Gail O’Neill obit

Model and Journalist Gail O’Neill Has Died

 She was not on the list.

News of the death of model and journalist Gail O’Neill, 60, is spreading through Instagram. Her passing has been confirmed by her agency.

O’Neill’s life in fashion took off at JFK Airport. In 1985, arriving home from vacation, this five-foot-nine beauty was approached by photographer Chuck Barry. At the time, O’Neill was a Wesleyan University graduate working in marketing and sales for Xerox and thriving in her career. She carried that success over to her new occupation. Just months after being signed by Click Models’ prescient founder Frances Gill, O’Neill landed the March 1986 cover of British Vogue and became part of what was being described at the time as a renaissance of Black models.

Born in New York’s Westchester County, O’Neill was the second of three children of Jamaican immigrants. “By the time I was 11 or 12 years old, I was convinced that my tall, skinny frame was some kind of cosmic joke...with me the punchline,” she said. She’d go on to make headlines, walking major runways and acting as the face of Avon, Esprit, and Diet Coke, among other clients, and appearing in 1992’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Though O’Neill reached the top of her profession, the road wasn’t easy. “She has a perfect, heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and a classic cover-girl smile. But in the three years she’s been modeling, 26-year-old Gail O’Neill has heard a hundred reasons why she’s all wrong for a job,” Newsweek wrote in 1988, the same year that the model became part of the Black Girls Coalition, founded by Bethann Hardison and Iman as an advocacy group speaking out about issues ranging from racism to homelessness. Two decades later O’Neill posed for Vogue Italia’s Black Issue, which was a response to the lack of diversity in fashion. By that time, O’Neill had become an established journalist. In 1999 she landed a job as a correspondent for The Early Show on NBC and subsequently worked with CNN and HGTV. Having moved to Atlanta in 2000, she wrote for ArtsATL.org and was often heard on NPR via WBAE, where she reflected on topics such as the legacy of André Leon Talley.

O’Neill hosted, and coproduced with Felipe Barral, the video series Collective Knowledge, with thought leaders discussing topics ranging from civil rights to symphony orchestras. “Curious. Omnivorous. Journalist” is how O’Neill categorized herself online. Those who knew her would describe her as a person who was universally loved.