Few can claim to have worked with Giorgio Armani and Yves Saint Laurent, photographers Herb Ritts and Matthew Rolston, strutted the catwalk for Givenchy, Donna Karan and Patrick Kelly, landed iconic campaigns for Maybelline, Revlon and Thierry Mugler--and broken down barriers for more than four decades. But Coco Mitchell can. The Florida-born, New York-bred model says it was all about rising to the moment. Spotted on Fifth Avenue and signed by Eileen Ford, she added diversity to the pages of Glamour and Mademoiselle in the 1970s and became one of the first African American women to land the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Coco says she learned to pose by imitating department store mannequins and to walk runway when Armani personally cast her, which led her to become a fashion week star for many other designers. Signing to Wilhelmina, Coco returned to the New York catwalk in September 2019. When she’s not shooting campaigns for Macy’s, L.L. Bean, Naturopathica and others, she’s collaborating with young designers and mentoring students through Project Brownstone in Harlem, where she currently resides.