Luigi Cazzaniga
“Donyale appeared in the horizon of fashion in the 60s, like the planet with her name - powerful and romantic. I was introduced to her in Rome and of course all my dresses on her took immediately a different life - a strange symbiosis of wild and elegance! She introduced the Black is Beautiful with just a few other models - their elegance and walk has never been achieved by many - She was a great woman!”
Valentino Garavani - Fashion icon
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“Her influence is boundless and her genius was incomparable. If only the world were ready for her when she was with us.”
Nailah Jefferson - Director
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“She had (....) lots of presence. We’d walk down the street and men’s mouths would drop open in awe. When we walked into restaurants people would stop eating and stand up and applaud. She was like a mirage, or some kind of fantasy.”
Pat Cleveland - model and artist
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Reflecting on Donyale Luna runway performance for Paco Rabanne spectacle in 1979, a landmark moment for the fashion industry when he presented his 12 robes importables, made from Rhodoid discs, at the George V hotel. “Her body moves like a panther, her arms, the wings of an exotic bird… The audience responds with shattering applause - for the model’s performance rather than the designer’s clothes. It is the birth of a new fashion era - that of the spectacular show that rivals any on Broadway.”
Bill Cunningham - Photographer
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“I am a proud daughter, eager to share what your unique pioneering spirit has accomplished and what your gracefully charismatic and loving presence meant for the world.”
Dream Cazzaniga - Luna’s daughter
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On April 1 of 1966, Time magazine released an article titled “The Luna Year”:
“She is a creature of contrasts,” the magazine wrote. “One minute sophisticated, the next fawnlike, now exotic and faraway, now a gamine from around the corner. (…) a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper’s Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain’s Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue. (...) "She happens to be a marvelous shape," says Beatrix Miller of British Vogue. "All sort of angular and immensely tall and strange. She has a kind of bite and personality.”
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“Six feet three inches tall and slender as an adder, with eyes the size of demitasse saucers, Donyale Luna was not only the first black supermodel and the highest-paid fashion model of her time: she was a unique phenomenon, arguably the most strangely beautiful woman to grace the planet in the 20th century. The fashion world—indeed the world at large—will never see the likes of her again.”