Book Description

In her revelatory and redemptive memoir, Beverly Johnson, the first African American supermodel to grace the cover of Vogue, recounts her career in her own passionate and deeply honest voice. She chronicles her childhood as a studious, and sometimes bullied, bookworm during the sixties. She left college to pursue modeling and a successful three-decade career followed. Amid glamorous tales of the hard partying of the 1970s and Hollywood during the eighties, she details her many encounters and friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Halston, Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Jack Nicholson, Keith Richards, and Warren Beatty. But she also reveals the demons she wrestled with--her struggles with racism, drug addiction, and an abusive marriage followed by divorce proceedings which tested her fortitude and sanity. She shares for the first time intimate details surrounding her love affair with the late tennis icon Arthur Ashe, and pays homage to her mentor, the late Naomi Sims, while lifting the veil off the complicated and often tense relationships among models. Familiar names from the catwalk, such as Pat Cleveland and Iman, illustrate how each had to fight not just the system, but each other, in order to survive. More than five hundred magazine covers later, Johnson is now a successful businesswoman, actress, women's advocate, and philanthropist. This no-holds-barred look at the lives of the rich, fabulous, and famous is also a story of failure and success in the upper echelons of the fashion world, and how Beverly Johnson emerged from her struggles smarter, happier, and stronger than ever.--Adapted from book jacket.