Monday, July 22, 2019

The Beauty of Retrospect: Cynthia King Week, Part One

I still can't believe that I haven't featured Cynthia King, one of the loveliest black models of the 1980s and one of the loveliest models of the 1980s, period, since August 2010!  Well, I should be able to make up for lost time easily, starting today with these two pictures.


Cynthia King was one of the brightest stars of the Wilhelmina agency in the eighties, and she was a constant presence in ads for a certain cigarette brand.  Both of these photos are taken from said ads, though, as always, the brand is not mentioned here and the offending carcinogenic appendages are edited out.   

I haven't found out a great deal about Ms. King, though, because she inexplicably failed to become a big star in the modeling world. But I do know this; she became an artist and is a prolific painter.  I'll add a little more info about that later. :-)

4 comments:

Daniel Chavis said...

Wow! I thought your post from many years ago was it. But I love your new post about mIss King. How did you find out about her art? I would love to find out how to see some of her work. Thank you so much for your post.

Steve said...

I learned about her art from a piece on her in Ebony magazine that I found online while researching Ms. King, and a couple of people who have commented on my posts of Ms. King have commented extensively on her paintings. I'm always glad to post pictures of her, I only wish I could find out more than I already know.

Daniel Chavis said...

Amazing, I was looking hard in NYC and even contacted Jaques who did a lot of her 8o's William Morris ads but havent found anything. He didint remember her and said he had done so many pics for that brand.
I did however find a Cynthia King on FB but I've not gotten any responses. Good luck wth you work. ill keep in touch as well if I find anything out!

Steve said...

Daniel: That would be great if you could find out where she is and what became of her. Please do keep in touch; it would be really great if either one of us could connect with her. The only problem with finding a Cynthia King on Facebook is that that's such a common name. Hopefully one of us will hit pay dirt and find her! :-)