At 75, Pat Cleveland is not slowing down. The legendary supermodel celebrated for bringing movement, joy and an undeniable presence to the runway is reflective, radiant and resolute. Her career, which spans more than five decades, began on the streets of New York City, and her philosophy on beauty, aging and self care has only deepened with time. For Cleveland, glamour is not vanity. It is, as she firmly believes, a fundamental part of living.
From pinafores and petticoats to the pages of Vogue
Cleveland grew up in an era when dressing well was not optional it was a form of dignity. As a child, she wore pretty pinafores layered over petticoats, and Sunday church style was simply how women carried themselves every day of the week. Her mother, a skilled seamstress, passed on the belief that clothing opens doors, and the two of them would window shop together, then go home and recreate what they had seen.
By the time Cleveland was in high school during the 1960s, the cultural winds had shifted toward freedom natural hair, bare faces and denim. She leaned into it, letting her hair go loose and making her own clothes, including a miniskirt she created before they were fashionable, because, as she put it, nothing should hold you back when you’re dancing. It was that creativity and personal style that caught the eye of an editor from Vogue on 42nd Street, setting the course for everything that followed.
The early days of Black beauty in modeling
Breaking into the industry in the 1960s meant navigating a beauty landscape that was not built for her. Cosmetics at the time did not cater to darker skin tones, so Cleveland and other Black models invented their own solutions, blending brown eyeshadow into foundations to find a workable match. Her mother even crafted homemade eyelashes by clipping hair, clumping it with nail polish and carefully applying it to the lash line a testament to the ingenuity that necessity demands.
Her first modeling campaign was for Duke hair products, a line from Johnson Publishing. From there, she went on to appear in Fashion Fair and Ebony, eventually becoming an Andy Warhol muse and an Essence cover star in 1982. On the runway, she was known for twirling and dancing an approach that was entirely her own and that helped redefine what modeling could look like.
Surviving cancer and finding a new definition of beauty
The most profound shift in Cleveland’s relationship with her body came about six years ago, when she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She underwent 12 rounds of chemotherapy and narrowly avoided a far worse outcome when, while preparing for a show in Paris, she became severely ill and required emergency surgery. She no longer has a colon. She came extraordinarily close to not surviving at all.
That experience reshaped how she sees aging entirely. Being in her 70s, she says, feels like a miracle. She has witnessed two pandemics the AIDS crisis and Covid-19 and has outlived many of the people she loved most. Rather than mourning what time takes away, she describes herself as a lotus flower, releasing the dead leaves and continuing to bloom.
No scalpel, no shortcuts just sleep and purpose
Cleveland is clear about what she will not do in pursuit of beauty: she does not believe in cosmetic surgery or procedures that cut into the body. She uses creams, she moisturizes, but her approach is fundamentally about care rather than correction.
Her wellness routine is equally uncomplicated. She catnaps when tired, gives herself permission to rest without apology, and has long been self employed a choice that has protected her energy and time. She keeps a dedicated room in her home that is entirely hers, a creative sanctuary where no one is allowed to interrupt. She falls asleep thinking about what she will create and wakes up with a sense of purpose already in place.
Her hair, after decades of every color and cut imaginable, is now simply growing out. She has been blonde, red, close-cropped and everything in between. Now, she says, she is finally asking herself who she really is underneath all of it.
The one lesson that carried her through everything
If there is a single thread running through Cleveland‘s life from the girl making miniskirts in the 1960s to the woman who survived cancer on the eve of a runway appearance it is the practice of finding one good thing to hold onto when everything else feels uncertain. For her, that thing has always been her ability to transform, to change, to become something new from whatever material life offers.
She was, in her own words, a flower growing through a crack in the chaos. At 75, she still is.
