When a 19-year-old Josephine Baker stepped onto the stage in Paris in 1925, wearing little more than a string of pearls and a skirt made of rubber bananas, she left the audience astonished. A play on the era’s fascination with stereotypical African culture, her danse sauvage was uninhibited and controversial, turning her into a star overnight. Within a year, Baker was heading her own revue at the Folies Bergère music hall and was rumoured to be the highest paid performer in Europe.



Off-stage, Baker was equally groundbreaking. Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1906, she grew up surrounded by the brutality of a racially segregated America and became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She boycotted segregated venues and was one of the first black artists to perform in front of an integrated public as well as the only woman to address the crowd at the March on Washington in 1963. During the Second World War, Baker worked for the Red Cross, the Free French forces and the French resistance, smuggling messages in her sheet music. Upon her death in 1975, Baker was the first American woman to be buried in France with full military honors. On the 112th anniversary of her birth, Vogue remembers the artist and activist with a collection of archival images from her life and career.