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A Study in Perfection
Supermodel Linda Evangelista Loves Her Job, a
Glass of Wine and a Good Cigar
by Mervyn Rothstein
Click.
She moves. She is slender, radiant; her close-cropped auburn hair
sparkles against the bright, starkly white background, shifting ever
so gently with the motion.
Click.
Her head tilts, barely. Her smile, unchanging yet real, radiates an
unconventional beauty; not a classic blonde mannequin but a living,
breathing, intense individuality.
Click.
A leg bends, ever so gracefully, at the knee. The white silk blouse,
open at the collar, undulates flowingly, as if in a breeze, the folds
as sculpturally flawless as a Michelangelo.
Click.
The eyes, limpid and crystal blue, narrow and mysterious, come
sensuously alive, reflecting the photographer's flash with a million
brilliant points of diamond light.
Click.
She moves again. A new position, minutely different from the one
previous, yet just as flawless; every pose, every angle, every stance
a model of perfection.
A model of perfection. Make that a supermodel of perfection. Because
the model in question, finishing a long day's magazine-cover photo
shoot at an East Fourth Street studio in downtown Manhattan, is Linda
Evangelista.
In the intense, competitive, fast-lane world of fashion and modeling,
with its glitz and glamour, celebrity and gossip, only a few of the
best and most beautiful rise to and stay at the top. In recent years,
there have been but a handful. They include Naomi Campbell, Cindy
Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington. And Linda Evangelista.
For nearly a decade, Evangelista has graced the covers of
Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Allure,
Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, W and scores of other
major magazines. She has starred in ads for Ralph Lauren, Chanel,
Versace, Perry Ellis, Lanvin, Guy Laroche, Capezio, Bloomingdale's,
Barneys New York, Donna Karan, Valentino, Calvin Klein and countless
other top-name designers, as well as for perfumes such as Opium and
Jil Sander. She and her companion, actor Kyle MacLachlan of "Twin
Peaks" fame, are regulars in newspaper gossip columns and on
television gossip shows. Even the well-known fashion writer Michael
Gross (not one of her favorite people) has called her "the most
accomplished model of her time."
Evangelista is sitting in the outdoor garden of a trendy Italian
restaurant in Soho one muggy, late-spring evening, her 9-to-5 day of
work over and a glass of ruby red Chianti resting before her. Just
turned 30, but looking at least five years younger, she is getting
ready to talk about what the life of a supermodel is really like. She
will reveal that sometimes she must create an imaginary cocoon to
shield her from the glare of success. She will reminisce about her
childhood in Canada, just north of Niagara Falls, where she was raised
in a working-class Italian Catholic family and where she began
dreaming at age 12 of becoming a model. She will discuss the difficult
early days of her career and what she had to do to rise to the
top. And she will speak about cigars, because she smokes them and
loves them.
But there is also another topic, a best-selling book called
Model, by fashion writer Gross. Model describes the
world of fashion, of models and supermodels, as rife with sex, drugs,
mindless orgies and hard-nosed business brutality. He also has a few
less-than-nice things to say about Evangelista. She does not really
want to talk about the subject, which she finds unpleasant, but
because she has been asked, she will.
"I have not read the book," she says. "I don't want to. But I do know
his style of writing, and I do know that he has never had anything
positive to say about me or about a lot of my colleagues and
friends. And I can paint a picture for you right here of what I have
seen in my career. I have never slept with anybody I did not want to
sleep with. I have never slept with a photographer to get work. I have
never slept with an art director. I've never had to sleep with anyone
to get a job. That does not happen in this business. Maybe way down at
the bottom of the ladder it does, but I didn't even see it there. No
one forces you to sleep with them."
And as for drugs, she says, "Everyone knows I have never tried
cocaine. I've seen it a couple of times, and I've walked away from
it. I just say no, I'm not interested. I'm not saying I'm Miss
Goody-Two-Shoes, but I never have used it, and I never will. Yes,
drugs exist, but they exist everywhere, in every business. And people
sleep with people in every business. This business is full of the most
amazing characters and the most fun people. I don't see them hurting
people, and I don't see them doing drugs."
Gross writes that "wags at Elite" have called her "Evilangelista"
(and, indeed, some gossip columnists have accused her of being bratty
and bad-tempered). But Evangelista says it just isn't so.
