From: pcg@panix.com (Paul Gallagher)
Newsgroups: alt.supermodels
Subject: Article about Linda
Date: 9 Nov 92 19:31:41 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC



The  best  in  the world. 
 Fennell, Tom
 Maclean's  v104 p36(5) Dec 9, 1991

     The giant neon signs blinking over New York City's Times Square
promote the titans of world commerce: Coca-Cola, Sony and Kodak. And on one
recent evening, as the polluted sky darkened behind the swirls of color,
hundreds of people stopped and gazed up as another huge billboard was
unveiled. When the curtains parted, the partially naked body of Linda
Evangelista, one of the world's most beautiful women, appeared. The image
of the sultry supermodel dressed only in skintight pants and high heels
drew an audible gasp and applause from the crowd below, while
Evangelista--the real flesh-and-blood version--stood nearby in a blaze of
camera lights. For 26-year-old Evangelista, who just seven years ago was a
struggling model in St. Catharines, Ont., the image towering behind her was
more than just another glamorous high-fashion ad. In many ways, it
symbolized her remarkable journey to the very pinnacle of the international
fashion industry. Said Rocco Laspata, one of New York's top fashion
photographers: "Linda is incredibly beautiful. Her face is one in a hundred
million. She is a phenomenon."

     Evangelista has soared to a level previously attained only by such
legendary models as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, who defined fashion and
became cult heroes during the 1960s. As the presence of the throng beneath
her hot billboard testified, Evangelista has achieved a celebrity status
rivalling even the salacious pop star Madonna. In North America and Europe,
legions of women slavishly mimic the model's sense of style: earlier this
year, when she dyed her hair from blond to red, and then black, they
followed. And when she appears on the runway and in advertisements in
expensive clothes, designers bank on her appeal to sell their merchandise.
The classically beautiful olive-skinned face of the model regularly graces
the covers of the world's leading fashion magazines. Inside, her image
dominates page after page of advertising and editorial copy. And unlike
other internationally renowed models who hold the public's attention by
cavorting with notorious rock stars or actors, Evangelista has achieved
success by marrying her beautiful face to an almost compulsive need to
excel. "I was always obsessed with fashion--with the magazines, the models
and the poses," she said. "Now, Arab princes want to marry me."

     But despite her superstar status, Evangelista has cloaked her personal
life in secrecy. Little has been written about her, and the iron control
that she exerts over her public image has, for the most part, kept her out
of the tabloid gossip pages. But in an exclusive interview with Maclean's
in a noisy bistro in Manhattan's SoHo district, she described her
remarkable journey from aspiring teenage through her early rejections by
major New York fashion houses and, ultimately, to her current reign as one
of the world's top models. Modelling has made her a multimillionaire, and
she travels constantly among her assignments and homes in New York and
Paris, and her spectacular villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

     'Beautiful': The five-foot, 9 1/2-inch, 125-lb. model receives
hundreds of fan letters every month and is at the top of the guest list
when leading fashion designers, including Valentino and Gianni Versace,
throw a party. And even though many models find their careers at an end
when they reach their early 20s, Evangelista's may just be taking off. "She
is more beautiful than she has ever been," said Laspata. "She is going to
be around for a long time to come. She gets more beautiful all the time."

     Evangelista, who agonizes that time is rapidly destroying her
multimillion-dollar face, appears to be battling the onslaught of age by
remaining in constant motion. She says that she works more than 300 days a
year. Occasionally, she will even work in Paris in the early morning before
flying the supersonic Concorde to an afternoon shoot in New York. The
world's major designers fuel her torturous schedule and grand ambitions
because Evangelista has proven time and again that people will buy the
clothes that she models. And she proudly boasts that her fashion
photographs are being purchased by art collectors in Europe, while leading
fashion photographers battle to promote themselves by working with her.
Said Lisa Herzog, vice-president of New York-based Elite Modelling
Management Corp., the world's largest modelling agency: "Linda is simply
the absolute best. She is like an actress in front of the camera."

     Glamorous: Evangelista's remarkable rise to the top of the fashion
world coincides with the sudden emergence of the world's top three or four
models as glamorous international celebrities in their own right.
Toronto-based Flare magazine style director Nancy Jane Hastings, who has
covered the fashion industry in Paris, Milan and New York, said that the
rise of top models as stars follows the decline of glamor in Hollywood.
Said Hastings: "Films just are not what they used to be as a vehicle for
glamor and fantasy. But fashion is still firmly rooted in fantasy." She
added: "The star models are also more accessible, because you buy into the
fantasy by buying the clothes they are wearing."

