by Deborah Ball
Then, after an imperceptible pause, the music shifted again, and George Michael’s “Freedom” rose over the sound system. Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Cindy Crawford stepped onto the runway together, wearing little Empire dresses with sweetheart necklines in black, red, and yellow. Arm in arm, the quartet strode down the stage followed by a bright spotlight, lip-synching the song and smiling broadly.
A roar went up from the audience and a hundred flashbulbs exploded as the photographers recognized the shot of the season. A few months earlier, George Michael had featured the four models in a six-minute video for his hit song. The clip, with lush images of Cindy lounging in a bathtub and Naomi dancing languidly, had become the hottest video of the year. The women’s fame had been soaring over the past year. Gianni’s spectacular show took the four and pushed them—and him—to a new peak. Gianni was not just dressing celebrities but also making celebrities of the models who wore his clothes.
Until about 1990, top models like Naomi, Christy, and Linda wouldn’t have dreamed of walking a runway. Traditionally, modeling was divided into two separate camps. Runway models had bodies—good shoulders, small waists, boyishly slim hips, and extra long legs—that flattered designers’ clothes, but their faces usually weren’t pretty enough to appear in magazine ads. In turn, the models who did the magazines had gorgeous faces but were rarely thin and long enough to carry off tiny runway samples. Moreover, designers paid far too little to tempt the women onto the runway. In the late 1980s, Christy earned about $800,000 for twelve days’ work selling Maybelline cosmetics.1 A Milan fashion show paid about 1.5 million lire, the equivalent of $1,000. All the urgency and sweat of a live runway show wasn’t worth the top models’ time and money.
But Donatella, already busily seducing celebrities into the Versace fold, spotted an opportunity. In the late 1980s, she recognized that a trio of new women—Christy, Naomi, and Linda—were attracting media attention in a way that had never occurred for models before. Looking for new fodder, celebrity reporters turned their sights on the three new models, who were quickly dubbed “the trinity.”
The first of the three to be discovered had been Christy, a California-born daughter of a pilot and a former flight attendant of Salvadoran descent. With clean, intelligent looks that exemplified an idea of sophisticated American beauty, she became a favorite of Steven Meisel, an edgy photographer who was a protégé of Anna Wintour. The second, Linda, the daughter of a General Motors auto plant worker in Ontario who had sleek catlike looks, had seen her career take off after marrying the head of a powerful modeling agency, who promoted her to the top photographers, particularly Meisel.
The third woman, the youngest by several years, would one day eclipse her sisters to become a true superstar. Born on the wrong side of the Thames River in south London, Naomi Campbell was raised by a single mother, an exotic dancer of Jamaican origin. As a teen, she aspired to become a dancer herself, and her mother scrimped to send her willowy daughter to dance school in central London. One day in 1985, when Naomi was buying tap shoes in London’s West End, a model agent spotted the fifteen-year-old. When she got a glimpse of Naomi’s warm, toffee-colored skin, Asian eyes, and thousand-watt smile, lightning struck. Not long after, Naomi made her debut in the British edition of Elle. She had turned up at the shoot with just two smudgy Polaroids, but the editor was bewitched.
Soon after, at a shoot in London, Naomi met Christy. “She was in a high school uniform,” Christy recalled later. “She was really cute.”2 When Naomi moved to New York, Christy helped her meet the top magazine editors and photographers, including Meisel. By 1988, Meisel began shooting Naomi, Christy, and Linda together. It was a potent mix. Not all models look right together, but these women’s different looks complemented one another. Soon magazines were booking them together.
By then, Naomi was becoming a darling of New York’s nightlife, hitting as many as five parties and clubs in an evening and drawing tabloid attention for her colorful personal life. In 1987, at just seventeen, she met heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, and they secretly began dating. When she made their relationship official by appearing ringside at one of his fights in early 1989, the media interest was tremendous. If her affair with Tyson nudged her into the media glare, her subsequent relationship with Robert De Niro put her there full-time. In September 1990, she became the first black woman to grace the cover of the September issue of Vogue, the most important issue of the year, with its feature on fall fashion.3 To the paparazzi’s delight, Naomi, Christy, and Linda often hit the clubs together.
