“Am I too soft, or is the world too harsh?”
No AI, algorithms, divisive politics, or infighting. Social media as it should be, everybody The Best Bags NFL Players Carried So Far This Season Explore medium Re-Nylon shoulder bag with flap, Carrie Bradshaw herself is recruited to be an “authentic New York Real Person model,” to which she readily retorts: “But I’m not a model.”
And really, what’s wrong with wanting? As Nicolaia Rips quips for Vogue, “You dream of someone eyeing you on the street as you trot along and they call out, ‘Hey’ – dollar signs in their eyes, heart thumping out of their chest – ‘Hey! Have you ever considered modeling?’” “You always want to be invited to a party,” she surmises, “even if you don’t want to go.”
However, crossing that threshold from the person who wants to be asked to the person who wants is an entirely different ballgame.
And as Carrie later finds herself facedown on the D&G runway, Frank Richard and Fran Lebowitz gracefully gliding past the crime scene, my dear friend recently found himself in a similar juncture, bemoaning the ruthless reality of modeling today with the epiphany that opens this piece.
Now, like Ms. Bradshaw, he too is “the modeley-iest of the real people,” breathtakingly beautiful and heart-stoppingly handsome, with a passion for the art form that falls nowhere short of those supermodels of yore who declare with (not entirely misplaced) confidence: “I wasn’t discovered. I chose.”
Yet, why is it that those models are still chosen? What is it about them that has us all in a collective chokehold till this day?
The Decade of Decadence
“These are the best of times; these are the worst of times. Everything’s iconic, everyone’s a supermodel.” So writes Tim Blanks for the BoF, in anticipation of The Super Models, I think, to a certain extent.
True to the rather overused superlative, the show is a true time capsule, encapsulating the meteoric rise, fall, and rise again of four of fashion’s most prominent models deserving of the “super” moniker: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista.
spent an entire series’ release was American and British Vogue’s dual September cover—a nostalgic nineties throwback featuring the four ladies, enshrouded in all-black and expertly retouched, seemingly ageless, undoubtedly timeless. “Exaggeration for effect,” continues Blanks, “has always been fashion’s modus operandi,” although maybe Photoshop could do with a little less aggression.
But then again, the Supers are the Supers for a reason, with origin stories veiled in their own mythmaking.
Campbell, for instance, was scouted while shopping in South London, Crawford from her Illinois high school, Turlington while horseback riding in Miami, and Evangelista from the 1981 Miss Teen Niagara Pageant.
What brought them together, as legend has it, were co-conspirators Liz Tilberis (then-editor of British Vogue) and Donatella Versace, who put the Four (along with Tatjana Patitz) on the magazine’s January 1990 cover, lensed by Peter Lindbergh. In mid-dispute with his record label, George Michael hired the Four for his October 1990 MV, Freedom 90.
Come March next year, they strutted down the runway for the Versace finale, lip-syncing to the same song. Nothing short of history, it was, as director Ross Williams announces, “the American dream if it wore haute couture.”
“We Don’t Vogue, We Are Vogue”
If you’d never heard of Gabbriette, Devon Lee Carlson, or Alex Consani (at least, prior to her Model of the Year win last December), you might need a moment to figure out exactly who they are – models? Influencers? Bloggers? Businesswomen? “The long answer,” writes Viktoriia Vasileva, “is all of those things and none of those things all at once.”
You see, dear reader, these ladies are it-girls. And there’s really no defining what that is. New York Magazine spent an entire A Century of the New York ‘It’ Girl issue trying to demystify, well, It.
LA-based artist Emily Ferguson jives, “It’s not even about the literal girl!” Today, it-girls cook their Marc Jacobs Tote Bags from scratch, every magazine attempts to list the 5 Books Every It-Girl Should Read (it-books are, after all, the new it-bags), Kendall Jenner and Angelina Kendall make up the new wave of supermodels.
“This is the essence of its It-ness,” describes Amy Odell, “it is a bag one has for no other reason than onlookers knowing one has this particular bag.”
The Supers for Versace Fall 1991?
Well, if the first stage of super-dom is “discovery”, and the next is “launch” – as with the Versace show – then what comes after is the “work.” As an NYT review of the 1995 documentary Catwalk captures, the supermodels are “used to being stared at by everyone around her. And these star-struck gazes eventually become more interesting than the model herself.”
Model Carla Bruni helpfully adds, “We have plenty of empty time to think about things. That’s why we’re so smart.”
This isn’t to say that the Supers haven’t done the work. “The models who have achieved longevity and icon status have all shown tenacity,” claims fashion-writer Caroline Leaper, author of Supermodels Discovered. “It’s not like she wakes up one day on the cover of Vogue.”
But as the likes of downtown it-girls Chloë Sevigny (of New York) and Kate Moss (of London) began muscling their way into the fashion scene with their unique brand of raw, relatable glamour, the Supers, who once didn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day, found themselves punted out of the zeitgeist, retiring instead to pursue education (Turlington), write novels (Campbell), feature in infomercials (Crawford), or simply, well, disappear, like Evangelista. The Supermodels weren’t gone, but they sure were over.
The New Age of the Supers
The Supers remain the Supers.
I think, to a certain extent America’s Next Top Model (“a show which should be tried at the Hague for human rights violations”). We have models who podcast (Emily Ratajkowski), models who cook (Nara Smith), and models who sing (Charli XCX). We have Instagram models and influencer models, we have runway models, straight-size models, plus-size models, and curve models.
We have personalities asked to model and models who aren’t supposed to have personalities. We have Revolve models like Ludi Delfino (“This girl shows up as one of my recognized friends in my iPhoto People & Places because I’ve screen-shotted her outfits so much.”). And we have nepo-baby models like Kendall Jenner (“go girl, give us nothing”)—whose lack of passion and negative engagement is, at the end of the day, still engagement.
As Rips goes on to conclude, “There are a million new boxes to check, a million ways to be real, a million ways to not be beautiful enough or not have enough followers or be not curvy enough or not skinny enough, so a million ways to fail and a million ways to succeed.”
It’s only natural, therefore, that we’ve turned to the Supers as the deeply nostalgic culture that we are. “These women”, writes Glamour, “were presented to us, as works of art. Their beauty outshone anything that may have been going on in their lives. Any pain or insecurity of theirs was airbrushed away.”
Except now, they’ve lived, aged (and still look gorgeous), have hot flashes on camera (Campbell does in the docu-series!), and they’re human.
And so too are the new faces hungry to make it big in modeling, like my friend, for it is among them that we’ll find our future Supers. So, before you go, don’t forget to leave him a few words of encouragement; he’ll read them all!
I miss Claudia in this post…