The Return of the Supermodel?

[congacon]

commercially i would pick giselle, cindy and claudia as the 3 biggest models ever.

artistically/high fashion, i would pick kate, linda and daria as the 3 biggest models ever. i dont just judge on the volume but the also the quality of their works.

overall, queen giselle is the biggest supermodel ever!!!!!

 

[Wintergreen]

Gisele is nowhere near as popular as any of the Big 5 from the 90's. Well maybe more so than Christy Turlington but that's it.

 

[congacon]

Gisele is nowhere near as popular as any of the Big 5 from the 90's. Well maybe more so than Christy Turlington but that's it.

you must be kidding! the girl appears in more magazine covers than any model on the planet. and her campaigns are countless. on top of that she dated leo decaprio and is married to tom brady.

 

[anlabe32]

I get the feeling that Linda wasn't/isn't as popular as the other supers. She was mainly high fashion and thus not very interesting to the mainstream people. Maybe that's why you don't see her often anymore. She's aged horribly as well.

 

[katcty]

I get the feeling that Linda wasn't/isn't as popular as the other supers. She was mainly high fashion and thus not very interesting to the mainstream people. Maybe that's why you don't see her often anymore. She's aged horribly as well.

I think people underestimate the popularity of Linda and Christy. Linda was extremely popular during that time because she was always seen as the most skilled of the supermodels. She was also dating Kyle MacLachlan who was a big actor at the time. Christy was less popular but everyone still knew who she was.

Gisele has the most vogue covers but Kate, Linda, and Christy have more big 4 covers and the supers have more originals than her. In terms of Elle covers, Helena is actually leagues ahead of every other model. Gisele is popular and lots of people know who she is but everyone was obsessed with Cindy and Claudia. The same thing to a lesser extend with Naomi and Helena. You could turn on the tv any day and you'd know what Claudia was wearing, who Naomi was dating, a Cindy commercial, and where Helena was at.

 

[Bertrando3]

I don´t know if this is the place where I could post this but I thought it is an interesting and valid article about supermodels and their ``return´´.

Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid Don’t Have That Supermodel “Magic” According to Robert Verdi - http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/kendall-jenner-gigi-hadid-supermodel-magic-robert-verdi

I definitely agree with him and so do a lot of you here anyways.

 

[Urban Stylin]

commercially i would pick giselle, cindy and claudia as the 3 biggest models ever.

artistically/high fashion, i would pick kate, linda and daria as the 3 biggest models ever. i dont just judge on the volume but the also the quality of their works.

overall, queen giselle is the biggest supermodel ever!!!!!

Lol no way, that would be Cindy Crawford. In the 90s, even people that had absolutely no interest in fashion knew who she was and there was no facebook or IG or snapchat.

 

[Runabout]

I don´t know if this is the place where I could post this but I thought it is an interesting and valid article about supermodels and their ``return´´.

Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid Don’t Have That Supermodel “Magic” According to Robert Verdi - http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/kendall-jenner-gigi-hadid-supermodel-magic-robert-verdi

I definitely agree with him and so do a lot of you here anyways.

I couldn't help but to agree on this post.

I might be off-topic for this, but why for some reason I kept thinking that fashion is awfully political that Kendall and Gigi are somehow given a free pass due to their buzz? Are TPTB in Fashion sided with them already which would most likely equal to have people accept them as supermodels?

 

[congacon]

Lol no way, that would be Cindy Crawford. In the 90s, even people that had absolutely no interest in fashion knew who she was and there was no facebook or IG or snapchat.

of course everyone knows cindy crawford same goes for giselle. if you looks at giselle body of work, hers are miles longer than cindy's. and i meants miles.

 

[zacatecas570]

I don't have problems with Gigi, Cara, Kendall, Bella, Haley... but I feel like this is a very long episode of Gossip Girls when Little J hired the socialites Serena and friends to do the Eleonor Warldorf fashion show and everybody love them.
I guess this socialites turned models sell, but I can't consider them as supermodels. I guess they deserve all this success to Katie Grand who started all this.

 

[ToniOrtega]

Supermodel is the most overused and disrespected word in the fashion dictionary.

The term was created to label the Lindas and Kates of yesteryear because they established, not only themselves as icons of the industry, but also how it means the be the personification of the designers' creativity. They were the only ones in the entire world, at that time, who were unafraid to be glamorous and glorified. They were known through their work and were given recognition, respect, and their unbelievable paychecks only through their work. They didn't just represent fashion, they revolutionized pop culture.

We have to stop this obsession of trying to duplicate that era because we may never have that again! Fashion will never let that happen again! Kendall and Gigi may be great models in their own right, but they are not Supermodels and will never be supermodels because now, we have celebrity-culture... and that's what they are: celebrities!

 

[BetteT]

A new term is needed here: Super Celebs! Those who can cross many of the borders: acting, modeling, reality TV, related to another celeb, athletes ... and list goes on.

In this digital age ... anyone might become a Super Celeb ... if they play their cards right.

 

[pollyanna90]

To me the supermodels of today are girls like Joan Smalls, Liu Wen, Karlie Kloss, and unfortunately Kendall, Gigi, and Cara. They do beauty, commercial, and HF work and make lots of money and are quite well known, especially the last three I mentioned. Social media has also been a tool for bringing supermodel back in the game obviously.

