It’s hard to say when they went too far. Perhaps it was when one of them allegedly sneered, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” Or was it when they started posing nude for Playboy? It might have been when the public got tired of their calendars and trading cards. Or when they started writing novels, photo-autobiographies and self-help guides.
Perhaps it was when they had the effrontery to open, of all things, a restaurant. Or when they became bigger stars than the designers who paid them to wear their clothes. Or when they began dabbling in politics and making documentary films about themselves. Or when the actresses took notice and reclaimed the glamor that the supermodels had usurped.
Whenever it happened, whatever the cause, the result is now popular truth: The age of the supermodel is over.
In their heyday, when the supermodels bestrode the Earth, they could do no wrong. Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson dominated the catwalks and fashion magazine covers of the world. The press and paparazzi fawned on them and packaged their faces as texts for mass consumption and transformed them into pop-culture personalities who transcended the fashion business. Gossip columns reported on the minutiae of their lives, and models became accessories du jour of any self-respecting actor or rock star.
Today the same media organizations that created the supermodels have turned against them and pronounced them extinct. A recent People magazine cover story, “Supermodel Meltdown,” chronicled their personal problems and professional setbacks. The article oozed with Schadenfreude and damned the supermodels with the ultimate snub: They were “out of fashion.” Actresses such as Meg Ryan, Claire Danes, Renee Zellweger and Sandra Bullock; performers such as Jewel and Madonna; and personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Rodham Clinton have, along with the new breed of fashion models, bumped the supermodels off the covers of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, not only gracing the cover but sometimes also “guest editing.” And Vanity Fair would rather offer its coveted cover to budding actresses such as Gretchen Mol or Charlize Theron than any supermodel.
The reason? According to a highly placed source at Conde Nast, “Supermodels don’t sell magazines. Actresses do.” And at the fashion shows in New York, Paris and Milan, the supermodels have essentially vanished from the runways. The Fashion Cafe restaurants have gone bust, Top Model magazine has vanished from the newsstands, Calvin Klein decided recently not to renew his contract with Kate Moss, and People revealed that “Supermodel Meltdown” was one of the worst-selling issues of 1998.
Explanations for the supermodel fadeout vary. Elizabeth Snead, veteran observer of the fashion and Hollywood scenes for USA Today, foretold the decline as long ago as 1995 when she wrote that “supermodels rose to fame in the mid-’80s when TV and magazine exposure elevated them to star status as socially acceptable centerfolds. But after a decadent decade, their shelf life may be over.”
Snead predicted that a new generation of actresses would supplant models as glamor icons. Looking back, Snead says that is exactly what has come to pass. “The red carpet at Hollywood events is the new catwalk of fashion and style. People want to see actors and actresses, who are more interesting, have three-dimensional characters and are easier to identify with. Supermodels had the opportunity to make it as personalities, but unfortunately they were lacking one thing: personality.”
To Richard Johnson, who chronicles the vicissitudes of the fashion world in his “Page Six” column for the New York Post, the explanation is more simple. “It’s a conspiracy! The designers, the editors and the photographers decided that the supermodels had gotten bigger than they were. They had to take them out.”
Designer Karl Lagerfeld sees the fall of the supermodels as a natural process: “Fashion is about change. The best models are like actresses. But some girls do not want to change with the times. They want to become an image.’ It is at that moment that they no longer move me.” Lagerfeld believes that personal favorites Shalom Harlow, Amber Valletta and Karen Elson will transcend the fall of the supermodels.
It is an open question whether new supermodels will emerge to replace those that have fallen, or whether the species itself has become extinct. The generation of top models that forms the bridge between the supermodel generation and the present one, including Harlow, Valletta, Carolyn Murphy and Kirsty Hume, could lay claim to the title but they have passed. While they are among the top models in the world, and the press calls them supermodels, they do not describe or carry themselves that way.
Asked what she feels when someone calls her a supermodel, Valletta says, ” `Yuck’ is my gut instinct when I hear that word. It’s a label and I’m not that thingI’m a human being. . . . I’d rather think of myself as a woman doing many interesting things.”
The abdication by the presumptive heirs to supermodel status hasn’t deterred the media from manufacturing and crowning their own. Today the press proclaims swimsuit and lingerie models as “supermodels” on the basis of pin-up pictures in Sports Illustrated, men’s fashion magazines or Victoria’s Secret catalogs. But these are centerfolds, not supermodels. As Valletta observed, “We’ve all seen on TV and in the press that today just about anybody is a `supermodel.’ So what does it mean?”
Fashion photographers, editors and designers have designated several women from the new breed as the faces of the moment. Still anonymous to all but the fashion cognoscenti, perhaps they are the supermodels of tomorrow. Or perhaps not. According to Ellen von Unwerth, the celebrated photographer who discovered Claudia Schiffer, there may be no more supermodels as we know them. “Of course there are new faces, and there will be new generations of sexy, pretty girls. But I’m not looking for the `next Claudia’ or the `next Cindy.’ The times are different and so are the women.”
Designer Cynthia Rowley agrees. “I no longer think in terms of supermodels. It’s about character and personality and who you are. I’m interested in new, quirky, unknown women for my shows.”
Perhaps the whole concept of “supermodeldom” is a social artifact of another era. Once upon a recent time the models represented beauty, glamor and perfection. Today, for many, they are icons of greed, excess, arrogance, vanity, materialism and selfishness.
In the end, perhaps the decline of the supermodels is simply, as Lagerfeld implied, the natural order of things. Time passes. Like youth and beauty nothing, not even a supermodel, lasts forever.
TOMORROW’S SUPERMODELS?
Supermodels may be out of vogue, but the fashion industry still needs beautiful women to walk its runways, pose for its magazines and sell clothes and cosmetics. Here are a few top faces of the new generation. Still anonymous to most, their names are already well known within the industry. If the Zeitgeist changes, they could lead a supermodel comeback.
Left: Brazilian Giselle Bundchen has modeled for Ralph Lauren, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and the major magazines. Right: Aurelie Claudel of France has appeared in Paris and British Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and modeled for Oscar de la Renta.
Angela Lindvall from Kansas City, Mo., has been photographed by Bruce Weber and Steven Meisel and appeared in a Prada ad campaign.
Fernanda Tavares of Brazil has been shot by Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier and has several ad campaigns set.
