@BLtheKid
Sharon Van der Knapp, Veronika Varekova, Valeria Mazza are some Claudia look-alikes active in the mid to late 90s onward
Last month (it took me only about 21 months of actual searching), I finally determined that the model in the photo I am looking for is James King. Previously, I thought that I never knew who the model was but a memory surfaced that at the time I wanted to know who the model was and I was fortunately able to identify her because she was also on the cover and I was able to look at the cover credits.
That narrowed my search considerably because now I know the photo I'm looking for came from an issue that James King covered. Analyzing FMB and e-Bay, the only likely issue was Elle UK February 1999.
The problem? That was previously looked at in early 2020 and my photo wasn't there.
The twist? This cover was reprinted - and so I have been reviewing all Elle covers from March-July 1999 and found it in Korea (April), Japan (May) and just this week Greece (April) but my photo was not in any of these issues.
Anyway, I really thought this Elle Greece issue that came out of nowhere was going to be the one. Without Greece, this is all I have left:
China 4
Czech Republic 4,5
Mexico 3,7
Norway 3,4,5,7
Taiwan 6
Thailand 4,7
Turkey 6
Is there anyone out there who has the covers of these issues?
I feel it is very likely April (4) is the right month but that May (5) is also a decent possibility.
Logically, it HAS to be in one of the above issues but I'm having trouble closing these out (some libraries don't have the issues or don't bother responding).
I think the foreign language involved does not have the same character-types as the English language so I think it is going to come down to the
April issues of China (known cover) and Thailand (unknown cover).
The bad thing is if it ends up being Thailand it is possible there will be no way to find this issue (in which case my photo could be there and I would have no way of confirming either way). I will eventually try the publisher or maybe a company that facilitates reprints but either of these are difficult to even get a response from.
I also am thinking of joining Twitter just to write to James King herself and see if she will respond (will she even know anything?), given the extensive search I have undertaken to this point.
I will also write back to the National Library of China as they routed my previous request for more information to the wrong area.
This whole thing has turned out to be like an archeological dig for an ancient artifact.