     At the same time, members of a tiny club of models that includes
Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford are commanding ever
increasing salaries, and some are earning more than $1 million annually in
the multibillion-dollar fashion industry. And even rapidly rising young
models like 20-year-old Yasmeen Ghauri of Montreal can command $5,000 for
an afternoon's work (page 41). While Evangelista is reluctant to discuss
her income, Women's Wear Daily, the respected New York-based trade
newspaper, reported that last year, Lanvin, a major European fashion house,
paid Evangelista a record $20,000 to model its clothes over an afternoon.
The paper also reported that she routinely earns about $6,000 a show. At
the same time, Evangelista earns about $750 an hour doing fashion
advertisement shoots, but an exclusive arrangement for a series of ads such
as those she recently completed for Chanel could easily cost $50,000, and
her personal endorsement of a cosmetic or fashion line could top $500,000.
"I have become bigger than the product," said Evangelista. "I never thought
it would be like this. I'm amazed."

     Force: Just how powerful a force she has become in the modelling world
was underscored in Manhattan in September at Elite's Look of the Year
contest. The pageant is a massive talent hunt to find the world's most
striking teenage models--many of whom were discovered by top model agents
like Toronto's Elmer Olsen (page 42). Included in the crowd in the grand
ballroom of the Plaza Hotel were New York financier Donald Trump and his
then-girlfriend, starlet Marla Maples. British-born supermodel Naomi
Campbell, the event's co-host, drew heated applause when she appeared
wearing a see-through black lace body stocking. And many members of the
audience were distracted by controversial musician Axl Rose of the rock
group Guns N' Roses, who was passionately kissing fashion and Playboy
magazine model Stephanie Seymour.

     But when Evangelista suddenly emerged from a corner hallway, the room
momentarily went silent. Unlike many of the models in attendance, she did
not require a scandalous dress or a controversial escort to draw the camera
lenses towards her. Instead, she wore a glamorous black Chanel suit that
was buttoned to her collarbone. And even though scores of celebrity
photographers immediately surrounded her and pushed her back towards a
wall, she remained in complete control. The only sign of weakness was a
plaintive cry to her husband, 41-year-old Gerald Marie--Elite's European
president--"not to leave me."

     Influence: Two weeks later, at a party at the Hudson Theatre near
Times Square, Evangelista was again the centre of attention--this time
celebrating the incredible financial influence that her image commands. She
had just arrived from the unveiling of the Kenar Enterprises Ltd.
billboard, which was erected as part of a new advertising campaign for
Kenar, a New York-based fashion house. Kenar owner Kenneth Zimmerman said
that because Laspata was working with Kenar, and is a close friend of
Evangelista's, the model agreed to work with his firm. "It's impossible to
get her," said Zimmerman. "She has increased our sales dramatically." Added
Laspata: "It's been incredible. Even men come into the stores looking at
T-shirts--anything with Linda on it."

     As the city's high-fashion set drank champagne and congratulated
Zimmerman on his stunning coup, Evangelista made an entrance into the
Hudson Theatre that seemed in keeping more with royalty than the fashion
industry. Surrounded by bodyguards, she moved in lockstep with almost 30
photographers in tow. Each time she stopped, the enraptured crowd ignored
her escort and squeezed tightly around her, as if trying to fathom the
mystery of Evangelista's great beauty. On three occasions, she was forced
to retreat to the theatre's upper balcony, where she regrouped before
descending into the anxious throng again.

     Rejection: But Evangelista, dressed in a flowered sundress, sipping
lemonade and toying with a tuna salad in the SoHo restaurant, told
Maclean's that her enormous popularity has been a complete surprise. She
found herself in modelling almost by accident and, once there, often met
with rejection. She said that when she was 7 and growing up in a big
Italian Roman Catholic family in a middle-class area of St. Catharines, her
mother, Marisa, enrolled her in dance lessons and, a few years later, a
self-improvement course, which included modelling lessons. "I would do a
little local fashion show," said Evangelista. "I got paid $20." Recalled
her mother: "Even when she was 13 years old, I knew she would be good at
it. She was always dressing up. When we saw the potential there, her father
and I backed her."

     Fate would single out Evangelista again a few years later, when
friends persuaded her to enter the Miss Teen Niagara contest. "I didn't
expect to win and I didn't even place," said Evangelista. But in the
audience that evening was a modelling scout from the nearby Buffalo, N.Y.,
area. He was just one of hundreds across North America who attend amateur
talent and fashion shows in the hope of finding a beautiful young face.
     Three years later, the 18-year-old Evangelista completed Grade 12 and
started down the path taken by hundreds of aspiring Canadian models. She
travelled to New York with her mother--and at her parents' expense--to be
photographed in test shoots organized by Elite. Like scores of other
would-be models, she found New York's highly competitive fashion scene all
but impossible to break into, and few photographers there were willing to
work with her. Evangelista's elegant European looks also worked against her
in New York, where the industry at the time was paying a premium for perky
all-American blondes with pouty lips.

