Nevertheless, DeVore’s daughter Carol, now 83 and living in Georgia, fondly remembers commenting alongside her mother at that 1970 show. “That was her idea to bring some excitement to fashion—and to lunchtime. It was a lot of fun,” she says. “The fashions we had were very unique. So this was something people wouldn’t see ordinarily, even fashion-wise, and not just because the fashions were on Black models.”
A review of flyers, handwritten logistics, and family photographs from the weeklong shows in 1969 and 1970 included Butterick, Gay Gibson, Pandora Frocks, an international show in partnership with TWA, menswear by Oleg Cassini (a designer favored by Jacqueline Kennedy) and Federico Pio, wigs by Jacqueline Lee, and more, including one day set aside exclusively for Black designers. An exuberant soundtrack came by way of a Chicano garage band from California called The Premiers, as well as radio hits including The Jones Girls’ new single “My Own Special Way.”
Beneath their relaxed vibe, the shows were painstakingly planned; for example, City Hall permits scheduled rain dates for the open-air event, which was capped at 500 attendants.
Fashion Week didn’t simply arrive at Bryant Park one day. DeVore brought it there.
Carol sighs happily: “My mother didn’t just promote things to sell. She saw value in people. She called Black people ‘Black diamonds’ and said it was her job to polish those Black diamonds.”
As early as 1949, DeVore herself elevated the staid practicality of showroom exhibits by modeling a gray Persian lamb fur coat by John T. Vidal (America’s premier Black furrier at the time) as part of a “fashion cruise and dance.” By 1955, she was host of ABC’s Spotlight on Harlem, New York’s first TV show produced by and for Black Americans. Being multiracial herself, DeVore also launched a pioneering cosmetics line tailored to non-white skin. In 1959, one of her models, Cecelia Cooper, became the first American and first Black woman to win the Miss Festival beauty contest at the Cannes Film Festival (another one of her models scored the title the following year). The victories made Del Marco the first choice for Christian Dior’s push into international sales; from Del Marco’s roster, Dior chose Helen Williams.
Amid all this momentum, DeVore’s life came literally crashing to a halt in 1952. A car accident in a Detroit snowstorm. Friends pulled her broken body from the flaming wreckage before her new Buick Special exploded. She awoke from a coma two weeks later in a body cast from the neck down. Her legs were crushed and shoulders broken with one arm dislocated. Even her teeth were shattered. “The only thing holding me together was the brand-new girdle I had worn,” she told her family. She spent nine months bedridden, including five in hospitalized traction. Her doctor swore off ever again taking a case as difficult as hers.
“She had one good hand and she used it to sign contracts from her hospital room,” says Alina Mitchell, author of The Color of Beauty. “She was so determined. It’s so inspiring to me. Imagine being stuck in a hospital for months and using that time to think up ways to improve the fashion industry.”
