Bethann Hardison: Model, Mother, Agent and Advocate

0:04Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOFest podcast. It's Friday, January 10th. Bethann Hardison is a former model, agent, and advocate who has been agitating for a more inclusive fashion industry for more than half a century. Bethann launched her own modeling agency in 1984, pushing for representation and equal pay for Black and ethnic minority models. Meanwhile, in her personal life, she was a working mom and a woman that, in her own words, has no sense of retirement in her DNA. I just don't like the injustices of anything, but I do believe in diversity.

0:47When I say racial diversity, I mean I want to make sure I still see a redhead and I still want to make sure I see a, I don't want to make an all-black anything. I want to make sure our world remains completely integrated. And that's the most important thing to me. This week on the BOF podcast, we revisit a conversation from BOF Voices 2024, where Bethann spoke with the London-based British-Jamaican designer Bianca Saunders about her inspiring career journey and the state of the fashion industry today. Here's Bethann Hardison with Bianca Saunders on the BOF podcast.

1:33So yeah, thank you, Bethann, for asking me to do this. It's actually so incredible to be with someone that is actually a legend in this industry and created so much space for people. And I guess we should start from the beginning. I guess how did you start in modeling and also becoming an advocate and what was the difference in changing that? First of all, I can't even speak. I'm so taken. I'm so taken with what happened right before us. The lens of purpose and Nikki, the two of those, it makes me a little emotional. so I'm happy to be here for the lives of Bethann, the many lives of Bethann and thank you so much for sitting here with me having this conversation because the interesting thing is she doesn't know me and she's gotten to know me recently and I love that because you are my audience as well so you asked me the question, what was the question?

2:27So I wanted to start by the beginning of your journey like being a model and an advocate and like your difference in change? Yes, interesting. I started out in the garment industry. I had many different jobs, and then I wind up being discovered by Willie Smith, and he asked me what I consider, even though I was a sales girl in a showroom, what I consider being his muse, his model. And my company that I worked for, they were very encouraging, and they said, yes, do it and do it. I wind up doing many things along the way, of course, and the advocacy that you speak of but something that came that just falls at your feet.

3:03Sometimes there are certain people come on earth that are just meant to do certain things, and that's how I see myself. I didn't have big plans. I'm not a consistent activist, as people like to call me. As I always say, activism has to remain active. If you take your foot off the clutch and you decide to go and lay in a hammock, you're no longer an activist. But if you are working at something, doing it, it takes consistency. Seeing I'll always remain as an advocate of injustice or, you know, not supporting those who are lesser. But I do care very much about diversity in the industry. And it's not just racial diversity.

3:38Yeah, I definitely saw that with your journey with Willie Smith and, of course, like Stephen Burrows. But what this industry does sometimes is very, like, much trend-based, but you've been able to stop your agency and then come back again. What was that experience like? Because sometimes fashion, it could be you're gone and forgotten, but you've continued that, and that's something that I would really like to know more about. I didn't want to have a model agency, so I get talked into it by Stephen Mysel and Lisa Robinson and a few people in my life that kept saying, that's what you should be doing, don't...

4:09I wind up doing it because I got stuck. The French agency in Paris wanted me to do it with her. And then what she did, I found out that she didn't really want me to be a partner. She wanted me just to work for her. I was already working for other people I really admired. And I was walking away from them to do something what everyone thought I should do on my own. When I heard that, my then-to-be accountant told me that he had heard from her, that that's not her intention. So then I had to do it on my own. And I was able to have the models that were waiting for me because they wanted to come with me if I did start an agency to come.

4:43But the point of it really was it was important for me not to have a black model agency. I had a white model agency because I'm a black woman. I didn't want to have a Woody Allen movie. You know, you see Woody Allen movies. Everybody, no matter where they shoot it in Manhattan, everybody's white. Yeah. Not possible. Not in Manhattan, especially in the garment industry. So I made sure that I was wanting to go up against my white counterpart. And I think it's very important when you have to compete against the people who are renting it. And so that was natural because I came out of a model agency that was white.

