Models of Influence by Nigel Barker

Author:Nigel Barker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Photograph by Patrick Demarchelier, Vogue, 1991.

{Demarchelier/Vogue; © Condé Nast.}

Linda Evangelista

Photograph by Gilles Bensimon, Elle, 1989.

{Gilles Bensimon/Trunk Archive.}

Of all of the supermodels of the late 1980s and 1990s, none was as pure a creature of fashion as Linda Evangelista. Linda has never wanted to do—and has never done—anything else professionally. There have been no skin-care lines, no acting, no television shows, no tell-all books. Her focus, insatiable desire, raw talent, and incredible, unmatchable skill all go to modeling. This drive has made her every photographer’s dream, never mind that at the height of her fame, she could be a handful. No one who has worked with Linda begrudges her that quality for long because she loves and understands fashion with a consuming passion, and she does what it takes to make indelible images, which is, after all, what the business is about. Linda is more than a model; she’s an inspiration and a muse, a role she has played for such era-defining designers as Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, and Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, as well as photographers like Peter Lindbergh and, especially, Steven Meisel. When the stakes were very high, she took consistent risks with her appearance and, in so doing, changed how women approached beauty forever.

Linda was attuned to fashion as a teenager and first tried modeling at age sixteen in Japan, but when she was asked to pose nude, she smartly ran back home to Canada. Pressed by her agency there, she entered the Miss Teen Niagara contest the same year, in 1981. She didn’t win, but she was scouted by Elite Model Management and asked to come to New York, though she took years to follow up with the agency. When Linda finally did make the trip to New York, her book didn’t catch fire, so in 1984 Elite sent her to Paris, where she spent the next three years doing catalog and some editorial work.

Gradually things picked up for her. Arthur Elgort booked her for Vogue Paris, and she then started to work regularly for the magazine. In 1987, she married Gerald Marie, who ran the Paris branch of Elite Model Management, and Linda benefited greatly from his sharp negotiating skills and ability to set up the right girls with the right photographers.

There would be many right photographers for Linda, but the most right one was Steven Meisel, whose dramatic, over-the-top, concept-driven shoots required a girl who could transform herself easily and play a part. Linda first worked for Meisel in 1987, the year that she, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell started walking the runways together—something they’d reprise over and over in the ensuing few years.

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