Fashion Flashback: Ophelia DeVore

Fashion Reverie looks back at African American fashion pioneer and businesswoman Ophelia DeVore.

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, former model, booking agent, charm school director, and newspaper publisher opened up the first African American modeling agency, the Grace Del Marco Modeling Agency, and charm school in New York City in the 1940s. Former clients and students included Helen Williams, the first black top model, actors Cicely Tyson, Diahnn Carroll, Bea Richards, Richard Roundtree, musical artist Faith Evans, and television personalities Sue Simmons and Melba Tolliver.

Cicily Tyson, Richard Roundtree and Diahnn Carroll, respectively

Cicely Tyson, Richard Roundtree and Diahnn Carroll, respectively

Emma Ophelia DeVore started her career as a fashion model in the late 1940s after graduating from New York University. With few opportunities for black models, DeVore was inadvertently able to pass for white because of her fair complexion and aquiline features. After a few modeling jobs, DeVore was regularly featured in the newly founded Ebony Magazine. Realizing that American publications, even black publications, of the 1940s were not interested in using brown or dark-skinned models, DeVore founded the Grace del Marco Modeling Agency, and later a charm school.

Helen Williams

One of the modeling agency’s earliest and biggest successes was Helen Williams. Williams was the first African American model to be placed in advertising campaigns for Budweiser, Johnson & Johnson, and Bulova. Williams was also a showroom model in the 1950s for Christian Dior and Jean Desses.

Ophelia DeVore’s other accomplishments included writing a fashion column for the Pittsburgh Courier; hosting the ABC-TV program “Spotlight on Harlem” in the 1950s; serving on President Reagan’s Advisory Committee to the Arts, and publishing The Columbus Times.

“I wanted to change the way people of color were seen across the United States,” stated DeVore in the black-themed news site The Grio last year. “I wanted America to know that beauty isn’t just white.”