     Marisa Evangelista said that she and her husband, Thomas, who works as
a tool setter at General Motors of Canada Ltd. in the southern Ontario
city, had given their daughter one year to make it in the fashion business
or she would have to return to St. Catharines and continue her education.
Faced with rejection in New York and her parents' threat hanging over her,
Evangelista left for Paris, where her classic looks were immediately more
in demand. Still, she says, her career was hardly exploiding. "I thought I
was doing good," she recalled. "I started working, doing mediocre jobs for
$650."

     But her luck started to turn in 1985 when an editor of the French
edition of Vogue sent her to top fashion photographer Arthur Elgort.
Editors at British Vogue saw the pictures and were intrigued enough to use
Evangelista. It was then that she started to build her reputation as a
versatile, hardworking model--and when she developed the working philosophy
that would help propel her to great fashion heights. "The idea is to be
good over and over and over," she said. "Over the past five years, the
photographers I've been with are all at the top."

     Evangelista is the first model of her generation--and perhaps the
first since British model Jean Shrimpton revolutionized the fashion
industry in the early 1960s--to have a dramatic impact on the industry.
With her eyes hidden behind outrageously long eyelashes, and dressed in
miniskirts and leather boots, Shrimpton quickly became emblematic of the
1960s "mod" look. And in 1966, a model named Leslie Hornby, an impossibly
thin teenager from London with vapid blue eyes, became known around the
world as Twiggy. Women everywhere dieted and cropped their hair to match
Twiggy's bobbed blond look.

     In the following two decades, other models, including Cheryl Tiegs and
Christie Brinkley, climbed to prominence and managed to stay in the public
eye by developing fashion lines and cosmetics. Others, including Cybill
Shepherd and Lauren Hutton, drifted into acting. Many of the current top
young models are holding the public's short attention span by appearing in
Playboy magazine or by linking themselves to other celebrities. Before
model Stephanie Seymour took up with Axl Rose, she dated actor Warren
Beatty. And supermodel Cindy Crawford has been the constant companion of
actor Richard Gere for some time.

     Controversial: But it is more than beauty, hard work and a highly
developed sense of style that has propelled Evangelista into the spotlight.
Like Madonna, who regularly captures attention with her scandalous
behavior, Evangelista has kept her image fresh, controversial and--by
high-fashion standards--radical by simply cutting and dyeing her hair. She
explained that three years ago, Peter Lindbergh, a friend and leading
fashion photographer, convinced her to cut her shoulder-length brown hair,
which she later dyed blond.

     The results were instantaneous--and unexpected. Thousands of women
around the world quickly followed suit, and the fashion press treated
Evangelista's new haircut the way the Hollywood press treats Madonna's
latest rock video. Said New York makeup artist Francois Nars, who helped
design Evangelista's new look: "We cut her hair and dyed it and that's what
made her famous. She was the new Twiggy. Everybody wanted that hair."

     With her blond hair sending tremors through the fashion industry,
Evangelista decided last June to go back to her natural brown color, but
before doing so she wanted to be a redhead for a while. "I had blond hair
for nine months," she said. "I did everything I wanted as a blonde." With
her hair red, startled fashion houses and magazines rushed to sigh her to
new and even more lucrative contracts. In Vogue's 622-page fall-fashion
special alone, Evangelista's penetrating blue-green eyes flashed not only
from the cover, but from more than 30 editorial pages as well. "They went
wild because it was so unexpected," she said. "But in fashion, hemlines get
long and people get bored and then the designers bring them up. It's the
same thing with hair."

     Like Madonna, Evangelista has also developed a reputation for being
temperamental. In fact, W magazine last year bestowed on Evangelista the
dubious honor of listing her in their "bitch" category, which also included
former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos. But many of those close to her
say that people are confusing her determined and occasionally contentious
efforts to control her public image with stubbornness and bitchiness. Said
leading New York fashion photographer Garth Aikens: "They all talk about
Linda because they envy her success." Added Nars: "She is very tough but
very professional, and she expects you to be 100-per-cent good all the
time."
     Evangelista acknowledges that she has a reputation for being tough.
But she adds that she has to be firm because she treats herself as a
business that can be destroyed if the product goes downhill. Said
Evangelista: "I do my job really well and I never make mistakes, and I
expect people to do their jobs as well as I do." She added: "I'm tough on
people, but if they put a bad picture of me out there, people are going to
say, 'Oh, Linda doesn't look so good.' I have to watch out for myself."

