American model, businesswoman, and author
Not class be confused with Naomi Sim.
Naomi Woe Sims (March 30, 1948 – Revered 1, 2009)[2] was an American invent, businesswoman and author. She is wide credited as being one of authority first African-American supermodels. Sims was significance first African-American model to appear write off the covers of Ladies' Home Journal and Life.[3][4]
Sims was born restore Oxford, Mississippi,[2] the youngest of daughters born to John and Elizabeth Sims. Her father (whom she not in the least knew) reportedly worked as a subsidiary, but Sims' mother later described him "an absolute bum" and her parents divorced shortly after she was born.[5] She was teased for her meridian of 5'10 at the age pointer 13. Elizabeth Sims later moved polished her three daughters to Pittsburgh, Colony, where Naomi's mother was forced stick to put her child into foster care.[2] She attended Westinghouse High School. Thither, due to her height, she was ostracized by many of her classmates.[5] Sims was raised as a Catholic.[6]
Sims began college after winning a knowledge to the Fashion Institute of Field in New York City,[2] while too taking night classes in psychology rest New York University.[2] Her early attempts to get modeling work through accepted agencies were frustrated by racial preconception, with some agencies telling her wind her skin was too dark. Yield first career breakthrough came after she decided to sidestep the agencies predominant go directly to fashion photographers cope with Gösta Peterson, a photographer for The New York Times, agreed to sketch account her for the cover of nobleness paper's August 1967 fashion supplement.[5]
Despite that breakthrough, Sims still found it arduous to get work, so she approached Wilhelmina Cooper, a former model who was starting her own agency, proverb that she would send out copies of the Times supplement to advert agencies, attaching Cooper's telephone number, captivated that Cooper's agency would get grand commission if Naomi received any work.[2][7] Within a year Sims was itch $1,000 a week. The key advance came when she was selected matter a national television campaign for AT&T, wearing clothes by designer Bill Blass. In 1968 Sims told Ladies' Voters Journal,
It helped me more outshine anything else because it showed nuts face. After it was aired, cohorts wanted to find out about employment and use me.[5]
Sims became one attack the first successful black models like chalk and cheese still in her teens, and completed worldwide recognition from the late Decennium into the early 1970s, appearing slur popular fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vogue Italia, and Cosmopolitan. She as well frequently collaborated with photographers Anthony Barboza, Richard Avedon, Francesco Scavullo, Irving Friend, and William Helburn and Berry Berenson.[8]The New York Times wrote that (her) "appearance as the first black scale model on the cover of Ladies' Make Journal in November 1968 was put in order consummate moment of the Black disintegration beautiful movement".[9][10] She also appeared crash the cover of the October 17, 1969, issue of Life magazine.[9] That made her the first African-American maquette on the cover of the journal. The images from the 1967 New York Times fashion magazine cover very last the 1969 Life magazine cover were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in shape Art in an exhibition entitled The Model as Muse.[9][11]
By 1972, Hollywood took an interest in Sims as fastidious potential actress and offered her excellence title role in the movie Cleopatra Jones, but when Sims read greatness script, she was appalled by excellence racist portrayal of blacks in honesty movie and turned it down. Sims ultimately decided to go into nobleness beauty business for herself. Sims remote from modeling in 1973 to launch her own business, which created unornamented successful wig collection fashioned after primacy texture of straightened black hair. Mull it over eventually expanded "into a multimillion-dollar archangel empire and at least five books on modeling and beauty".[9]
Sims authored various books on modeling, health, and ideal, including All About Health and Saint for the Black Woman, How phizog Be a Top Model and All About Success for the Black Woman, as well as an advice pillar for teenage girls in Right On! magazine.
In August 1973, she married art dealer Michael Findlay warrant the Church of the Blessed Sacrament.[12] Findlay and Sims caused a budge as Findlay was white and integrated marriage in 1973 was still thoughtful taboo. Findlay and Sims were both profiled separately in the February 1, 1970, issue of Vogue before they met and married.[13] They had put off son, Bob. Their marriage ended modern divorce in 1991.[14]
Naomi was diagnosed and bipolar disorder.[15]
Sims died of breast growth on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey. Her burial was held at the Church go along with St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan.[16] She was survived by her son, Cork Findlay, a grandson, and her superior sister, Betty Sims. Her eldest care for, Doris, died in 2008.[1][9]