FLANNELS THINKS: AN ODE TO THE O.G. SUPERS

FLANNELS THINKS: AN ODE TO THE O.G. SUPERS

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FLANNELS THINKS:

AN ODE TO THE O.G. SUPERS

Fashion, friendship and sisterhood: step into the world of fashion rental.

WORDS: MARNI ROSE MCFALL

Christy, Cindy, Linda, Naomi. No surnames are necessary. Not when you’re talking about icons of this calibre. Defining a decade – and beyond – in the fashion world, in a way that had never been done before. Inventing a whole new genre of model, and indeed celebrity, the supers changed the game. As Hamish Bowels said In Vogue: The 2000s: “[They] were smart enough to realise that they themselves had a role and a power in shaping fashion.” And boy did they do that.

Up until the ‘90s – and the meteoric rise of the O.G. supers – models did one thing; they wore clothes. They were also typecast, existing only in their particular pigeonhole. You had runway models, beauty models, swimsuit models and print models. But when the supers emerged, everything changed. “Those four models were doing everything. They really helped foster an identity of what fashion was and what it could be. The supermodels were part of that shift,” said Hamish Bowles, In Vogue: The 2000s.

And the supers had personality. They were having fun with things, in a way that was endearing, intoxicating, fun. It wasn’t just the clothes they wore or the beauty they possessed; it was them. In 2023, we live in an age of influence where celebrity often equals success. But back then? They were the first to marry these two ideals.

Our obsession with the supers has gone nowhere over the years. They’re just as beloved now as they were 30-odd years ago, which is why when they reunited on the cover of the September issue of Vogue the internet went into meltdown. Not to mention the fully-fledged frenzy that occurred when the supers reunited at the Vogue World event in London this month. Whether you were there the first time around, or you’re a Gen-Z who’s closer to Kaia Gerber's age than Cindy Crawford’s, ahead of the release of The Super Models on Apple TV, the supers have our attention all over again. Although you could argue that they never really lost it in the first place…

The shift started, fittingly, at the turn of the decade. It was January 1990. Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington, accompanied by the late Tatjana Patz, graced the cover of British Vogue. Shot by Peter Lindbergh, the black and white image features the five women in pared-back ensembles: jeans, tank tops, minimal makeup. Their energy was natural and candid. Their beauty was otherworldly. This cover would go on to set the tone for a new age: the age of the supermodel.

This cover? It was just the beginning. It inspired millions of people, the whole world over, but it inspired one person in particular: George Michael. Having seen the Peter Lindbergh portrait, he reached out to the supers and asked them to appear in his upcoming music video. The video for Freedom! ’90, which was directed by David Fincher (who would later go on to direct cult classics like Fight Club and Gone Girl), has become one of the most iconic music videos of all time. It features the five models, sprawled across a mansion, with the jangling tune of Freedom! ’90 in the background.

Naomi lay naked in a bathtub, lip-syncing to the song. Linda sat cross-legged and barefoot on the floor, propped up against a wall, sporting her signature bleach-blonde pixie cut. Christy walks through the house, draped in a white bed sheet. Visionary, revolutionary, ground breaking: if the Vogue cover was the beginning, this was the moment that would pour gasoline on the whole thing, propelling the supers to almost-instant worldwide acclaim. And the legacy of this moment would only continue.

Picture the scene: it’s 1991. The late Gianni Versace is showing his AW91 collection. The show is ending, and Linda comes out in a red chiffon mini dress, her blonde hair in a Marilyn Monroe style up-do. She’s followed by Christy, who dons a little black dress. Naomi comes out in a sunshine-yellow mini, twirling down the runway. Cindy Crawford follows, again in a tiny black dress. They all link arms, dancing down the runway, arm in arm, lip-syncing to George Michael’s Freedom ’90! The crowd went wild and some thirty years later you can still feel the applause.

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It was a paradigm shift: in fashion, beauty and celebrity culture. The supers were rewriting the rules. (“We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day,” Linda Evangelista famously said in an interview with Vogue which appeared in the October 1990 issue.) The relationship between the brand and the models propelled them both forward and created a series of pop culture moments we’re still obsessed with thirty years on. Read: Cindy Crawford in a slinky black dress, interviewing Claudia Schiffer – in head-to-toe, metallic, glittering, pink VersaceX glam – for MTV after the SS91 show. It doesn’t get more iconic than that.

The canon of legendary Versace supermodel moments is endless. For example, this shot by Richard Avedon from 1994, which could easily be a poster for a high school movie like Mean Girls. It features Christy and Cindy alongside Claudia Schiffer, Stephanie Seymour and Nadja Auermann in metallic mini-skirts, cropped cable-knit sweaters and heeled loafers paired with socks. We’re not being dramatic when we say it’s one for the history books. Four years after the iconic Vogue cover, Gianni Versace continued to use a cascade of It girls to set a new precedent.

The relationship between designer and muse was already a fixture in pop culture (think Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn or Yves Saint Laurent and Betty Catroux) but when Gianni Versace brought the supers on stage, everyone became obsessed. Shots of designers backstage alongside models quickly became as coveted as pictures of the collections themselves. And in 2023, we’re as into it as ever. Some key moments from the fashion hall of fame? This BTS shot from Valentino SS92 for one. Ft. the likes of Linda Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer alongside the designer, the models don black and white ensembles from the collection, in a moment that exudes monochrome magic. The dress worn by Evangelista would later be worn by Zendaya at Euphoria’s season two premiere. See what we mean when we say iconic?

