{"id":34933,"date":"2016-12-22T23:55:37","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T04:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=34933"},"modified":"2019-12-20T14:49:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T19:49:52","slug":"rip-china-machado-and-franca-sozzani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/rip-china-machado-and-franca-sozzani\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP, China Machado and Franca Sozzani"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year has robbed us of David Bowie<\/a>, Prince<\/a>, Muhammad Ali<\/a>, our faith in our democracy<\/a> — the list of obituaries goes on and on.<\/p>\n

In the fashion world, Bill Cunningham<\/a>, the original street-style photographer, was a huge loss. But if there’s a fashion heaven, Bill is no doubt giving a warm welcome to two other icons from the industry. Groundbreaking model China Machado died on Sunday <\/a>at age 86(-ish<\/a>) of cardiac arrest. The daughter of a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother<\/a>, Machado became the first model of color to appear in Harper’s Bazaar in 1959, photographed by the great Richard Avedon<\/a> after he spotted her in a fashion show<\/a>. She was in her late 20s at the time — that’s retirement age for many models these days. In contrast, Machado continued defying prejudices and didn’t retire at all. Well, she said<\/em><\/a> she retired but she still had representation and still booked jobs. At 81, she struck a fierce pose in a one-sleeved look for the cover of New York Magazine.<\/p>\n

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Click for source.<\/p><\/div>\n

Two years later, she was doing a Cole Haan ad<\/a>. There was also a spread in W<\/em> and a Barneys ad. Modeling wasn’t all Machado did professionally though. First, Avedon convinced her to become Bazaar’s senior fashion editor.\u00a0 After eight years of that, New York Magazine said<\/a>, Avedon moved to Vogue, while his muse\/colleague\/friend “went on to produce fashion TV shows, design costumes for films, and crisis-manage as fashion director of Lear\u2019s, a magazine for women over 35 founded by Norman Lear\u2019s manic-depressive ex-wife, Frances, that lasted a miraculous six years before Lear ran it into the ground. Machado would frequently rejoin Avedon to produce and style ads for Revlon, like his ‘Unforgettable Women’ campaign, featuring her successors Beverly Johnson and Iman.” After that, she had a store and gallery, and invested in real estate. And that leaves out her tumultuous childhood experiences and a wild personal life that included an elopement with a famous bullfighter.\u00a0 Machado gave great interviews, so it’s best to read those stories in her own words:<\/p>\n