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The supermodel craze has been further fueled by the explosion of media interest in the fashion world. Most newspapers now treat the semiannual fashion shows as celebrity events, and gossip columnists keep obsessively close track of how the leggy spend their evenings. "Style is covered on cnn and mtv," says the model and writer Veronica Webb. "It has been taken out of the rarefied environment of European runways and brought into living rooms in Atlanta. People don't even need to buy $5 fashion magazines anymore."
It was the mass marketing of fashion that first gave rise to the model as celebrated commodity. Once designers started licensing their names and manufacturing moderately priced "bridge" lines during the late 1970s and early '80s, clothes that conveyed status were no longer the province of the alite. Models like Brooke Shields started hawking jeans and became widely known personalities for doing so. There were famous models before Shields-from Suzy Parker to Twiggy to Lauren Hutton-but none until then had been featured in giant ads on bus shelters.
This mass marketing has changed the whole culture of modeling. Models of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, largely anonymous to the general public, traveled in aristocratic social circles. Whatever recognition they had came through their association with renowned photographers like Cecil Beaton and Man Ray. "Fashion has been taken down from its lofty standard," bemoans art historian Anne Hollander. Author Michael Gross notes, "[The '30s model] Hannah Lee Sherman was a debutante. She would never sit back and watch Johnny Depp rip up a hotel room [as girlfriend Kate Moss reportedly did]. The fashion world is no longer cultured."
As commercial entities, however, supermodels have never been more powerful. Their fame rubs off on the artists they favor. Photographer Sorrenti, who now regularly shoots for Harper's Bazaar and other magazines, landed the Obsession and Escape fragrance campaigns after his pictures of Kate Moss caught the eye of Calvin Klein. High-profile models also helped boost the career of highly regarded designer Anna Sui. "Linda and Naomi helped me a lot," she admits. "They got me a lot of other models. They had been wearing my clothes, and that's what gave me the confidence to go ahead and do my first show."
But not all designers are as enamored with supermodels. Geoffrey Beene, American fashion's patrician doyen, does not use them in his shows because he feels they eclipse the clothes. "Good design does not need expensive crutches," he asserts. "I prefer to view my clothes as visual and not performance art." Beene sees a shift in the attitude of supermodels. "I never felt that Twiggy saw herself as a superstar in the manner that some of the girls do today. The way it comes through in them is so evident and commercial and appalling. There was a mystery to Twiggy. There is no mystery to them."