The perfect storm of glamour, haute couture fashion, high-end product advertising, the launch of MTV and global exposure combined to create four women in the right place at the right time into the original Super Models – Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. It was they who were to set the rules for all who followed.
The Super Models over its four episodes follows the (public) lives and careers of these four icons as each, singularly and apart, talk directly to the camera. Along with archival footage and interviews with key peer fashionistas, the miniseries explores the impact the four had on the world of fashion in the late 1980s /early ’90s onwards – and the impact success had on them.
From the pages of magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bizarre et al, the four were the first to move to the catwalk. All the major houses demanded their services – Paris Fashion Week was seen as nothing without them. High fees were paid – but the paparazzi ensured global coverage. Naomi Campbell falling off her shoes on the Vivienne Westwood catwalk? Front page news around the world. Christy Turlington became the face of Calvin Klein, Cindy Crawford broke tradition and promoted Pepsi – and Linda Evangelista was seen as the most beautiful woman in the world. And then came the George Michael video for the song Freedom. There was no stopping them.
Admittedly, The Super Models is something of a ‘closed’ exploration – revealed is only what the four decide to reveal. Interviews with others generally accentuate the positive – even when a potentially contentious point is made, chances are that one of the four has already mentioned it, thus greenlighting the subject (racism, Evangelista’s abusive marriage, addiction). Now in their 50s, all four continue to be involved in the industry in their own way.
Whilst lacking incisive evaluation and avoiding flipping to the less glamourous aspects of the industry, it’s an immensely likeable, interesting skimming-the-surface insight. The four were great friends on the circuit – how much this has continued is moot as family and work pressures have kept them apart. Evangelista has also had more than her fair share of health problems which she talks about in the final episode of the fourparter.
Rating: 67%
Director: Larissa Bills (TV’s On Pointe), Roger Ross Williams (Life Animated, Stamped From the Beginning)
An Opinion or Two 