Christy introduced Naomi to Donatella, who saw that the models offered a golden opportunity if she could tap the tabloids’ insatiable interest in them for her own purposes. Moreover, the trio’s popularity with the most influential photographers and magazine editors was the ticket to goosing editorial coverage of her brother’s clothes in America.
“Gianni, we have to bring these girls over for the runway shows,” she told him excitedly after returning home from one trip to New York. “They are incredibly hot. We have to book them for the shows.”
“You must be nuts!” he told his sister. “Look at them! They don’t have the bodies for the runway. How would I ever dress them?”4 Indeed, all three women had ample breasts, hips, and bottoms—nothing like traditional catwalk models. They also had no idea how to do the quirky runway walk, where a woman slings her hips forward and keeps her buttocks tucked tightly under. Compounding the issue was their agents’ resistance to Donatella’s offer.
“It was nearly impossible to get the girls to come over because the pay was so low and because a lot of the girls were too big,” said David Brown, a top model agent who started working in Milan in 1981. “Plus, the runway shows weren’t important in terms of publicity for them.”5
But Donatella’s sixth sense was right. According to Nunzio Palamara, an early Versace employee, “Donatella was always traveling, while Gianni went to Como for the weekend. It was Donatella who brought Kate Moss,” the famously waifish British model. “Gianni said, ‘Who is this shrimp?’ And Donatella said, ‘You’ll see. In two years, you’ll be asking me to get her at any cost.’”6
Donatella began lobbying the three models’ agents, promising triple and beyond the going rate for runway shows. She had by then become friendly with the trinity, hitting the clubs and parties with them in New York. She promised them perks unheard of for models: flights in the Concorde, the best suites (never a simple room) at Milan’s five-star hotels, free clothes, cars, and drivers at their disposal. Once she got them to visit Milan, Donatella treated them to a few days in the luxury of Villa Fontanelle, parties and dinners at her private apartment, and nights out at Milan’s hottest discotheques. The women soon acquiesced.
Their appearance in Versace’s shows ushered in what would become the supermodel era, making them first-name-only famous. To this Rat Pack, Donatella added other models: Carla Bruni, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer (an ethereal German blonde whose agent had refused to let her appear in George Michael’s “Freedom” video), and Cindy Crawford. Not all of the women were naturals on the runway: Despite the best efforts of Versace’s team, they couldn’t break Schiffer of her awkward lope.
“We used to have to put Claudia in flat shoes because she didn’t know how to walk,” Angelo Azzena said. “She was an ugly duckling. She would get to the end of the runway, make her turn, and it was like, ‘Where am I?’ But Gianni didn’t care. She was on the cover of American Vogue.”7
Soon after the March 1991 show, Gianni and Donatella began squeezing every bit of juice out of the supermodel phenomenon. They staged bread-and-circus shows for the press in which they would send as many as six supermodels down the runway at once. Gianni hired photographers to take shots of him with the models backstage in their showstopping dresses alongside their Versace-clad famous boyfriends—images his press office fed to eager newspapers. The supermodels and celebrities would then head next door for a party at Gianni’s
home, where the powerful editors of magazines had an up-close-and-personal view of the couture dresses in all their glory.
“There was champagne and caviar everywhere, and the girls were there with their celebrity boyfriends,” recalled one fashion journalist. “Claudia Schiffer and David Copperfield, Stephanie Seymour and Axl Rose, Linda Evangelista and Kyle MacLachlan. The buzz was amazing.”8
The models adored the exuberant Gianni, who treated them like princesses, flattering and joking with them backstage. While other designers paid little attention to their models, Gianni personally thanked each of them after a show. “Sei bellissima!” (“You are so beautiful!”) he told one after another, pulling them over to join him while he gave television interviews. He surprised them with gifts for their birthdays and wrote them warm notes when they had personal problems. Donatella sent them to the boutique on Via Montenapoleone, where they giddily grabbed armfuls of free dresses. (Designers doled out so many free dresses to the models that most of them had racks of unworn clothes in their closets, the tags still hanging from them.)
