Learn about 1960s model Mozella, muse to Richard Avedon and Salvador Dali.<\/p>\n
Surrealist Salvador Dali once made a painting directly on her bare back.
\nCelebrity photographer Richard Avedon took a portrait of her that hangs above her fireplace.<\/p>\n
She was among the first black women, possibly the first, to walk the runways and model in the showrooms of New York’s fine hotels and department stores in the 1960s.
\nMozella Roberts Holder, nee Hairston, was born on a farm in Stokes County 80 years ago, delivered by a midwife and Worth Fulp, her great grandfather and a former slave.
\nWhen she was 19, she married an entertainer 30 years her senior, Henry Roberts, and moved to New York. They separated in 1959, and she was left with two small children, so she took the first job she could find \u2014 working in the rug department of Gimbel’s department store. She didn’t like it much.
\nOn a lunch break in 1960, Holder walked over to B. Altman on Fifth Avenue to pick up a blouse that she had placed on lay-away. She noticed a sign that read, \u201cFashion Show at 1 p.m. Free.\u201d She had to see it. On an impulse, she found a pay phone and called in sick, went up the escalator and took a seat on the front row of the show.
\n\u201cEach girl was just absolutely fantastic as she paraded up and down her work area,\u201d Holder said, delight on her face. \u201cThey were all dressed beautifully, in different designers’ clothing, and I thought, ‘Oh boy, with those eyelashes, I can do that.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Learn about 1960s model Mozella, muse to Richard Avedon and Salvador Dali. Surrealist Salvador Dali once made a painting directly on her bare back. Celebrity photographer Richard Avedon took a portrait of her that hangs above her fireplace. She was among the first black women, possibly the first, to walk the runways and model in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[680,500,703,984,508,1989,1993,615,616,575,504,1990,1992,622,1991],"class_list":["post-11224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-america","tag-diversity","tag-history","tag-models-of-color","tag-models-of-colour","tag-mozella","tag-mozella-roberts-holder","tag-new-york","tag-nyc","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-richard-avedon","tag-salvador-dali","tag-usa","tag-vintage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11226,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11224\/revisions\/11226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}