Black Beauty Model Agency

The remarkable true story of the agency that helped change the face of fashion.

When a chance discovery in her late father’s archive leads her to a faded magazine photograph, Desta Haile embarks on a journey to uncover the forgotten history of the Black Beauty Model Agency, a groundbreaking New York agency that championed Black models at a time when the fashion industry rarely made space for them.

Founded in the late 1960s, Black Beauty helped create new opportunities for Black models while launching a generation of creatives whose influence extended far beyond fashion. Through interviews, archives and personal memories, Haile traces the agency’s remarkable network of models, artists, musicians and cultural pioneers, revealing a story that reaches across fashion, music, film and popular culture.

Blending memoir, cultural history and biography, The Black Beauty Model Agency uncovers a vital but overlooked chapter in Black cultural history, celebrating the people who helped redefine beauty, representation and possibility for generations to come.

Desta Haile is a writer, researcher and cultural storyteller. Inspired by the discovery of her late father’s connection to the pioneering Black Beauty Model Agency, she spent more than a decade researching its history and tracing its influence on fashion, media and popular culture. The Black Beauty Model Agency is her first book.