Naomi Sims died. She was a huge glamorous model. Andre Leon Talley spoke at her funeral and then again at Sugar Baby…and here he recalls their first meeting and her legacy.

We met at Joe Eula’s house, then at Halston’s house. That is how I met her, in 1974, and then 1975.

My best memory of Naomi is the Life Magazine cover and the AT& T telephone commercial that she did in the sixties when black models were not gracing mainstream American covers of a weekly family magazine, much less a commercial on television of a major brand like AT&T

The legacy of Naomi Sims is that she left to women of color, of all diversity of color the inspiration to believe in themselves to empower the world with a sense of worth, class, and dignity, through her own example, and through giving back by her self-help books (five of them!) as well as creating a beauty empire of wigs, fragrance, beauty salons. Her legacy as the first true black Supermodel is only part of her history. That is important but there is so much more that she gave to the world. She broke the barriers down for women of color to be in high fashion, as a great model and she went on to empower women and young women with her own brand of Naomi Sims.

KEYWORDS: Andre Leon Talley Naomi Sims