5:15And so for me, I continued and I just made sure I had some black kids and then Latin kids. And then eventually I added a couple of Asian kids. But I always made sure that our agency was white-based. And then I could hear everything that was going on. That makes a lot of sense. I think what I thought was quite interesting in the film, Invisible Beauty, Tyson Beckford being one of, like, your biggest models, like male models, and turning him into a supermodel. Tyson Beckford. Yes. You were saying about when people meet you, you change their lives. And it's been quite prominent throughout your life how you've kind of created that journey.

5:49but not many people like take you under their wing and have them in their houses like what made you become a mother to outside of your being oh yeah that's that you know yeah that's the thing matriots are matriots you know i'm just a i mother anybody who i like i just decided my child you know and when you have a model agency it's quite different i didn't want to be like the other model agencies because i didn't want to have one the fact of it is if i'm going to do it. I'm going to educate that talent to remember that they are really part of a business that they're not working for me and I'm not working for them, that we're in this together.

6:26No matter how young they are, I always looked out for the models. Then you have the people who are working for you, you don't feel so good about because they become part of an industry. But truth of it is, is that, yeah, you do become that person. You're naturally, you know, even though I didn't want to have children myself and I did wind up having one, the fact that it really is is that there are a lot of other people out there that I make. And I make other people's husbands my husband, too. Yeah. I just keep going down because I like men. Yeah. And I'm glad they have a wife. Yeah. You know, it's important because I can't take care of them.

7:03I'm busy. So it's the same thing with the extra children. Yeah. They go home. Stephanie Horton's in here. She's one of my daughters. I just they go home. I don't have to worry about them. That's the ticket but I do give my wisdom yeah and that's been quite balanced of your son as well too it'd be good to speak a bit more about him because I think he's my son yeah definitely because there was a point where you were talking about like you're scared to fail and I was like I was wondering about that where did that come from was it because of the fashion industry or there was a kind of like a pressure on him to make sure he was good at what he did as well too so it'd be good to hear You really watched the film.

7:39I didn't already say it. Yeah, that's very true. No, the whole thing about being scared to fail is I had my son at a young age. And my father was a very important man. He was an imam, but a cool imam out of Brooklyn. He influenced a lot of people. Malcolm X, a lot of people. Elijah Muhammad, you know. He was very important in Brooklyn at that time. Because at that time, there wasn't a lot of Muslims like there are now in the community. And when I left him, you know, my father was so upset because I left him not coming back home at around 18. And thereafter, I got pregnant. I just knew that this man was going to think, I'm never going to come back around the mountain, never get there.

8:21And the most important thing for me was I had this child, but I couldn't fail. I just had to make sure whatever I did, I succeeded in anything I did. So when Kadeem came to live with me after I had lived with my mother for a while, that was the mission, you know. I'll make sure I pay the rent, and you make sure you do your schoolwork. And I sent him to an acting school because I thought he could act. And I just would say, you know, I just can't fail because I had that pressure of thinking that my father, you know, would be looking at me like, see, I knew she wouldn't make it. You know, you have to think that way.

8:56And I knew I could, I think, but that was pretty much it. My son, basically, he was a really good, easy kid to raise, really. He was so easy. But I was strict as shit. It worked, so. Couldn't afford to fail. That was my whole model, yeah. Do you ever think about failure now? Yeah, I do. You know, fear is a very interesting word. I've gone up in international industry, and I wrote letters and went to the press. I did a lot of things. I didn't feel so fearful of those moments. It took me a while to get there. Like, you know, it took me one, two years, three years and four years. It took me that time because, you know, it's not easy calling people out, especially people you've never, never met.

9:44But you know that they've done the wrong thing. And I believed in my industry. I believed that they weren't racist. I had to believe that in order to go up against them. I had to show them how ignorant they were. Ignorance to me is far worse than racism to me. believe it or not. Yeah. And so here we are with the international fashion industry designers who have just gone down a rabbit hole. And so I just, I had to write those letters. I had to sort of like indicate, you have to watch the film because I'm not going to tell you everything, all right? I know you all live in foreign places, but try to get that BP in or something.

10:19You know, you hook up. Just, just whatever you have to do. Imran, somebody, tell them how to do it and I want you to see the film because the film is really good. I mean, I'm not even going to tell you, 100 % Rotten Tomatoes.

