55-year-old model makes Virginia Fashion Week

Remember, toe over toe as you walk. For every entrance you make, there is an exit - make it last. And most importantly, pivot left... 1... 2... pivot right... 3... and STEP!

This is what Jeanette "Cookie" Cooke-Dabney tells the students hoping to walk in her path. When Cookie, with her ultra-short gray hair, steps out into a show, necks elongate, heads turn and gazes linger. Then come the whispering, whistling and nodding as she glides down the runway.

Cookie is a mainstay of Virginia Fashion Week, which opened its fourth year Monday in Richmond and ends Sunday at Norfolk's Waterside.

A runway model of Cookie's look and longevity is not the norm. Most are younger than 30 and with heads full of hair. But at 55, Cookie has extended her shelf life and given no signs of an expiration date.

"A lot of the designers specifically ask for her. She gets a tremendous response," said Ann Leister, owner of Splash Model Management and creator of Virginia Fashion Week. "Her look is so high fashion for her age range."

For Willie Hall, a designer from New Jersey, she is her muse.

"She walked into the room and my creativity lit up," said Hall, recalling the first time she saw Cookie. "Her walk, her smile, her personality. She is always aware that she is working for the designer, and that's the reason why I go nowhere without the Cookie Diva. Her class, her elegance, her sophistication says she has what it takes to be on the runway."

Such demand means that Cookie could live in any of the major fashion hubs, but she chose Virginia Beach 15 years ago to raise her family. Since then, she's started a business to share her catwalk finesse.

"When I'm modeling, I transform into whoever's garment I'm wearing," Cookie said. "I own it. Even though I'm not talking, my clothes are. My biggest compliment has come from designers who say, 'You sell my clothes.' "

Cookie has undergone quite a transformation from her years as a slew-footed, knock-kneed tomboy.

"Every time my mother put a dress on me, I destroyed it."

Her fashionably refined mom had had enough when Cookie reached seventh grade. She sent her daughter to charm school.

"By the time they were through with me, I was a girl."

Cookie said she and her brother Ron Cooke, who now is a stylist, looked forward to flexing their fashion sense each Easter. That's when their mother let them loosen up. It was a big deal to them because they were "Catholic school brats of sorts" who were in gray uniforms most days of the week.

One year Ron chose a plaid shirt with a big butterfly collar and a velvet bow tie. And there was the time he wore a lime green ruffled shirt and a plaid jacket with matching wide-leg slacks and green platform shoes.

"And he looked just as cute because he had a big Afro," Cookie recalled.

Cookie later took classes at the Precola DeVore modeling school in her native Washington, D.C.

It was there that Ron was assured of his sister's style. She was 17, and it was graduation day.

As he sat in the audience, Ron noticed a change in the crowd's demeanor when Cookie came out.

"I was like, why are they screaming for my sister like that?" he said.

In the early '70s, there were not a lot of black models in the mainstream. Those who did receive broader exposure often had fairer skin tones.

Cookie was the darkest of those graduating, Ron said.

Cookie was named the model most likely to succeed. She was perhaps the most surprised.

"When they called my name, they had to call me twice," she said.

The two saw their professional careers intertwine. In the late '80s, Ron was getting his feet wet as a stylist. He was asked to style one of Washington's major "it" affairs - the Congressional Black Caucus fashion show.

"I said, 'My sister is going to wear Fabrice.' She closed the show wearing a $10,000 dress and a $30,000 fur coat.

"Cookie dragged the coat, then she shook it and flung it over her shoulder," Ron said. "That was a moment. They paid me handsomely for that. I said, 'This could work.' "

Meanwhile, Cookie was picking up major clients such as Liz Claiborne, Ed Burke, Sehar Peerzada and Edouard Johnson. She'd moved to New York, then back to D.C. Although work was steady, she decided to move with her young son to a place where the pace was slower.

She picked Virginia Beach, where she'd earlier visited another brother, who still lives here.

A widow, she shares the space with her adult son and Ron.

"I feel at home when Ron is around," Cookie said. "He can tell me, 'Drop that jewelry.' He can tell me when I've put on a dress that doesn't work for me, if it's something that's a little too youthful for my age."

Ron, who's been runway director, stage manager and co-producer of Virginia Fashion Week since its inception, is proud to stand guard.

"Cookie... can sell a paper bag," he said. "But I don't want her in a paper bag."

At this stage of their careers, they've managed to live away from the epicenters of fashion but keep a steady profile.

Viewers of Bravo's "The Real Housewives of D.C." may have spotted them in an episode in the audience of fashion shows produced by cast member Lynda Erkiletian.

"We're in planes, trains, automobiles going to New York, D.C., Atlanta, Miami. We're not just here in Virginia," Ron said. "We go where the need is."

The duo also has begun to train models. They hold two classes twice a week at the Kempsville library branch in Virginia Beach.

"I do let my students know that fashion and modeling are a business," Cookie said. "A lot of us had a preconceived notion of what fashion is as a business. They think it's a fantasy of looking good, partying, hanging out with celebrities.

"You have to be able to know. Know when to stop. Know when to swish and laugh, know when to own it so the people in the audience will know. It's about reflecting a lifestyle."

In addition to the classes, the two are putting together a pitch to local universities to provide internships in fashion and styling, production, and photography.

"I want to teach the girls how to be elegant," Cookie said. "It's OK for them to be beautiful. A lot of girls want to be tough, and they want to make their fashion statement say pow! and slap you in the face, and that's not necessary. We are ladies. We are soft with an underlying toughness."

Toe over toe as you walk. For every entrance you make, there is an exit - make it last.

Jamesetta M. Walker, (757) 446-2211, jamesetta.walker@pilotonline.com