“Naomi was the first. She was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers.” - Halston to the New York Times in 1974 regarding Naomi Sims who died this weekend and was considered by many to be the first black supermodel. She was a huge part of the “Black is Beautiful” movement and you can find two images of her in the current “Model As Muse” exhibit at the Met. Read the Times full obit here.

At the Met, no less. How chic is that?

The Costume Institute is launching a film series during July in conjunction with their Model as Muse exhibit and they’ve lined up some pretty awesome special guests to attend and discuss the movies, along with curator Harold Koda and guest curator Kohle Yohannan.

Here’s the lineup:

July 10 - Funny Face and Carmen Dell’Orifice
July 17 - Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? and Dorothy McGowan
July 22 - Unzipped and Isaac Mizrahi

Tickets are only $10 and you can get them here.

It’ll be like a way more stylish version of all those film classes we loved so in college. Plus, we’re just about due for our annual viewing of Unzipped and we can’t wait to watch it with Isaac himself.

“Perhaps someday a museum will be equal to mounting an intelligent investigation of the changing roles of fashion models, and fashion photography’s relationship to the wider culture — its uneasily shifting placement on the continuum between high art and low commerce, between editorial content in magazines and clothes and makeup as we do them in everyday life. Perhaps someday, we’ll see the model as muse. But that museum is not the Met, and that exhibition is not yet come.” —Tatiana, Jezebel’s anonymous model, on the Model as Muse exhibit.

Avedon Chance: The International Center of Photography’s launching a Richard Avedon exhibition next week. It focuses on his work in fashion in particular from 1944 to 2000. {TheMoment}

Fairy Dust: Pixie Geldof’s interning at LOVE. Apparently she talks too much and befriended a meerkat — or they’re just as fun and silly as we thought. {LOVE}

Circus Time: Paolo Roversi shot a Lucinda Chambers-styled Guinevere Van Seenus for the new Vogue UK. The results - gorgeous, if not a little creepy - make us wish shirts were optional in real life. {Models}

Time Will Tell: Just in case you still have hundreds of thousands of dollars handy and you’re shopping around for a pretty watch, VF’s lined up some winners. {VanityFair}

The big day is finally here and since we have a previous evening commitment, Gossip Girl, we spent the morning with Marc and Anna and Hamish and Harold and even a model or two at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibit itself is spectacular. It opens with life size elephant cut outs and a mannequin wearing Dovima’s Avedon Dior. A hallway of Irving Penns pays tributes to the originals - Suzy Parker, Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh and co. There are New Look coats and dresses, Charles James and a Madame Gres. You turn the corner to David Baileys, iconic images of Twiggy and Veruschka wielding her shotgun. Music blares, “Talking ‘bout my generation,” and the mannequins wear Cardins, Paco Rabbanne link dresses and a YSL Mondrian. Then it’s onto Lauren Hutton, Rene Russo, Jerry Hall and unreal Helmut Newton photographs before turning the corner to Versace clad models carrying, seriously, broken champagne bottles. Lastly, the supermodels and the 90s in a graffitied room stocked with Marc Jacobs’ Perry Ellis, Ellen Von Unwerth photography and mind-boggling pictures of Kate.

It’s this room, according to the Costume Institute’s Director Harold Koda, that Anna didn’t feel was “quite grunge enough” late Friday night. And so Oscar winning set director, John Meyer, stayed up Friday and into Saturday, tagging the walls with “Daria,” “Twiggy,” “Kate,” etc in army green, silver and black spray paint - it’s the best part of the whole thing.

Marc said he’s, “honored, flattered, thrilled, grateful to have anything to do with this institution,” and called his involvement, twenty years after his first Met, “a dream come true.” And Koda said he was a pleasure to work with - his only demand that “the exhibit be lively.”

We could gush some more, but basically, the exhibition lives up to the standard set by 06’s Anglomania. So go.