"He doesn't know me," she says. "He's never talked to me. If he wants
to write about me, he should talk to people who really know me. I
don't think they call me Evilangelista. I say 'sir' to my taxi drivers
in the morning. I'm so nice to people when I go into stores because
I'm afraid that something negative might get out. I'm Miss Polite. I'm
not a slut. I'm not this awful person. I'm a businessperson. I do my
job. I go to work, and I go home, and I have a very normal home
life. It all makes me want to do a documentary and have a camera
follow me from my bed all the way through a shoot and all the way home
so I can tell my side of the story."
She pauses and takes a sip of wine. She has begun to tell her
story--and in doing so she will be unfailingly polite. There is no
trace of brattiness or bad temper apparent, and indeed, it is
difficult to conceive of her ever being so. Her eyes, her face, her
sinuous lips, her classically prominent cheeks radiate sincerity, just
as her longish, thin nose makes apparent that she is a fashion model
cut from a different cloth.
Part of that different cloth includes the appreciation of a good
cigar. In fact, she loves cigars.
"I've always loved the smell of cigars," she says. "I have always been
fascinated by them. My boyfriend is a cigar smoker. He reads Cigar
Aficionado from front to back, and I've started reading it. I've
started getting obsessed with the whole art of cigars, the different
kinds, the rolling of the leaves. And I just think they're
delicious. My favorite is the Cohiba panatela, even though it's
small. I've tried every kind of Cohiba, and Montecristos and Romeo y
Julietas. I love the Cohiba robusto, but I can't do the whole thing."
She has been smoking cigars for about two years. Her smoking buddies
these days, in addition to MacLachlan, include Ronald Galotti, the
publisher of Vogue, and Steven Florio, president of
Condé Nast Publications, Inc. "I'm going to a party with Steve
tomorrow night," she says, "so we'll probably smoke some there."
Her other favorite aspect of cigar smoking, she says, is the
humidor. "They are the most beautiful objects. I buy them for Kyle. We
have quite a few of them: Davidoffs, a Dunhill, a beautiful blue
Hermès."
What does she appreciate most about a good cigar? She takes another
sip of her Chianti. "It's like sharing a nice bottle of wine," she
says. "It's comforting. When you pick one up, whatever you're doing
changes for the better. And when you smoke, you're always doing it
with friends."
You talk about the cigars you're smoking, she says, about how they
taste and how they compare to others of the same brand you've smoked
and to other brands you've smoked. You talk about the people you've
smoked cigars with.
"You tell cigar stories," she says. "It's great fun."
Linda Evangelista's story begins in a city of 120,000 residents called
St. Catharines, in the Canadian province of Ontario near Niagara
Falls.
"It was my whole world," she says. "It was all I knew. Now, having
traveled as much as I have, I don't consider it a very interesting
place, except for my family and friends who are still there. It's very
blue-collar. There's the car industry. Paper mills. Ship factories. A
lot of steel. My father worked for General Motors."
She went to a Catholic elementary school and a Catholic high
school. "I graduated from high school, but I didn't go on. Compared to
all the stories I've heard from other people, I think I had the most
normal upbringing."
Early on, though, her mind focused on modeling rather than
academics. "From about the age of 12, I got it into my head that I
wanted to be a model," she says. "I dreamed about it. I did not really
think I could become one. I started with the women's fashion
magazines. It was more the clothes than the actual modeling that
fascinated me. I got every magazine. I would tear the pages out and
dream."
Her mother made sure she was busy. "She kept me in all these
extracurricular activities," Evangelista says. "I took accordion
lessons and skating lessons and tap lessons. Then my dance school
closed down, so she wanted to find something else for me to do. And
people said, 'Oh, your daughter's really pretty. She's tall enough to
be a model.' When I was 12, I was five foot eight. Now I'm five foot
nine and a half. I thought I was going to be seven feet tall. And I
had really big feet. They haven't grown since then."
So one day her mother took her to a local modeling school. "They
interviewed me and said I could join the modeling class. But I think
it was too expensive, so my mother enrolled me in the self-improvement
class instead, which actually was not a bad thing. I laughed at it,
but I learned how to set a table, how to get in and out of a car. I
learned a lot of etiquette. Then I begged my mother to let me get into
the modeling class. The school was the only way to get jobs."
The jobs she got, though, were not exactly high-paying. "I don't know
how much money it cost my mom, but I think that, with the price of
makeup and the classes, I probably grossed about $100 a year. It was
real small-time. I would go to fashion shows. I would be the
bridesmaid. I would have rehearsals and fittings, and I would get
$20. She would take the day off from work and drive me to Hamilton to
do a store catalog for $8 an hour, and it would be for two hours."