10:40So my point of it is that I can do those kind of things where I can go up. That had a little bit of fear. Fear is like this, like, I can't mess this up. I've got to make sure I hit the nail on the head. And those things I was able to do. and you come back and you watch the results be immediate, then you know you did the right thing. And all they wanted to do is be told that if you continue to use one or two or no models of color consistently, this was going on for 10 years, I want you to know that, consistently for that amount of time, you know, in a show, then whether it's your intention or not, the result is racism.

11:19and for a creative person, they don't really believe that they're racist. That's the last thing, a creative person, but they just go down that rabbit hole. You know, designers just follow the yellow brick road and the next thing, Mutual Prada did it and the next thing, just keep going. I didn't have a lot of fear about that because I believed I could make a success. I knew that I would win. Where I have fears is things like, when now I want to do a one-woman show. That's fearful. Who do I think I am? But I'm funny. So I can do that. But that has a little fear. And then there's a lot of people that are doing activism since Black Lives Matter, in fashion, but you are the person that has the strongest voice.

12:00Who do you think is someone else that can carry that torch? About trying to change things in general or any kind of activism? Because there's all kinds now. Now, race is like we're holding good for the moment. So there doesn't need to be anyone to come in and take that batard and run with it. I think mostly because, like, in the beginning of your journey, you started, like, the Black Girl Coalition. And then, like, of course, like, years later, 2007, there was, like, you know, no black women or black models to be seen. And then again, you have Black Lives Matter, which was given opportunity for black designers and also black people in the industry to kind of have a place.

12:40It seems as though, like, it kind of goes in waves. Like, what do you think's next after that? It better stay where it is. Yeah. It has to stay where it is. I mean, you know, I always feel I always have my foot on the clutch. I always say that because it could slip back. And I haven't got the time or the patience as I did before to put up with this shit. And I really mean it. I just hope and pray that it doesn't go back because then I just don't like the injustices of anything. But I do believe in diversity. When I say racial diversity, I mean I want to make sure I still see a redhead and I still want to make sure I see a, I don't want to make an all black anything.

13:14I want to make sure that our world remains completely integrated. And that's the most important thing to me. I oftentimes, I do, I do like redheads. And I tend to, like you're saying, they ain't got no redheads anymore. What's going on? You know, it becomes important to me to see what the world should be. Yeah. And so in that case, yeah, I don't know. What was your question? I go down over the road. I think I was just asking who's next. Oh, yeah, next. Who's next? Oh, next. Yeah, yeah. But the idea that it is very difficult to think about who could be, because I think it's a very difficult job or a difficult calling.

13:50And I think it's not easy for everyone to do and it's not meant for everyone. Sometimes when people watch a film and we're on the road with the film and we're at film festivals, I always have to say to people, you know, don't walk out of this theater thinking, I want to do it. You get so inspired by watching what that woman did on the screen. And everyone's not meant to do that. Everyone, you know, if we could only be conscious of things and just sort of support those who do those things. But that's not for everyone to do. So when you ask me who you think, I mean, there are people doing things in different regions that I think are wonderful.

14:26You know, bringing awareness of, you know, like Aurora, who brings a 15 percent pledge. Or, you know, there are people who are doing wonderful things. That's making a difference for people. But in general, I don't know much more about that. Well, yeah, hopefully it stays positive. So we all hope for the best of the future. But as you were saying about the living your best life, it would be good to know outside of fashion, like how do you continue to do that? And what have you been doing lately to live your best life? I think only as you get older, you begin to appreciate your life. And I think I'm at a stage now that I really do like seeing the film taught me a lot.

15:05When my co-director showed me four hours of the film that he had gotten from seven hours down that he loved down to four, that's the first time I realized I had a story. Because for a long time, people say, how could you think you didn't have a story? Well, when you're doing the work, you don't think of it as significant. You just want to get things done. You want to correct the world and just keep it moving. And so for me, that was it. When I decided then to make the film about me and let the story be told, then it became something that I said, OK, now I see my life. Now I see what I've done.

