Richard Avedon once called China Machado quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the world. The two met in 1958 in New York, and days later, they changed the face of fashion.
Born Noelie Dasouza Machado to a Chinese mother and Portuguese father, China found herself in Paris after her affair ended with a certain famous bullrider of the time. She did what anyone would do after a scandalous breakup – go to a party. It’s where she met a fashion director at Balenciaga who asked if she was interested in modeling. “I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea about fashion. I was just a girl from Shanghai,” Machado said in Harper’s Bazaar: Models, a 2015 book from Abrams Books celebrating the publication’s most iconic models. Although Balenciaga was out of town when Machado arrived that day, she was sent to Givenchy and made her mark as a house model. She became the master of the walk. “It was my walk that I became known for,” said Machado.
The striking model may have been discovered in Paris, but in New York, history was made. After their initial introduction, Avedon got to work shooting China, becoming the first person to photograph her professionally. “I didn’t know what to do when I came into the studio,” remembers Machado. I had never had a makeup person, or a hairdresser – and he even had a manicurist.” It was during this shoot that Avedon captured her looking into his lens full of self-assurance, cheekbones for days, and a cigarette in one hand.
That image, taken in an instant, ended up having a long-lasting effect on the fashion industry, based simply on China’s ethnicity. At the time, fashion magazines did not showcase models of color on their pages, and unfortunately, Harper’s Bazaar was of the same mindset. They shied away from including images of models who were not considered traditionally beautiful or accepted in the late 1950s. When Avedon got word that Harper’s Bazaar balked at featuring his photos of Machado in their magazine, the well-known and respected fashion photographer threatened to cut ties with Harper’s Bazaar if they did not print Machado’s photos.
Harper’s Bazaar printed the images, and Machado became the first non-caucasian to appear on the cover of a major American fashion magazine.
“I had no idea that they were racial issues,” said Machado. “I didn’t think of myself as any race, to tell you the truth.” When she found out that Avedon would quit shooting for the popular magazine if the photos didn’t run, she returned the loyalty by traveling with him to photograph the Paris collections. “I didn’t give a damn about being photographed by anybody else.”
In 1962, the groundbreaking Machado became an editor at Harper’s Bazaar and signed with IMG Models when she was 81 years old. China Machado passed away five years later, leaving behind decades of work in the fashion industry and being remembered as the model who broke barriers, opening the door so other women of color in the fashion industry could walk through.
