TEXARKANA - A recent Women's Wear Daily article told a story that many Texarkanians may not know in connection to our own Carol Collins-Miles and her years as a fashion model for French designer Hubert de Givenchy.
As part of Givenchy's Parisian fashion house in the late 1970s, Collins-Miles was one of several Black models from the U.S. who ventured overseas to become part of his "cabine" and help usher in more diversity in fashion.
WWD recalled this time and Givenchy's pioneering commitment to Black models in the recent article, including a photo of Collins-Miles standing - statuesque with prominent shoulders - beside Givenchy and other models, all part of this groundbreaking moment in time.
It all sparks for her the opportunity to reminisce about those days when she was, as a young Black woman, at the center of the worldwide fashion industry.
"It was just a wonderful time, it was a groundbreaking time even more than what we realized," Collins-Miles recalled. "Before he put together the 'cabine,' there were very few Black models. When I was modeling in America, I would be one or two Black models in a show, even in Europe and Paris."
Collins-Miles started in modeling in 1974 and '75, in Houston, working with the likes of department store owner Bob Sakowitz and also Elsa Rosborough, whom Collins-Miles called the "grand-dame of fashion in Houston" and a "great beauty." She considered Elsa a mentor.
"Modeling agent Jeri Halpin signed me and I found myself often working between Houston and with the Kim Dawson Agency and Neiman Marcus in Dallas," Collins-Miles remembers of her early days.
But after she and her husband moved to Los Angeles, she had a second offer to work with Givenchy, she said. She couldn't refuse this time, having declined the first to remain with her husband.
She remembers arriving in Paris on April 1, 1978, and immediately working with designers like Chantal Thomass and Thierry Mugler.
"That group of young upstarters," Collins-Miles said.
Soon, she says, she signed a contract to be a house model working on the second floor of Givenchy's multi-level design house, Maison de Givenchy, in the chic 8th arrondissement of Paris. In that house, they did couture and ready-to-wear, but Givenchy would have clothes ready-made to the client's measurements after seeing the models wear them.
"Incredible handmade clothes. They could walk on their own, they were so well-constructed. It was amazing," Collins-Miles said, recalling other revolutionary designers like Jean Paul Gaultier and Claude Montana. She remembers that big shoulders like hers became hip.
"They were the new guard, and they still are the great ready-to-wear designers," Collins-Miles said. "They were just starting then."
Collins-Miles recalls being paid to go there for a couple weeks. "But I stayed for 16 years," she said. Givenchy was a gentleman, she said, and made her feel like a princess. She learned from him.
"It really changed my life in that way. I could embrace this love of peace and harmony that I always felt inside of me, sort of like a destiny to spread this around the world," Collins-Miles said of the inspiration Givenchy gave her. And, she says, his commitment to Black models empowered them.
"This put him on the level, on the lips of all the fashion world," Collins-Miles said about Givenchy having five Black models. "The designs became very avant-garde, very alluring."
From there, she said, everyone wanted to work with Black models. "Everyone around the world wanted to add Black models to the show. In a big way. There were Black models everywhere. There were plane-loads of Black models coming to Europe because of this," she said.
One impact, she said, was ushering in the era of the supermodel as a show headliner. "That is the person who goes out first and opens the show, who gives the stamp of the collection, who gives a statement, who sets the tone of the show," Collins-Miles said.
At one point earlier in the '70s, there was a desire from some designers to elevate an American Black model, said Collins-Miles. But that desire got blowback from racist clients who didn't want to wear clothes Black people wore, or clothes that had been seen on a Black model first, she explained.
But Givenchy, she said, sought to change this and create a more diverse fashion house.
Looking back, Collins-Miles recognizes how momentous it was to have five Black models with Givenchy in 1978. "We changed the industry in a lot of ways," Collins-Miles said.