The ’80s and ’90s were a wild time
We later see the supers’ emergence onto the fashion scene when they were just teenagers – and some of the behaviour they were subjected to is truly startling. It runs the gamut from Cindy’s hair being cut off without her consent, to Naomi being photographed on a former slave plantation, to terrifying interactions with those at the top of their field. Naomi recalls an art director once touching her breasts on a shoot, while Linda speaks about going to Japan at the age of 16 on a modelling contract and being asked to do nude photos, and Christy talks about being coerced into showing her breasts for a portrait that she was later shocked to see on the cover of a magazine. “I can’t say I was so savvy the whole time,” the latter adds. “My mom would say, much later, ‘You were always going to be fine.’ But I don’t know if there was every guarantee that I’d be fine.” One of the series’s most disquieting moments also involves Christy, who remembers that her agency, Ford, had her stay at the prominent model agent Jean-Luc Brunel’s apartment when working in Paris. Following abuse allegations, Brunel was banned from his modelling agency in Europe and went on to launch a new venture with the backing of Jeffrey Epstein. He was eventually charged with the rape of minors, but died from an apparent suicide before his trial. “I look back and I think, I can’t believe that I’m okay,” says Christy.
Naomi’s relationship with Azzedine Alaïa sustained her early on
When she was 16 and working in Paris alone, Naomi’s bag was stolen, with all her travellers’ cheques inside. A fellow model took pity on her and took her out to dinner, and it was there that she met the man who’d become her surrogate father, whom she’d call “papa”: Azzedine Alaïa. She did a fitting with the visionary, after which he spoke to her mother on…
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