protect that.”
As a working model, she defended her image from unflattering photography, the assault of age, and a fashion industry dominated by a Eurocentric point-of-view that often didn’t know how to fully celebrate her skin, her hair, her Africanness. “When that young girl is going to pick up that magazine, she’s going to see me. And I cannot be seen like however they want to see me, however they want to highlight me. I’ve got to get a hold of this, of my brown skin, of who I am. My dignity. My grace. That has to be shown so that young girls can see it.”
“That’s where representation matters,” she says.
Now, she’s defending her image, and that of other Black models, from forgetfulness, from the fog of history.
Iman arrives at The Mark hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for a late-afternoon meeting. She walks toward a booth in a softly lit corner of the restaurant, dressed in black trousers from the Frankie Shop, a green blouse from her Iman Global Chic collection and a Sergio Hudson blazer. When first asked about her attire, she seems surprised by the question, but quickly reels off the credits. But she wanted to be sure. So two days later, unsolicited, she emails confirmations. She is supportive of young Black designers such as Hudson. But she also has her limits.
“LaQuan (Smith) says, ‘I have to dress you.’ I said, ‘You know, I’m 67.’ So he said, ‘But you can show a little bit of skin.’ I said, ‘I can, but I should not.’ Dear God!”
