Bethann hardison swimsuit cover
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Bethann Hardison on the Surprising Secrets to Aging with Style (Including 'Be a Little Selfish!')
Model, agent, activist, actress, documentary director and fashion revolutionary: Bethann Hardison has packed a lot into her years, and the accolades only continue to add up. (In 2023, she was named one of PEOPLE's Women Changing the World!)
Hardison worked as a runway model in the 1960s before opening her own agency; in recent years, she's returned to her original career, appearing in Italian Vogue, Gucci’s look book and even a Victoria's Secret campaign. ("I hated that picture," she confides.)
She co-directed and starred in the documentary Invisible Beauty, which premiered at Sundance and is now streaming on Hulu. And she is executive advisor for global equity and culture engagement for Gucci.
Though she declines to state her actual age (The Wall Street Journal reported she was 80 when she posed for Victoria's Secret, but “they write things,” she says dismissively), she does enjoy serving as a role model for those who want to enter the second half of life joyfully and with purpose.
“I seem to make a lot of people feel like, 'I wish I could be you when I grow up. ... You have such a great life, or, I love the way you just move
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Bethann Hardison Shares Why ‘Being Alive is the Moment’
Last year, while I was on a retail therapy run, I paused when I saw Bethann Hardison’s face emblazoned on a billboard for Victoria’s Secret. I first interviewed the pioneering model turned agent for another publication in 1997, and as I gazed at the confident image of this uniquely beautiful, brown-skinned sister with a short gray natural and her arms crossed in an embrace – I smiled and thought to myself, “There’s Bethann! She’s still doing her thing.”
As Black women, whether younger or older, we can see ourselves in this image of Hardison – bold yet vulnerable and commanding with dignity to be seen. I loved that in her golden years, she was featured in this inaugural “Undefinable” campaign for an intimate apparel brand that typically exalts youth and Eurocentric beauty. According to a press release, with this inclusive global campaign, Victoria’s Secret celebrates “all women and every unique layer that makes them who they are,” and it also featured curvy country singer Brittney Spencer and Paralympic athlete Femita Ayanbeku.
Hardison, darker and having a more androgynous look than her peers, stood out. The biggest feather in her catwalk cap was being cast in the 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show in France, a•
Bethann Hardison start in on art, coordinate and selfgovernment dressing
On bunch up mission
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On media representation
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