So on a freezing February morning, runway legend Pat Cleveland made the two-hour trip from her southern New Jersey home to the 1920s mansion in New York City where we shot "The Bold and the Beautiful." Two of her fellow Versailles models—Alva Chinn and Bethann Hardison—arrived later that morning. They'd be sharing the pages of O with three "young-uns": Kinee Diouf, Shelby Coleman, and Jaunel McKenzie, who have walked the runway for designers like Vivienne Westwood, Tory Burch, and Michael Kors.

Together the six models made magic in dresses, skirts, and jackets in classic cream and white. During a pause in shooting, Hardison livened things up—with an African-inspired dance. "Bethann totally let go of her inhibitions out there," says photographer Lorenzo Agius. "It was hilarious!"

McKenzie's favorite part of the ten-hour day: "In this very caring way, Alva showed me how to turn my face while we were posing together—I loved it."

Chinn embraced that motherly role. "I liked being around the new kids on the block," she says. "That day I had three beautiful daughters, and I was proud of how comfortable they were in their own skin. They didn't compete with each other or vie for attention," she says.

Cleveland, too, saw the shoot as a bridge between fashion's past and future: "It felt like being in a garden with lovely flowers from every season."