“I understand them,” Donatella said of her models after a 1995 party she threw in the Ritz discotheque to celebrate them. “Linda is the most difficult—she has to have her say on everything, from the light to the photographer. But with me, she’s wonderful.”9
Egged on by Donatella, Gianni paid the top models as much as fifty thousand dollars to appear exclusively on his catwalk, sending the total cost of an individual show to hundreds of thousands of dollars, including travel, hotels, and free clothes. Other designers complained bitterly that Gianni was driving the costs up for everyone. His shows were getting so much press that everyone had to play the same game. Armani, in particular, found Gianni’s supermodel fixation vexing. He scrupulously chose anonymous models who would never eclipse his clothes. Years earlier, he had hired Iman, the splendid Somalian model, for one show, but he abruptly canceled her for a second show when he saw that the audience paid more attention to her than the Armani clothes she was wearing.10 “I refuse to pay figures like that,” Armani snapped to journalists in 1994. “It’s an ethical question. There are people who live for an entire year on amounts like that.”11
The models abetted the cost escalation. “Gianni had endless pots of money,” said Carole White, Naomi’s agent at the time. “The Concorde became a status symbol. An agent would say to a designer, ‘Well, Gianni is Concording her in. Why can’t you?’ These girls got anything they wanted.”12 In the end, most designers couldn’t resist the frenzied press coverage that came with the supermodels. (After one Chanel show, Schiffer needed four bodyguards to fend off the paparazzi and reach her car.13) So a bidding war ensued.
“It got bigger and bigger because they were outbidding themselves,” recalled Christy. “Every year I thought, I can’t make more than this, but every year I almost doubled my income.”14
The models’ agents began demanding that magazines name the models in the photos, and they wanted approval over photographers, makeup artists, and hairdressers. In the September 1991 issue of Vogue, Linda alone had thirty pages and the cover. “We don’t vogue—we are Vogue,” she told a magazine that year. “We have this expression, Christy and I: We don’t wake up for less than ten thousand dollars a day.”
While that last remark brought down a rain of catcalls, for Gianni the glorification of the supermodel did more to entice the American public than millions of dollars in advertising could achieve.
“Before, it was, ‘Who is this Versace guy?’” said celebrity stylist Wayne Scot Lukas. “They used to pronounce his name Ver-sayse. But then people knew him because those girls who wouldn’t get up for less than ten thousand dollars a day chose his clothes. The lifestyle of these people made it something really fabulous.15
Of the original trinity, Gianni’s favorite was Naomi Campbell. She became a muse for him. On her lithe five-foot-nine frame and pert thirty-four-inch bust, his show-stopping dresses looked fabulous. Her dance training helped her move like a natural star on Gianni’s runway, her slinky walk beyond compare. “She’s simply the greatest catwalk model ever,” said one fashion editor. “When she’s on the runway, you literally cannot take your eyes off her.”16
But Naomi was notoriously difficult to deal with. Over the years, her tantrums were breathtaking in their vitriol and violence. Several personal assistants charged that she was violent and abusive with them. Court-ordered anger-management classes had little effect on the belligerent supermodel. Once, when yet another assistant sued her for assault, Naomi posed for paparazzi wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Naomi Hit Me” across the front.
After enduring her many demands, Naomi’s agents lost their patience. When she decided to dump one agent, he blasted her publicly. “No amount of money or prestige could further justify the abuse that has been imposed on our staff and clients,” he wrote in a press release. But the constant blaze of headlines about her latest dustup or new celebrity boyfriend—among them U2 bassist Adam Clayton, Sylvester Stallone, and Eric Clapton—only served to jack up her notoriety. And the more outlandish her behavior, the more she earned. Her burgeoning drug habit amplified her volatile personality. She first tried coke when she was twenty-four while attending a concert. “It made me feel invincible, like I could conquer the world,” she once said. But in the 1990s, her habit would worsen.17
With Gianni, Naomi was different. She felt coddled and protected by Gianni and the Versace clan. He invited her to the villa in Como when he thought she needed some rest. He tended to her personally backstage before a show. Once, he hired the DJ from a hot Milan disco popular with the supermodels to come to Via Gesù to entertain Naomi and the others at home. In turn, she never turned up late for his shows and spared him her explosive temper.
