Read Online The Legs Are the Last to Go by Diahann Carroll - Free Book Online Page B

matriculation at the High School of Music and Art, I established residence with a single aunt in Manhattan. And every day in that school—full of the kind of intellectual curiosity and ambition I had never seen in classrooms before—I thrived. It made me question my mother’s insulation, and wonder if I couldn’t open her up to the world I was now reading about in Sunday’s New York Times . But she was too busy to pay much attention to the needs of an adolescent with worldly pretensions. “Reading the New York Times is your assignment, not mine,” she’d tell me. She had to decorate her new house in Westchester and care for a second child. She filled her days with shopping for furniture and making her new home as impeccable as possible.
    I filled my days with studying, music, and performing.
    One day, a friend in the city took a picture of me posing in my sister’s baby carriage and sent it to a fashion editor at Ebony magazine, one of the few national publications devoted to showing blacks at their best. I didn’t look anything like the sophisticated models in the magazine, but to my surprise, six months later, Ebony responded with a letter. Much as I spent my life shopping with my mother, who adored clothes, neither of us actually knew the first thing about fashion. That much was clear when I dressed myself for a midtown Manhattan morning interview at Johnson Publications ( Ebony, Jet, and Sepia were their magazines) in a gray taffeta cocktail dress that would only have been appropriate for evening. To make matters worse, I wore a lavender straw hat with a veil and matching lavender gloves. And instead of something as simple as stockings, I oiled my legs so they wouldn’t look too ashy.
    The fashion editor of Ebony opened the door to find, not the pretty young lady from the photographs, but a living example of how not to dress for a meeting. She must have been able to see past the lurid outfit to the high cheekbones, tall, slim figure, and sincere innocence of the little lady I actually was trained to be. So she hired me, and sent me off to a hairdresser who warned me to pay attention to all the makeup artists I’d meet before going in front of photographers. Right away I learned to carry a leather hatbox, containing black pumps, black and white gloves in various lengths, and my own makeup. I learned the difference between daywear and nightwear. I was getting a whole new education, one that my mother, I was intrigued to find, could not provide for me.
    To further me along, someone at Johnson Publications recommended I enroll at Ophelia DeVore’s Charm School in Harlem. One day I walked up a staircase just inside a door on a bustling 125th Street to find a tall, imposing woman with a stern but kindly look in her eye. I loved Ophelia DeVore and her stylish staff of strong-minded women at first sight. Mrs. DeVore was very charming, well dressed, and committed to teaching us how to carry ourselves properly as young ladies who hoped to have careers in modeling and onstage. She instructed with a kind of caring gentility. She knew we were from underprivileged backgrounds and we didn’t have the money or sophistication to have been raised to understand the finer things in life, including social graces and posture. “You must tuck under, and keep the shoulders straight,” she’d tell me if my behind was not aligned with my head. Unlike today, when sex seems to inform every step, girls were chastised in class for the slightest flirtatious movement. “You’re walking too seductively, and that’s not the way to get work as a model,” we were told. To pay for class, I became a part-time receptionist. I’d sit outside Mrs. DeVore’s large studio, lined with mirrors, and inhale the mannerly ambience she had created.
    My first job for Johnson Publications was to pose with a few other teenagers in petticoats. Imagine how my father responded to that!