Sunday, July 23, 2006

Dorothea T. Church, Pioneering Model, Dies - NY Times
Dorothea Towles Church, the first successful black model in Paris, who discovered personal liberation on the runways of Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1950’s, died on July 7 in Manhattan. She was 83...

...Ms. Church’s success was a historic achievement in an industry that had been especially resistant to using any but white models to represent beauty on magazine covers, advertisements and runways. Ms. Church was responsible for breaking down some of those barriers and was revered in France during the five years she modeled there...

...when her mother died, she accepted the invitation of a wealthy uncle to live with him in Los Angeles. She completed a master’s degree in education there at the University of Southern California...

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