NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/alt/supermod/1734

Text File | 1992-11-11 | 9.7 KB | 182 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Paul Gallagher)
Subject: Yet another article, this time about Linda, Christy, and Naomi
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 23:48:42 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Keywords: not very interesting...
Lines: 171


A   night   with  the  cover  girls.
 Sporkin, Elizabeth
 People Weekly  v33 p44(8) June 11, 1990

     Cruising Manhattan in a stretch limousine. Learning the latest dance
steps from New York City street toughs and transvestites. A visit to an
after-hours club, then back into the limo and home before dawn. Face it, it
may not be your typical Saturday night. But when designer clothes, exotic
travel, constant attention and carloads of cash are all in a day's work --
and you're only in your 20s -- nothing beats a long evening of eclectic
thrill seeking. Top models and best friends Naomi Campbell, Linda
Evangelista and Christy Turlington recently allowed PEOPLE to go along for
a night on the town.

     The dinner reservation at Punsch, New York City's hot spot of the
moment, is for 9. But a hair crisis has delayed Naomi, Linda and Christy by
45 minutes -- a little problem likely to cost less extraordinary customers
their table for the evening. Yet this threesome isn't the least bit
worried. "They'll let us in," says the London-born Campbell in a chirpy
British accent. "We make their restaurant."

     Sure enough, the icy maitre d' turns to Jell-O as the three cover
girls in skintight Azzedine Alaias prance into the white-walled Manhattan
restaurant. Minutes later, Viscount Linley, son of Princess Margaret and
Anthony Armstrong-Jones, ambles over for an introduction as the models pick
at Caesar salads and pasta appetizers. Ah, to be young, rich, gorgeous and
in demand -- and to be best friends with women just like yourself.

     They may not have household names yet, but their faces are familiar to
anyone who reads the glossies. Turlington, 21, whose delicate features have
been compared to Audrey Hepburn's, is the gamine in the ads for Calvin
Klein's Eternity fragrance. Naomi and Linda say she is "the most fun" of
the three. Evangelista, 25, best known for her cropped haircut that started
an international shorter-is-better trend last year, is in the new Charlie
ads. The others call her the "mommy" of the group. And Campbell, the trio's
biggest ham, who turned 20 on May 22, was dubbed "the reigning megamodel of
them all" in last month's Interview magazine. Each earns more than $1
million a year, hobnobs with a crowd that could curdle Robin Leach's
caviar, and holds the power to sell a skintight frock to the wrong buyer --
a gift not lost on them. "I have that dress," meows Naomi of a thigh-high
Isaac Mizrahi mini that looks lumpy on a woman at the next table. "Now I'll
never wear it again."

     She doesn't have to -- at home Naomi has a closet bulging with
designer clothes, so she can just toss the dress if she's tired of it. What
isn't disposable is this friendship -- an anomaly in the belle-eat-belle
world of high fashion. Turlington first met Campbell four years ago at an
agency in London where Christy was modeling and Naomi was a 15-year-old
hopeful. "She was wearing her school uniform," Christy recalls. "The next
time I saw her, a few months later, she was on her own in Paris, dancing
until 4 A.M. I offered her my apartment when she came to New York." They
ended up sharing it for a year. Christy and Linda, meanwhile, hit it off at
fashion photographer Steven Meisel's midtown studio, and Naomi and Linda
met while on assignment in Paris.
     This is a bond that transcends even significant otherships. Since 1987
Canadian-born Linda has maintained a long-distance marriage to Paris-based
Gerald Marie, 39, who runs the French offices of the Elite modeling agency.
Christy keeps company in New York City and L.A. with her boyfriend of three
years, actor and screenwriter Roger Wilson, 32, whose initials are tattooed
on her right ankle. Naomi has been romantically linked -- inaccurately, she
insists -- with Mike Tyson and Robert De Niro. Breezing through life like
homecoming queens with New York City, Paris and Milan as their campuses,
the women were drawn to each other, Christy says, "because we became big at
the same time."

     In a group, they shed the sophisticated langueurs that earn them as
much as $10,000 a day and become three young women out for a good time.
"We're an Oreo cookie in reverse," says Naomi of her friends. "We're only a
third without each other." "They're crazy," says Meisel, a frequent
companion who refers to them collectively as the Ugly Sisters.

