How supermodels became victims of their own success
Cindy, Christy, Linda and Naomi were once household names. But economic forces clipped their wings
IT IS easy to be sceptical about a four-episode TV documentary series about the four biggest supermodels of the 1980s and 1990s, namely Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell. These women were once impossibly beautiful, and still retain a good part of their allure well into their 50s.
Still, one wonders if the new Apple TV+ series The Super Models would be a tedious four-hour hagiography of how they once ruled the world of fashion, charging five- to six-figure sums a day for a catwalk or photoshoot. They reached the height of their success when they appeared in George Michael’s music video Freedom, which made them household names.
The four women are, after all, credited as executive producers of the show.
Thankfully, directors Roger Ross Williams and Larissa Bills are far cannier than that. They grant the women the absolute freedom to speak their minds, but they look for contrarian views from leading observers of that era too. To wit, when it came time to attribute reasons for their downfall, the documentary looked to the latter for explanations – even going so far as to show archive footage of the women throwing tantrums behind the scenes when they did not get their way.
Evangelista, for instance, is captured childishly berating designer Isaac Mizrahi for making her wear flats for his show while Campbell got to wear heels. Polly Mellen, former creative director of Allure magazine, pulls no punches when she complains that the women were demanding suites at the best hotels, personal drivers, private chefs and Concorde round-trip flights – demands which gradually made the fashion world turn against them.
The Super Models is ultimately a familiar tale of the rise and fall of stars. It is wrapped in evocative images of New York, Paris, Milan and other fashion hubs of the era. It is wonderfully sustained by old footage and new interviews with the who’s who of fashion design, photography, publishing and commentary: Herb Ritts, Steven Meisel, John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui, Anna Wintour, Edward Enninful, Grace Coddington, Robin Givhan, Camille Paglia, Naomi Wolf and more.
The four women certainly worked hard to reach the pinnacle of their careers. Campbell endured countless episodes of racism because she is black. Evangelista escaped an abusive marriage to Elite Models boss Gerald Marie. As a child, Crawford lost her brother to leukaemia, followed by the dissolution of her parents’ marriage – which fuelled her determination to rise above her blue-collar roots.
Only Turlington seems to have had a fairytale life up till now. Their extraordinary successes are, in many ways, well-deserved, when one considers how many other stunningly beautiful rivals they competed with in the industry.
However, the supposed egocentrism that followed – as posited by some observers but denied by the women themselves – soon overshadowed their achievements. Fashion designers, annoyed by how powerless they had become vis-a-vis these women, tacitly conspired to clip their wings in the 1990s.
They started to champion the “waif” look – shorter, skinnier women such as Kate Moss and Amber Valetta who did not have the strong, statuesque physiques of the supermodels.
The fall of communism meant that Eastern European women were now free to travel to Europe and the US to pursue their dreams of becoming models – and designers started booking them because they were younger, cheaper and hungrier.
Meanwhile, grunge music and streetwear began to infect the world of high fashion, threatening the culture of conspicuous consumption that the supermodels had become synonymous with. The 1997 murder of Gianni Versace – the undisputed king of opulence, glamour and “more is more” – was the final nail in the coffin for the era of supermodels.
Beyond their heyday, the four women have variously sought to revive their modelling careers. All have succeeded to a degree – with the exception of Evangelista, who has become permanently disfigured by the side effects of a cosmetic procedure.
The Super Models is as much a story of fashion as it is of pop culture, gender politics, technology, economics and egos. For those of us who lived through the 1980s and 1990s, it is a riveting watch.
The Super Models is available on Apple TV+.
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