Hildegard von Bingen: 12th Century Visionary (c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Hildegard von Bingen: You have been called by your admirers “one of the most important figures in the history of the Middle Ages,” and “the greatest woman of her time.” Known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine you were a Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary and elected magistra by your fellow nuns in 1136. You were truly a woman ahead of your time determined to succeed in a medieval universe where few women would have dared to tread. You were a composer of Gregorian chants, a playwright, poet, and scientific pioneer in the fields of healing, herbal medicine and botany. Hildegard, who had the will of a modern feminist, has emerged from the shadows of history as a forward-thinking pioneer of the holistic approach to medicine and a prophetic warning that elements could turn against us. Similarly today we speak of nature turning against us if we do not protect it.
BORN IN THE RHINELAND
Instilling the world of a cloistered existence began in early childhood. Hildegard was the daughter, the tenth child of a noble German family and as was the custom of the time, her parents gave her to the church when she was eight years old. She was sent to live with Jutta, a holy hermit/nun, the sister of a count whom Hildegard’s father served as a knight, at the Benedictine monastery at Mount S. Disibode to be educated. When Hildegard was eighteen, she became a nun. However, during her youth she experienced visions but kept them secret. When Jutta died, Hildegard replaced her as the mother superior.
ARCHITECT AND ADMINISTRATOR
After becoming mother superior, Hildegard had a vision that she should spread the knowledge of her visions instead of keeping them secret. She devoted the years from 1140 to 1150 to writing them down, describing them and commenting on their interpretation and significance. After recording her visions with the aid of a monk, her writing and letters became popular and the abbey overflowed with the arrival of novice nuns. People of all classes wrote her for advice, and one biographer called her “the Dear Abby of the 12th Century. After a power struggle in 1150 with the abbot who wanted Hildegard to remain at Disibode, she moved her nuns to a location near Bingen, and founded a monastery for them completely independent of the monastery. She oversaw its construction, which included, innovative at the time; water pumped through pipes and advocated regular exercise, singing and musical instruments. She refused to allow the church to treat women as subservient to men, and she rejected negative stereotypes of evil seductresses, and taught that woman was indeed created in the image and likeness of God.
THE MIRACLE WOMAN
As her abilities as a doctor and natural healer spread the crowds gathered at the doors of the visionary for a miracle healing. While Hildegard was working on books on medicine, Scivias and Causae et Curae (Cause and Cure and Physica, as well as numerous other writings about herbalism, she was also writing hymns and some of her songs were apparently known in Paris by 1148. This was the period in which Hildegard collected her songs as symphony of harmony and heavenly revelation. One of her works as composer, the Ordo Virtutum is an early example of liturgical drama. Musicologists credit her with the invention of opera and recognize her as a Gregorian composer.
TRAVEL AND RECOGNITION
Hildegard wrote and spoke extensively about social justice, about freeing the downtrodden, about the duty of seeing to it that every human being, made in the image of God, has the opportunity to develop and use the talents that God has given him, and to realize his God-given potential. Around 1158 Hildegard began to write Liber vitae meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), a book of moral instruction. Unheard of for a woman to do so, over the next thirteen years Hildegard, the visionary preacher, also began a series of travels to men’s and women’s monasteries and to urban cathedrals to preach religious and secular clergy. She died in 1179 and her oeuvre leaves 90 songs, numerous books and surviving works of more than 100 letters to nobles, popes, bishops, nuns and emperors.
VISION, THE FILM
The recent release of the film “VISION,” written and directed by Margarethe von Trotta, a Zeitgeist Films attests to the fact that the Cult of Hildegard is finding new admirers along with the nuns who revered her teachings and continue to live in the Rhineland. The film’s release exalts the diverse accomplishments of Hildegard von Bingen, the Benedictine nun, portrayed by Barbara Sukova, who presents her character with complete conviction and unfaltering devotion. For more information about the film: www.zeitgeistfilms.com/vision.

EUNICE W. JOHNSON MAVERICK FASHION ICON

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

EUNICE W. JOHNSON MAVERICK FASHION ICON © By Polly Guerin

KUDOS TO YOU EBONY FASHION FAIR LADY
Dear Ms. Johnson: I applaud your life of amazing achievement. As wife of the late John H. Johnson, publisher and chairman of Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. you partnered in 1945 by naming the company’s flagship magazine geared to black readers, by calling it "Ebony,"after the fine-grain dark wood. It remains the world’s most popular Black-oriented magazine in which you also wrote a special fashion feature. However, imprinted in my memory is the fact that you produced and directed the iconic Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion show that set the pace for black fashion for half a century. I bow with admiration to your powerful persona and also to you as a leading lady, as a businesswoman and as a philanthropist, and a visionary who also created the Fashion Fair cosmetics a leading product line for women of color.

