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 the showrooms of New York’s fine hotels and department stores in the 1960s.
Mozella 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.
When 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 — working in the rug department of Gimbel’s department store. She didn’t like it much.
On 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, “Fashion Show at 1 p.m. Free.” 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.
“Each girl was just absolutely fantastic as she paraded up and down her work area,” Holder said, delight on her face. “They were all dressed beautifully, in different designers’ clothing, and I thought, ‘Oh boy, with those eyelashes, I can do that.’”