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And it wasn’t just in the world of fashion that the supers were changing. They quickly started to shake things up in the world of beauty, too. After all, the emergence of the four most beautiful women in the world was bound to make an impact on the industry. Hot on the heels of the ‘80s, when the beauty world overdosed on neon and saturated brights, the ‘90s brought things back to basics.

Linda’s slick, chin-length bob, Naomi’s statement lip, Cindy’s bouncy blow out. Like everything else they were wearing, the beauty looks worn by the supers are still in high demand.

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The ’90s has been having a fully-fledged revival over the past few years. To date, the #90S has 66.2 billion views on TikTok, while #90shair has amassed 872.4 million views and #90s makeup has racked up 272.6 million.

Why the long-standing appeal? Well, the looks are timeless. From high-octane glamour to toned-down off-duty looks, the supers donned every beauty look in the book and they looked damn good doing it. The era’s defining makeup artists (think Pat McGrath, Bobbi Brown and Francois Nars) set about, well, defining the era. Some key looks for your books? Naomi’s overlined nude lips, Christy’s sparkling skin, Linda’s dark, thick bows. And so many bold red lips and smudged nudes.

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Then, in 1992, Kate Moss arrived on the scene and with her, the arrival of grunge. From the rise of bands like Nirvana, the Pixies and Pearl Jam to Marc Jacob’s infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis, the landscape of style was quickly changing. Said collection featured Christy, Naomi and Kate in dirty Doc Martens, plaid shirts and silk slips. At the same time, O.G. cool girl Moss was being shot by Corrine Day and Juergen Teller, embodying anti-glamour, while Evangelista was posing as an androgyne for David Sims. Quickly, co-ordinating sets and vibrant prints were being switched out for flannel shirts and slip dresses.

As Kate Moss exploded into the industry, walking for everyone from Prada to Vivienne Westwood, her and Naomi quickly became a package deal, and today remain one of the most iconic double acts in fashion history. Pictures of the two of them on nights out in New York and London were plastered over the pages of magazines and today sit on everybody’s mood boards. Their friendship – much like the friendship shared by all of the supers – is part of what made these girls so popular. They were fun, they were stylish, they were doing it all, together. They worked all day and partied all night.

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There’s something intoxicating about female friendship. In the late ‘90s and into the early ‘00s, everyone was tuning into to watch girls on screen: from Sex and the City and Friends to the likes of Clueless and Thelma and Louise, women hanging out, having fun and sharing experiences became something we were endlessly drawn to. And the friendship shared by the supers had the same effect on culture. There’s a reason that pictures of Kate and Naomi are shared every year on National Friendship Day, they were iconic besties that people simultaneously related to, and aspired to. Call it Girl Power. The supers were to fashion what the Spice Girls were to music: a speeding juggernaut of cultural revolution. They were girls, and they wanted to have fun.

And their legacy continues. At Versace’s SS18 show – which marked the twentieth anniversary of Gianni Versace’s murder – the supers re-assembled. The show was more intimate, compared to the usual high-octane glamour and fanfare associated with Versace shows. The archive was big, loaded with the iconic black and gold, lots of leather, baroque motifs and iconic pieces like the Madonna/Warhol print, originally worn by Naomi for AW91. The new gen of supers featured heavily – with the likes of the Hadid sisters and Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s daughter (talk about full circle) walking the SS18 runway, following in the – quite literal – footsteps of the supers that came before.

At the end of the show, the lights went down, and came back up – revealing Crawford, Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Carla Bruni and Helena Christensen, draped in shimmering gold dresses. As Donatella emerged to take her bow, the supers descended down the runway, lip-syncing, once again, to Freedom! ’90, Naturally, the show set the fashion world alight.

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The super's status is unparalleled. After those five women appeared on the cover of Vogue 34 years ago, a whole new generation of supermodels has emerged, ready to follow in their heel-clad footsteps. From the Hadid sisters to Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski, in 2023, our appetite for an It girl is a plenty.

Fashion is inherently self-referential which is why you will always see trends recycling and archival pieces creating viral moments; just look at what was worn at this year’s Met Gala. Many of these looks were – quite literally – borrowed from the supers ‘90s wardrobes. Anne Hathaway for example, wore a re-interpretation of the iconic safety pin gown originally worn by Elizabeth Hurley in 1994. Said dress is so iconic, it has its own Wikipedia page.

Or take Rihanna’s Vogue cover from September 2018 as an example. With skinny brows, smokey eyes and matte skin, it screams ‘90s, while the combination of the floral headdress and gothic glam lip feels reminiscent of a look worn by Christy for Valentino haute couture in 1991.

In an interview for their September 2023 issue of Vogue, Linda recalls the frenzy of the public after they appeared in the “Freedom ’90!” video, stating, “It was insane. We are not The Beatles”. But as far as fashion is concerned? They kind of are. They paved the way, broke the mould and defined the fashion industry. They are icons, legends, the moment. They set the curve, and the tone. They ensured that from now, until forever, any new model will – to borrow a phrase from Emily in The Devil Wears Prada – “have some very large shoes to fill”.

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