THE FASHION FAIR

As a member of the fashion press I had the opportunity to observe firsthand the Ebony Fashion Fair, which was usually held on Sunday afternoons, and how lovely a scene did the audience portray. Dressed in their Sunday best, hats and gloves the ladies arrived fully expecting to view an extravaganza the likes of which had never been presented to the black community before. The exciting fashion show made over 175 cities during its annual tour of the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. From the start the tours aim was to bring attention to aspiring young black designers, including Leonora Levon, Quinton de’ Alexander and L’Amour, and to present the best of the haute couture to the black community. Over the years the fair focused on charity and raised more than $55 million for both local and national charitable organizations, civil rights groups, hospitals, community centers and scholarships. Your vision and your largesse make you Royal Celebrity in the annals of fashion history.

LAUNCHING MODELS’ CAREERS

It is a known fact that the Ebony Fashion Fair traveling runway shows are credited with launching the careers of many African-American models and most importantly, changing perceptions of minorities in fashion. Statuesque African-American models like Pat Cleveland, Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell, Iman and Beverly Johnson have graced those runways. When Mrs. Johnson was in Paris attending the couture shows to purchase fashions for the Fashion Fair shows, she even convinced Valentino to use black models in his shows in the 60s. Using the power of her prestige and deep pockets she threatened that if he could not find black models, she’d get some for him. Then she added, “And if you can’t use them we’re not going to buy from you anymore.” Obviously that was before he was famous. According to Johnson Publishing Co., the Ebony Fashion Fair has produced more than 4,000 shows and continues today to fulfill its role model for black women worldwide.

ATTENDING THE COUTURE

One day when I was covering the couture fashion shows in Paris as a journalist for WWD, I was on my way to the Yves St. Laurent show and bumped into Audrey Smaltz, who was working on the shows and assisting Mrs. Johnson. Audrey recalled how Mrs. Johnson traveled to the fashion capitals of the world including Paris, Milan, Rome, London, New York and Los Angeles to personally select and purchase more than 200 garments by internationally acclaimed designers and couture houses to be featured in the shows and for which she spent over $1 million annually. Resistance by the couture to sell to Mrs. Johnson soon vanished when they realized her considerable influence and buying power. Mrs. Johnson began producing the shows in 1963 and it rapidly become the most talked-about fashion event across the United States.
FASHION FAIR COSMETICS

Something else seriously concerned Mrs. Johnson. She noticed that the Ebony Fashion Fair models were struggling unsuccessfully to find cosmetics in shades that matched their deeper skin tones. It gave her the idea of starting, in 1973, Fashion Fair Cosmetics, a prestige line that African-American women could buy, for the first time, in major retail department stores. The first lady of cosmetics for black women revolutionized the cosmetic industry and due to the growing popularity of Fashion Fair Cosmetics influenced firms like Revlon to produce a line called Polished Ambers for black skins, Avon followed and so did Max Factor. Fashion Fair cosmetics for women of color is sold in nearly 1,000 stores across the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, France, England, Canada, Switzerland and other foreign countries.

GROWING UP IN SELMA, ALABAMA

Eunice Walker was born in Salem, Alabama on April 4, 1916. As a youngster growing up in Selma Eunice was always fascinated by style and clothing. Not only did she make clothing for her dolls but it was her physician father, Dr. Nathaniel D. Walker who took the greatest pride in the shirts that she made even working the button holes by hand. It’s no wonder therefore that Eunice earned her high school degree in sewing and tailoring at the high school at Selma University. She graduated from Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama in 1938 with a degree in sociology and earned a master’s degree in social work from Loyola University in Chicago in 1941. She met John H. Johnson at a dance in Chicago in 1940, and they married after she graduated from Loyola. Throughout her lifetime Eunice Johnson has received numerous awards and among the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters conferred on her by institutions of higher learning Talladega College is prominent among them, renaming its Division of Social Services and Education in her name and inducting Johnson into the university’s prestigious hall of fame.

FAIR THEE WELL

It is no surprise that a planned event was scheduled to honor Eunice Johnson. As reported in Women’s Wear Daily, the trade fashion bible of the industry, the “FAIR WELL” event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur was a luncheon planned for months in advance to honor Eunice W. Johnson. The event, however, took on an added poignancy when the famed philanthropist, co-founder of Ebony magazine and the Ebony Fashion Fair passed away on Jan 3, 2010 at the age of 93. The event became a celebration of a life’s achievement and a tribute to the Mrs. Johnson. Pat Cleveland recalled, “I met Mrs. Johnson when I was 14. She put me in her fashion fair.” Accolades poured in and most notably was a letter from President Obama, in which he paid tribute to Johnson’s legacy. “As a philanthropist and entrepreneur, Eunice wrote a chapter in history.” And so we must say goodbye and Fair Thee Well for you deserve the praise of the angels and paid homage by the world that has lost one of its most amazing women.