“She trusted Gianni totally, which for Naomi was a big deal,” said White. “She wants to be looked after and loved and he did that. He gave her the attention she craved.”18
“Gianni was wonderful to us,” Naomi recalled. “He fed us, he used to ask us if we felt okay, if we needed any help. He didn’t treat us like cattle. He treated us like individuals. If something didn’t fit or the shoes hurt, we could tell him. I used to get so nervous for his shows because I wanted to do my best for him.”19
Naomi and Donatella were close. Naomi sent Donatella to her hairdresser in New York, who did weaves and extensions for such stars as Iman and Whitney Houston. Once, at about 2 a.m. the night before a Versace show, Naomi was coming back to the Four Seasons with Linda Evangelista when she bashed into a glass door and broke a tooth.
“When Linda saw me, she started to freak,” Naomi recalled. “They wouldn’t let me look in the mirror and kept telling me it was only chipped. But it was broken half off.” The two women immediately called Gianni and Donatella.
“The next thing I knew, Gianni and Donatella were standing over me looking at my tooth,” Naomi said. Even in the middle of the night, “Donatella was dressed immaculately in this patent leather trench coat.”20 Donatella promptly got her own dentist out of bed at dawn and insisted he see Naomi right away. At the dentist’s office, Donatella, Naomi’s agent, and a Versace bodyguard were sitting outside the examination room when they heard a ruckus inside. A nurse, clearly shaken up, emerged. “I think someone had better come in,” she said. Donatella rushed in to find Naomi trying to wriggle out of the dentist’s chair as the doctor approached with a large needle. “Help! Help!” she screamed. Donatella managed to calm Naomi down enough for the dentist to cap her tooth. Later that day, she looked perfect on the runway.21
In 1994, one lucky event showed just how powerful the mix of models, celebrity, and high fashion could be in Gianni’s hands. That year, Gianni had an idea for a little black dress with daring slits, and he had his seamstresses cut one frock from under the arm down to the hip on each side. A seamstress used safety pins to hold the sides of the dress together on the mannequin while she worked. Gianni was struck by the effect. He had an assistant make oversized gilt safet
y pins with medusa heads stamped on the closures. He placed the pins along the sides of the dress and down the front of the deep décolleté. With the precariously placed safety pins and deep slashes, the dress was a coy, punk-inspired interpretation of the classic little black dress, a mix of high style and tough street fashion.
Versace PR people sent the collection to London to be photographed by the UK magazines. One day, Phyllis Walters, Versace’s publicist in London, heard from a friend who worked in public relations and was trying to drum up publicity for the red-carpet premiere that evening of a small new film, Four Weddings and a Funeral. “There is this rather good-looking guy who is starring in the film,” she told Phyllis. “His name is Hugh Grant. What do you think about dressing him tonight?”22
Walters had Grant try on several Versace tuxedos, but none fit because the actor was quite thin at the time. But Grant had brought along his girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley, a little-known model. “Is there anything here that I could wear tonight?” she asked, rummaging through the rack of clothes in Walters’s office. She pulled out the safety pin dress and put it on. Walters and her assistants stopped to stare. Hurley looked stunning. The sample had been worn on the runway by Helena Christensen. Hurley, at five foot eight, had a similar figure, with an ample bust, flat stomach, and slim hips.
“We were all staring at her,” Walters recalled. “She had no makeup on, her hair was tied back. She was in flat shoes. But she looked absolutely amazing.” Walters immediately phoned two paparazzi photographers. “Listen, I know you’re going to be looking for Hugh, but you need to focus on the girlfriend,” she told them. “I promise you. You’ll make a fortune.”