15:34Now when people come up to me and they say, oh, Miss Arson, thank you so much. Oh, I just love you. You're such an icon. Oh, my God. All of that, I can live with it better. Before I say, God, why is that all? I know all that, you know. But you do know it's all. That's a big thing that we did. We turned the tide. Yeah. So, of course, and it wasn't, I mean, I had the backup band, but I was the front of the band. No, I didn't let everybody know who else was telling me what was happening and all. So it's a big thing. It's a very big thing in many ways. So my life now, yes, it's Mexico a little bit, Morocco.

16:06Yes, I move around very fast. And my understanding is that I don't like, I don't think of retirement because, you know, I used to say, when soon as you retire a year later, you're dead. And I've seen that happen to people. They go and they retire. Well, I mean, I don't mind dying because I come here to die. But as we all do, I hope you do know that's happening. A lot of people, a lot of people get nervous when you mention death. I don't know why. it's not like a secret or anything, you know? So in the end of the day, I'm so prepared for that, but I do have other ideas. And I love the fact that I, too, look at myself and I say, God, Jesus, how much did you travel these last three weeks?

16:48And, you know, it's inspiring to others. I think that's one reason why now I think I would put myself out there in the world for more people to hear, because I think a lot of women need to hear what you can do. A lot of men need to see somebody do this. A lot of people should know that someone is capable and determined and not done. Yeah. I think it's very important not to be done. And then the book as well, too. And the book. The book. When you see the film, you'll hear about the book. But the idea of the book, yes, I have to finish it. They have more than half of it there. But, you know, the book started when I was already working on the film.

17:24So, of course, it became this kind of thing. Well, you know, let her take her time because she's working on this. And it was conflict. and now it's become let it take my time, and I'm just taking my time. But I'm almost finished with it now because I've sent everything I've written to my editor so she can tell me which direction to continue to go in, because I want to start another project, and it's not a film, and it's not another book. There will be these things, I'm sure, after. And I want to tell you one other thing. Jane Fonda said something that I really lean with, and I think you all should remember this too, is that when you're healthy, you have such a good life.

18:03You're so happy as long as you're healthy. And I'm lucky enough to be very healthy. You know, I don't have to take anything to keep the organs going, you know. That is everything is your health. Once you're not fully healthy, then it's not as happy. Yeah. You can't imagine still. But I am, as my son says in the film, even though I don't think I'm ambitious, I'm someone who will continue to do things. I think that's probably a part of the health as well, too, just keeping yourself going constantly. It gives you better health. Better health. Yeah, it's a good way of looking at it. How old are you?

18:37I'm 31. No way. I feel like I get that question all the time. I look younger than I am. No, you don't. Oh, okay. Oh, my God. How old did you think I was? Well, I didn't think you were 40. Oh, okay. But I mean, she looked... She looks cute. No, come on. Don't you dare laugh like that. No, I mean, 31. Look, she looks 31. Oh, thanks. I mean, when people say, you know, like, oh, this is the thing that kills me. People see people like they're like 60, and they say, oh, my God, you look so good for 60. And I always say, well, what does people 60 supposed to look like? Yeah. This is what 31 should look like.

19:18Oh, okay, thanks. Yeah. I mean, if you said I'm 28, I would say, oh, okay, that's good. That's nice. But 31 you look like. Okay, good. Okay. I just want to get that clear. But the idea really for you two, I want to ask you a question or two. How did you, I mean, this is, I don't know if you know what she does, and I just want to say this because I have 30 seconds left. You are a menswear designer. What attracted you to menswear? Because I've always wanted, if I was going to have a child, I always wanted to have a son so I could dress him. Go. When I started womenswear, of course, I'm a very effeminate woman.

19:51I felt also menswear was like an avenue for me to kind of like introduce my femininity into menswear and also transform exactly how it's like you and nikki doll yeah basically i was like i can relate basically yeah so you started out in women yeah i started at women's and then i had a really good cheer and he was like you should do menswear and then i thought when you find a good mentor like you believe everything they say like and your menswear is actually what's a hit yeah well it's won me awards so yeah yeah yeah yeah

20:26I love you first and foremost thank you for letting me have her here with me because you were good you were really good thank you Emma hey thank you thank you so much the BOF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria.