“Black is beautiful” has been around as a catchphrase since the 1960s, but a lot of aspiring models are still waiting for the arbiters of fashion to catch on to it. That’s why there’s so much buzz over Vogue magazine’s decision to devote its current Italian issue entirely to models who are women of color.

“Do black models sell?” was the rhetorical question Jerri DeVard, a black woman as well as a marketing expert, put to TODAY’s Hoda Kotb Monday. “It’s about myth-busting,” she said. “There’s this myth out there that they don’t. And that’s just not true.”

Veronica Webb, a black model and host of Bravo’s “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style,” agreed, and sees the pioneering Vogue issue as a vehicle that can begin to get people to change their thinking.