     On this particular warm Saturday night, he is sandwiched between them
in the back seat of a rented stretch limousine headed to an unlikely
destination: the Hudson River piers. No sooner has the driver pulled into
the parking lot than Campbell jumps out, asking the weekend crowd of
boom-box toters who congregate there, "What's the new dance?" At the sight
of such long legs and fabulous faces, dozens of free-spirited street people
shift into an Arthur Murray mode, launching into a revival of the bus stop,
a '70's craze. "1-2-1-2-1-2-slide-2!" they yell.
"Slide-jump-jump-turn-slide!" Christy trips; "I'm confused," she twitters.
Linda can't seem to loosen up. "Let your body go," someone tells her.
Fearless Naomi has the group cheering. "Do it! Do it!"

     Campbell, whose mother was a contemporary ballet dancer, was a student
at the London Academy of Performing Arts when she was discovered by an
agency scout. She has had parts in the movies Quest for Fire and Pink
Floyd's The Wall, and played Julia, the girlfriend of Theo's friend Howard,
on The Cosby Show. (Like her two friends, she chose a high-paying modeling
career over college.)

     "Not every model wants to be an actress," says Christy, who dreams of
writing novels one day, though she concedes her prose style isn't exactly
the stuff bestsellers are made of. The daughter of a Pan Am pilot and a
Salvadoran airline flight attendant, she grew up in San Francisco and
Miami, where she was spotted by a Ford model scout at age 14. At 20, she
signed an exclusive three-year contract with Calvin Klein that reportedly
set a world record in modeling, bringing her a seven-figure income for
three months' work annually. Last year, however, Calvin bought out
Christy's contract, prompting rumors that she was fired. "Not true," says
Turlington. "The perfume company was sold, and my contract was
renegotiated."

     Evangelista is the daughter of a General Motors employee and a
housewife from Saint Catharines, Ont. Her first brush with modeling came at
age 16 as a contestant in a Miss Teen Niagara contest. "I didn't even
place," she says. "But a scout for Elite was in the audience, and he gave
me his card." Her career didn't really hit stride until 1988, when she had
her long hair cut at the urging of Paris hair oracle Julien d'Is. "It was
just a bowl with sideburns," shrugs Evangelista, who is now growing it out
again.

     Now the limo veers toward the seamy territory downtown, where the
models occasionally visit the transvestite men they know by names such as
"Cat's Eyes" and "Stephanie." West 14th Street is relatively deserted
tonight. Buoyed by the attention of the three famous faces, the corner
denizens form an ungainly chorus line, resulting in a
more-than-passing-strange rendition of the bus stop.

     Then it's on to one of those relentlessly hip clubs that change
locations each week. Tonight it's in Andy Warhol's one-time Factory
Building off Union Square. Dubbed "a freak show" by Christy, it attracts
preppies and drag queens alike. Inside, there is plenty of smoke but no
mirrors or much of anything else except a makeshift bar. There is, however,
a constant parade of exhibitionists -- some wrapped in feathers, others
harnessed in leather and, in one case, a man dressed mostly in appliqued
plastic bugs.

     By 2:30 A.M., the models, whose natural energies have been fortified
by nothing stronger than the wine they sipped at dinner, pile into the car
and head home. They won't see each other again for nine days, when they are
all scheduled to appear in Azzedine Alaia's fall fashion show in Paris.
Though Alaia is one of their favorites, they say runway work, which can be
tiring and not very visible, doesn't usually thrill them. "The main reason
we do fashion shows," says Campbell, rubbing Linda's aching feet, "is so we
can see each other."

     CAPTION: SUPERMODELS: ON THE TOWN

     CAPTION: Known to the fashion world for their high-gloss magazine
covers, modeling friends Naomi Campbell (left), Linda Evangelista and
Christy Turlington put on a different face for a Manhattan night on the
town.
     CAPTION: See above.

     CAPTION: At dinner, Viscount Linley tries an impromptu hello.

     CAPTION: The three share a limo with Steven Meisel.

     CAPTION: Naomi tweaks Linda's million-dollar nose.

     CAPTION: The party starts out over salads and pasta.

     CAPTION: The unhip are turned away from La Palace de Beaute, the club
of the hour, but this group slips right in.

     CAPTION: At 1 A.M. the models show some fancy footwork with
"Stephanie," a demi-monde habitue.

     CAPTION: Naomi signs an autograph on a pier hangout where the three go
to learn the newest dances.

     CAPTION: An in-the-know crowd gathers to teach the models the bus
stop. Naomi gets the hang of it right away.
     CAPTION: "What fun I had," says Naomi, hugging her friends goodbye at
2:45 A.M. in front of Christy's downtown apartment.

     CAPTION: "We don't vogue. We are vogue," says Linda, doing the dance
Madonna has popularized.

         COPYRIGHT Time Inc. 1990