Veronica Webb

Fashion model, writer, and actor Veronica Webb was born on February 25, 1965, in Detroit, Michigan, to Marian and Leonard Douglas Webb. She studied animation at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City.

Webb worked at D.F. Sanders & Company in New York City in 1983 and signed to the modeling agency Click in 1984, where she was featured in shoots for magazines including Seventeen and Mademoiselle and brands including Calvin Klein and French Connection. Later that year, she moved to Paris, where she worked with Azzedine Alaïa. In 1985, Webb was featured in her first runway show, in Milan, Italy, where she worked with Commes de Garçons. In the late 1980s, she worked at the 135th Street YMCA in New York City doing youth-oriented theater and took acting classes for two years at William Esper Studios. In 1991 she became the “face” of Isaac Mizrahi and signed to N.S. Bienstock. Throughout the 1990s, Webb wrote for publications including Paper, The Source, Spin, Details, and Interview Magazine.

In 1991, Webb made her film debut in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. The following year, she starred in Lee’s Malcom X. In 1992, Webb became the ColorStyle spokesmodel for Revlon. In 1995, she walked in Victoria’s Secret’s first annual runway show. In the late 1990s, Webb starred in the TV show Damon. In 2007, she co-hosted the first season of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style on Bravo. In 2013, Webb began her fashion line Royalton. In 2016, she began her blog Webb on The Fly. She also has walked the runway for Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, been photographed by Andry Warhol, Bruce Weber, Peter Lindbergh, and Herb Ritts, and performed in the films In Too Deep (1999), Someone Like You (2001), and Dirty Laundry (2007), the TV shows Oh La La, Front Page, Last Call, Sunday, Good Morning America, and Just Shoot Me!, and music videos for Scritti Politti and New Order, and been on the podcast The Megyn Kelly Show. Webb’s essay collection Veronica Webb Sight: Adventures In The Big City was published in 1998 by Miramax Books. In 2010, she was named a member of the Eucerin Skin First Council.

Webb has served as a member of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Couture Council and was a founding member of 25 Black Women in Beauty. She also has been a Google Digital Entrepreneur Ambassador, editor-at-large for Google Accelerate, and editor-in-chief for New magazine’s Brain Trusts.

Webb and her husband, Chris Del Gatto, live in New York City. She has two children, Rose and Orpheus.

Veronica Webb was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 9, 2022.