Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. In 1927, interviewed for Vogue, Baker was reportedly “swathed in a full blue tulle frock with a bodice of blue snakeskin,” wearing an “enormous diamond ring with a very impressive diamond bracelet. And though, in later years, her banana skirts would transform from rubber fruits to a powerful, aggressive spike version, that initial design remains revolutionary.

The French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Josephine Baker the first American woman buried in France with full military honors. When she swung onstage in that fiercely swinging banana skirt in 1926, Baker brilliantly manipulated the white male imagination.The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

And there, wearing little more than strings of pearls, wrist cuffs, and a skirt made of 16 rubber bananas, Josephine Baker descended from a palm tree onstage, and began to dance. she remained a woman of the people, for the people: During World War II, Baker aided the French Resistance by smuggling secret messages in invisible ink on her musical sheets. The Spring 2011 Prada collection and most recently Marc Jacobs’s Fall 2016 runway notably referenced Baker’s signature gelled hair. With the profits, Baker moved into the Château des Milandes, a 24-room mansion in southwestern France; adopted 12 children from around the world; and kept a menagerie of exotic companions such as a cheetah named Chiquita.Hordes of white Parisians flocked to the famed theater to see La Revue Nègre, a musical show that emerged from France due to the country’s fascination with jazz culture. In 1963, she was, notably, the only official female speaker to give an address at the March on Washington. Get a buddy to be a gorilla for a hilarious pair or check out our other fruit costumes so you can make a whole group ensemble.