Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos by Bruce Weber / Magnolia Pictures / Luigi Cazzaniga / HBO
Documentaries about the modeling industry are apparently en vogue.
Not only will Apple TV+ debut The Super Models—a docuseries about the A-list posse that dominated ’80s and ’90s runaways, including Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford—next week, but there are two other new docs that celebrate pioneering, largely unsung titans in the fashion world.
On Wednesday, HBO dropped Donyale Luna: Supermodel, about the inscrutable figure who became the first Black woman to cover British Vogue in 1966. And on Friday, Magnolia Pictures released Invisible Beauty, a film exploring the career and activism of 1970s model Bethann Hardison. The two films approach their complicated subjects in radically different ways, but each offers a rich analysis on the politics of beauty and the loneliness of being a trailblazer.