Better late than never. Tyra Banks invited an army of black models old and young — From Pat Cleveland and Beverly Johnson to Chanel Iman and Selita Ebanks — to her show to celebrate Vogue Italia's all-black issue. It goes without saying that Naomi Campbell wasn't in attendance, right?

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Beverly Johnson is set to judge a much-hyped (especially for a TV Land production) reality modeling competition show where the catch is that the models are all older than 35. Here's a selection of fabulous and over 35 — in some cases way older than 35; Eartha Kitt is 81 — women in entertainment.

BEAUTIFUL AT ANY AGE Rerun network TV Land is exploring the realm of original programming with a new modeling competition show called She's Got The Look, in which the contestants will all be 35 and older. Groundbreaking model (and wig entrepreneur) Beverly Johnson is one of the judges. "What I was looking for was the ambition and the desire. That’s one thing you can’t give a person,” Johnson told EUR about judging the show. “I saw so many beautiful women enter the industry when I was coming up – or even now, and I’ve said, ‘Uh oh, this girl is going to come in and take over. She’s just gorgeous.’ And then they don’t make it. They just don’t want it. So, I had to see that light. I had to see that desire. I had to see that ambition.”

UPDATE Check out a photo of the contestants after the jump.

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I'm not sure what it is — I'd hazard a guess that it has something to do with not being attached at the hip to Irv Gotti and Ja Rule — but I have a newfound appreciation for Ashanti all of a sudden. She looks good, she sounds good, and she has seriously weakened her association with The Inc. I like that.

She glammed it up at Denise Rich's Angel Ball last night along with lots of others. Check out more pics after the jump.

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No, Beverly Johnson wasn't the first black woman on a Vogue cover. That distinction belongs to Donyale Luna (born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit), whose wide eye and long fingers graced the cover of British Vogue in 1966.

Donyale Luna was eccentric, rewriting her simple Detroit upbringing for the public and seriously fudging her racial background — she claimed her mom was Mexican, her dad was actually a man named Luna, and her Irish grandmother had married a black interior decorator. She was the toast of Europe for a time. She died in 1979.

Beverly Johnson, who was definitely more of the all-American supermodel type, became the first black woman to grace an American Vogue cover in August of 1974, and her face stayed splashed on the magazines for a decade after.

What's she up to now? Well, in addition to the occasional appearance on ANTM and in Page Six, if you ever have need of an wig, she's your ex-supermodel!

Before Beverly, Iman, Veronica, Naomi and Tyra, there was Dorothea. Okay, so the name doesn't conjure up images of beauty and glamour the way the ones I just listed do. But those fashion icons all walked through the doors Dorothea opened.

In the 1950s, Dorothea Towles Church was the first black model to sweep the Paris couture scene. A favorite of Christian Dior, for whom she dyed her hair platinum blond to create "contrast," Church has said that in Paris, they saw her only as a beautiful woman. Of course, the Texas native did not have the same mainstream success in the United States, but magazines like Jet and Ebony would often publish articles detailing her Paris adventures.

But her growing fame did not eliminate prejudice on the part of some designers. At Schiaparelli, she once overheard someone describe her as Tahitian. While she worked for Pierre Balmain, she recalled, he would not allow her to borrow dresses for a photograph for Ebony magazine, fearing that would offend his white clientele. She took the clothes later on the pretext that she would wear them to a party, and the magazine then photographed them.

Church returned to the states in 1954 armed with trunk-loads of couture she had amassed through her work with different designers. She toured HBCUs, staging fashion shows with the never-before-seen designer clothes and throwing fundraisers for various branches of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Read more about the little-known Dorothea Church in Skin Deep: Inside the World of Black Fashion Models.

I've already told you guys how much I love black actress bonding. What I don't love are those weird '50s pin-up bangs Taraji Henson's sporting these days or Kerry Washington's roots. The talented ladies, who are pretty anyway, hugged it out last night at an LA Confidential magazine party and mingled with Keisha Whitaker, Beverly Johnson, Eric Benet, and others.

More after the jump.

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