 

[la veronika]

commercially i would pick giselle, cindy and claudia as the 3 biggest models ever.

artistically/high fashion, i would pick kate, linda and daria as the 3 biggest models ever. i dont just judge on the volume but the also the quality of their works.

overall, queen giselle is the biggest supermodel ever!!!!!

If I may use your example, i would Correct it and say:

Commercially best of all time: Christy, Cindy, Gisele

Artistically/hf of all time: the Trinity

But then again, there are numerous notable mentions whiteout whom fashion won't be hat it is, starting from Gia, Paulina Porizkova, Iman, most 90s girls, from 2000s Gisele and Kate Moss.
And from today. Although I don't follow the new girls, I would say Gigi. In terms of super power, super modeling quality of attracting millions of followers, despite the fact that it's all on the social networks, it does remind me of the super power of Naomi, Linda, christy, Cindy,Karen, Helena, etc, etc...to call the shots in the 90s.

Daria, Natasha P and the whole group that came in the early 2000 is hard for me to put in one of throes categories, because they were huge but never the level of Gisele, so I really don't know which group they belong to, in this retrospective.

 

[jena92]

Super celebs is a term that would match the models today. With the right connections and a big social media following you can actually book a campaign or a show, and then maybe more will come.
As for the supermodels noone can't deny that Gisele isn't just a supermodel, she is in her own league. I don't think any term suits her because she is above everything. Yes Claudia, Cindy, Kate etc were all well-known and they still are but if you ask someone to name you the first model that comes to mind, Gisele is always the answer (yes I did that test to some of my friends and family) and maybe Kate is the second pic. That doesn't mean they don't know anyone else but they have associate modeling with Gisele and that's the reason she is a legend.

 

[katcty]

Super celebs is a term that would match the models today. With the right connections and a big social media following you can actually book a campaign or a show, and then maybe more will come.
As for the supermodels noone can't deny that Gisele isn't just a supermodel, she is in her own league. I don't think any term suits her because she is above everything. Yes Claudia, Cindy, Kate etc were all well-known and they still are but if you ask someone to name you the first model that comes to mind, Gisele is always the answer (yes I did that test to some of my friends and family) and maybe Kate is the second pic. That doesn't mean they don't know anyone else but they have associate modeling with Gisele and that's the reason she is a legend.

I think that people who are now arguing over supermodels and who they are and aren't weren't around for long enough for actual fashion and modeling to make that judgement. Claudia and Cindy are by far the most famous models ever to walk the planet. Cindy because she was a hot American married to a movie star and Claudia was the blonde bombshell. The reason that the supermodels were called supermodels wasn't because they were better or necessarily more famous than the top girls of other eras its because the world was obsessed with fashion at the time. Girls before like Christie, Carol, Paulina, and Iman and girls after Kate, Gisele, Angela, Carmen, Carolyn were just as credible in fashion. Supermodel is really the term of the time. Depending on where you live that determines who the supermodels one would know is.

Gisele is not the biggest modern supermodel. I'd give that to Kate Moss because she not only is the undeniable better model, she has a better body of work and has had more iconic cultural defining moments in modeling. The term is outdated though with I'll say Karolina, Daria, Natalia, and Liya's generation having the last set of girls who can authentically be called supermodels having worked along side the original girls.

 

[magsaddict]

i consider Kate Moss the ultimate supermodel, in terms of longevity, i mean real longevity working with top clients, while also recovering from PR disasters like a blatant drug addiction. You could argue any of the above, but realistically, aside from some magazine shoots and a token campaign here and there, most of the supermodel pack aside from Kate had fizzled out by the turn of the century.

i think gisele has a certain supermodel twinkle, but you could argue that while she may be a household name with a high profile husband, many in the general public might struggle to match her name to a face. Whereas Kate Moss is more ubiquitous, at least in a global sense.

To copy the above template:
for commercial i would say: Cindy, Cheryl Tiegs, or even Elle (often forgotten but had a very lucrative career for a long time).

HF: Linda, Kate, Christy or maybe Claudia

Also: many group Karlie kloss with these new supers with giant social media followings, but let's remember she has a paltry 6-7 million instagram followers, well below even models like Miranda Kerr (who i think is fabulous but everyone else seems to not care for anymore?).

 

[BambiPeanut]

What about the "next supermodels" that Vogue "predicted" were going to become the next top models of our era? I have to admit, I have a soft spot for this particular generation: Hilary Rhoda, Coco Rocha, Chanel Iman, Sasha Pivovarova, Doutzen Kroes... <3 It's like they all graduated super model high school together... and this is their prom picture, like I think Coco Rocha said.

 

[magsaddict]

i agree! what a great group of models! Sadly, the cover also reflects the lack of diversity in modelling, especially during that period where the industry favoured a very narrow perception of beauty. Curiously, none of these girls ever really reached the same height of 'supermodel' as the models who preceded or succeeded them. A decade later only half are still really present in modelling.

 

[madame_georgiana]

Its funny how in hindsight it is pretty easy to see that only Raquel and Sasha are the only ones on that cover that would have any staying power.