By Golda STEINBERG

August 4, 2009



New York, USA - The Americain pioneer, legendary American supermodel and business woman, Naomi Sims, died this past weekend.

Naomi Sims was born on September 20, 1949, in Oxford, Mississippi. To finance her studies while attending the New York Fashion Institute of Technology, she began modeling in 1967 by posing for illustrators. She first made history when on August 27, 1967 as the first African-American woman to get the cover of the "Fashion of Times", a supplement to The New York Times. Thanks to her own initiative, she “obliged” Eileen Ford to accept her onto the model books at Ford Models.

In 1968, she again made history by breaking through to Middle America as the first black woman to capture the coveted cover of the Ladies Home Journal. She appeared on the cover of Life Magazine and would capture others including McCall's, Essence and Cosmopolitan. Upon retiring from the modeling world, she wrote several books and articles and even launched successful ranges of cosmetics and wigs lines of international acclaim.

“Thanks to her proven personal initiatives as a true pioneer, she succeeded in creating a real place for black women in the modeling industry”, says Marcellous L. Jones, Editor-in-Chief at TheFashionInsider.com Magazine. “Without her, the careers of others such as Beverly Johnson, Bethanne Hardison, Pat Cleveland and Grace Jones could not have been possible!”

Sims died on Saturday, August 1 of cancer. She was 61. Her Times Fashion Magazine cover and images of her in Life Magazine are still on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
For her full biography at TheFashionInsider.com Magazine , please CLICK HERE . ...

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