This is Sayoko Yamaguchi. In 1972, when Yamaguchi appeared on the runways in France for Paris Fashion Week, she was one of the first Asian faces and the first Japanese to step onto the catwalk.
In the years following, she modeled for high-end designers like Issey Miyake, Kenzo Takada, and Kansai Yamamoto, helping to put these Japanese haute couturists on the global fashion map. She was named one of the world's top six models by Newsweek in 1977.
News just got out that Yamaguchi had died last week of acute pneumonia, at the age of 57.
Here she is in an iconic Shiseido ad from the 1970s. Until then, Japanese cosmetics companies were using Caucasians to promote their products. Shiseido's bold and groundbreaking decision to use Yamaguchi as a model—and to make her up in a way that accentuated Asian beauty—was empowering to many Japanese women of that day.
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