     For the most part, Evangelista has managed to maintain a scandal-free
reputation in an industry that worships sex and glamor. But she said that
in April, 1990, when she visited the Roxy, a huge nightclub in lower
Manhattan, she realized just how much she was in the public eye. The Roxy
has a giant swing that hangs from the ceiling in the middle of the dance
floor. With photographers present, Evangelista climbed aboard, while her
close friend, supermodel Christy Turlington, straddled her with her
miniskirt hiked well up her thighs. The inevitable photographs of the two
appeared in the city's tabloids the following Monday. Evangelista declined
to discuss the incident, saying only: "That was the only time I went out
that year. But every time I pick up a paper now, they tell me where I've
had lunch."

     Rumors: Shortly after the swing incident, rumors circulated that
Evangelista and Turlington were having a lesbian affair. But Evangelista
told Maclean's that she and Turlington started the rumor themselves because
they were amazed by the media's intense interest in their lives. She added
that the rumor spread quickly and that the pair were actually "outed," a
term used to describe the practice of some homosexual-oriented magazines to
publish the names of people whom they believe are homosexuals, but who have
not publicly acknowledged it. "We started the rumor," said Evangelista,
"but I'm totally straight."

     Unlike Twiggy or Shrimpton, Evangelista has not attempted to shock the
public into paying attention to her. In fact, she says that she has
deliberately avoided appearing in such sensational vehicles as Sports
Illustrated magazine's fabulously successful annual swimsuit edition. "I
always try to keep the job down to selling a product, not myself," she
said. "I would not do Sports Illustrated--I don't try to sell my body. A
picture might slip out here and there, but I always try to keep it very
tasteful."

     While such top models as Seymour and Crawford are part of the
Hollywood celebrity circuit, Evangelista has followed a more traditional
course. In July, 1987, she married Marie at St. Alfred's Catholic church,
which she had attended every Sunday for most of her life in St. Catharines.
And despite seeing her husband little more than one weekend a month, she
said that she is deeply in love with him. "He is the only real relationship
that I have ever had," said Evangelista. The model added that she longs for
a quiet life free of airports and the pressure that comes from matching one
beautiful image after another, but she added that she does not want to
settle down and raise a family at this time--although, she says, her
husband would like to. "I don't think you can make your lover or your
partner happy unless you're happy yourself," she said. "But I know that
some day we will live happily ever after."

     Renovation: When they do get together, they usually meet at one of
their four homes around the world. She spent much of August with her
husband at their villa on a cliff on Ibiza. And she says that when she is
in Paris, she oversees the renovation of a small mansion that they bought
in the city's suburbs. Meanwhile, she is selling her apartment on the
French island of Saint-Tropez. But much of her time is spent in her loft
apartment in Manhattan's gallery district, which Evangelista has filled
with antiques and stained glass.

     While her beautiful skin still appears as flawless as a schoolgirl's,
Evangelista says that she can already see the end of her career. "There is
a clock hanging over my head," she said. "I may not have the option of
doing this job in 10 years, so I'm trying to make the best of it now." But
Elite's Herzog said that while Evangelista will not be liable to beat the
clock, she may benefit from an aging population that no longer wants to
pick their clothes off the backs of 20-year-old models. As a result, she
may be able to extend her career longer than many great models have in the
past. But even if her reign as the world's top model ends suddenly--and
soon--she maintains that she would be satisfied. "I just wanted to be a
model and a really good one," said Evangelista. "I've been around for seven
years, and that's more than I prayed for."

     TOM FENNELL in New York City

         COPYRIGHT Maclean Hunter Ltd. (Canada) 1991

Plus, an anecdote about Leeenda:

excerpted from an article about hairdresser Oribe Canales.
Hair force. 
 Sporkin, Elizabeth
 People Weekly  v36 p61(2) Sept 16, 1991

     As he transformed models into cover girls, Oribe befriended them --
but the relationships have proved high maintenance. At an Azzedine Alaia
show in Paris, Oribe gave Linda Evangelista a Sophia Loren do, then made
the mistake of repeating the style on a lesser model. "Five minutes before
the show, they call me into the bathroom," Oribe recalls. "There's Linda,
with her head under the spigot, having a fit. She says, `If you don't
change that girl's hair, I'm putting my head under water.' " The other
model got a new look, and Oribe preserved his high-profile friendship.
Newsgroups: alt.supermodels,soc.women,alt.feminism,soc.men