She’d also met her future spouse, Donald McFadden. But by 18, she was bristling at his rules. A photo shows a handsome man, staring out, his head in a turban, his gaze daunting. At 12 years old, she went to live with him. Her mother was lively but her father was “the intellectual.” He’d been in the armed forces when her parents met and later became an Imam. The documentary hews to the spirit of that advice, which doesn’t mean we don’t learn a great deal about Hardison’s upbringing.Įarly in “Invisible Beauty,” Hardison admits to being something of a daddy’s girl as a kid. Hardison (a Libra, by the way) recounts that when she was bemoaning the slowness and challenges of writing, the astrologer told her to remember she’s been an advocate for so many and telling her story is as simple as telling theirs. Perhaps Hardison’s astrologer said it best. Her hunting and pecking on her iPad become a visual refrain that never gets old. The film’s most charming throughline might be watching this woman of action somewhat stymied as she writes her memoir. The young Black designers who arrive late in the film provide a new generation’s look at Hardison’s mentorship and meaning. The first Black male supermodel, Beckford became the face of Ralph Lauren’s Polo. Photographer Bruce Weber talks about the first time he saw Tyson Beckford, in what is a charming origin story, in part because Weber doesn’t use it to self-aggrandize. Iman and Naomi Campbell stand out, as does fashion casting director James Scully. Lebowitz makes her brief appearance in a film rife with engaging interviewees and players.
“Invisible Beauty” allows us to see her as the quasar she remains and also as a human being still making her way, reckoning with her past and pondering her legacy.
And the filmmakers make wise editing choices that allow viewers to ask their own questions and perhaps harbor reservations about the documentary’s admirable protagonist. That doesn’t mean she was always there for her son those early years, the film makes clear. Thinking back on the partying scene of the 1970s, NYC culture maven Fran Lebowitz remarks that Hardison was different because she had a kid she had to be grown. Hardison - who made his own kind of history playing Black college student Dwayne the late-’80s sitcom “A Different World” - makes several more telling and touching appearances in the documentary. The best and wittiest might be the snippet that comes about five minutes into the film when Hardison asks, “How do you see the film starting?” It already has.Īnother differently clever wink comes from actor Kadeem Hardison: “I first met Bethann…” he begins, before talking about his loving and complicated feelings for his dynamic mother. Recordings of some of the filmmakers’ phone exchanges are included. It is decidedly, if wryly playful at others. This is not Tcheng’s first rodeo: He directed “Dior and I,” “Halston” and “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.” But this collaboration with Hardison makes the weft and warp of the personal and the cultural into something that could be called intersectional at times. “Activism has to remain active,” says Hardison late in the film.
INVISIBLE INC REVIEW PROFESSIONAL
(Mia Cioffi Henry and Tcheng are the directors of cinematography.) Yet, anchored by a discerning approach that mixes the gifts of an advertising art director with the inquiring intellect of a sophisticated documentarian, it flows gracefully from the personal to the professional and back again and again as if to argue one of the documentary’s most salient points: Systemic change requires a never-ending activism, a vigilance and a generosity of spirit. The film’s visual stylishness shouldn’t come as a surprise. The filmmakers do something similar with a gathering Hardison called nearly two decades later when data made it clear that designers and their bookers were outright spurning models of color. It’s made more so by rendering it in rich black-and-white. The footage of Iman, Naomi Campbell, Veronica Webb, Roshumba Williams, Tyra Banks and Hardison flanking New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Mark Green as they held a press conference taking on the lack or representation in fashion ads in 1992 provides just one of the film’s indelible moments.
Four years later, along with friend and supermodel Iman, she gathered models to unite as the Black Girl Coalition. She was the first Black woman to open her own modelling agency in 1984. She was one of the models at the legendary Battle of Versailles runway show in 1973. When there were shifts in how the fashion industry viewed models of color, Hardison was there as participant but more often catalyst.
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