When Evangelista was 15, the modeling school entered her in the Miss
Teen Niagara Pageant. "I didn't place at all," she says, "but there
was a scout from the Elite model agency in the audience who gave me
his card afterward and said that if I was ever interested, I should
give him a call and he would test me and send my picture to New York."
She decided, though, to remain in school. And a year later, she had
an experience that almost turned her off modeling for good.
"These people from Japan came to my hometown agency and said they
were looking for girls for the summer in Tokyo, and I was the chosen
one, the only one they wanted. I got so excited. I said I was going to
go and do it on my own. So I went to Japan, and when I got there I
completely panicked. The accommodations were disgusting, and they
started throwing questions at me like 'Will you do nude?' It was
overwhelming. After one day I said I didn't want to be a model. The
Canadian Embassy got me out, and everything was fine, but I dropped
the whole modeling thing and went back and finished high school."
After graduation, her mother suggested that she try again. But it was
not easy. "She said I should call the guy who gave me the card. I was
terrified, but I said, 'All right, I'll do it.' I came to New York,
and at first they were very excited about me. But things didn't happen
quickly. I thought I was doing OK. I got a couple of bookings, and I
was overwhelmed to get those. I even made $600 on one job. But I guess
my agency was very frustrated. They said I should try Europe, because
it wasn't working out here." ("I didn't really have myself together,"
she once recalled. "I still had baby fat, and the hair was a
problem.")
She moved to Paris in 1984 and began working right away, "at the
bottom of the ladder." The climb was slow. "It was three years before
I got a booking with Vogue," she says.
The people at Elite in Paris were not enthusiastic about her, she
says. "And if you don't have a booker or manager who believes in you,
you're not going to get anywhere." She left. She met an important
fashion executive, Gérald Marie, and she went to his
agency--and with the switch, her move to the top began. (Evangelista
and Marie were married in 1987 in her hometown; they separated in
1992.)
Her career acceleration was swift. The magazine covers began coming,
and once they began they never stopped. Marie's firm merged with
Elite, and Evangelista was back with her original New York agency.
Now her face, and especially her hair, are going to become even more
familiar to her appreciative public. Evangelista recently signed on as
the official Clairol spokesmodel, specifically for its Ultress hair
tint.
It's a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract--the gossip columnist
Cindy Adams wrote that it would bring in between $5 million and $7
million, plus percentage. Evangelista's agent, however, would not
provide the official figures.
The deal involves magazine ads and television commercials worldwide
and seems particularly appropriate for Evangelista: Ultress comes in
33 shades, and the supermodel is widely known as the "chameleon" of
hair styles and colors. She reportedly has changed her coloring a
dozen times in five years, going from platinum to red, with many stops
in between. In the first four ads, Evangelista reportedly is light
blonde, dark blonde, red-brown and auburn.
To Evangelista, her success is more than she ever expected. "I
certainly never dreamed this high," she says. "My dream wasn't being a
supermodel. They didn't even use that word when I started. My dream
was to wear the clothes."
And she most certainly enjoys wearing them. "I love modeling," she
says. "I know it sounds so corny, but everyone who works with me knows
how much I love my job. I'm not going to say I don't do it for the
money. Yes, it's become all about money. But I do it because I love my
job. And you don't hear a lot of models saying they love their jobs."
The privacy of photographic work is what she prefers, rather than
walking down a runway with hundreds of people watching and scores of
flashes flashing. "I'm not that crazy about the runway," she says. "I
don't think I'm a great performer in front of a live audience. I
prefer being in the studio with people I know in a closed
environment."
She readily admits that there is a negative side to success and
celebrity, to the barrage of publicity and to being constantly in the
public eye. And she has adopted a strategy to deal with the problem,
when necessary. "I worked in, of all places, Wall Street, on the
street at lunchtime, right in the middle of all those people, and I
had so many eyes on me," she says. "But I just don't see them. I sit
there in this little cocoon. I have to put myself in a cocoon. I'll be
out with a group of friends, and they'll say, 'Oh, that table's
staring at us.' But I don't see them."
It is, however, not always that difficult. "It's not that I'm
recognized all the time on the street," she says. "After all, a lot of
people don't give a damn about models. They don't read fashion
magazines, and they don't know who we are. And most of the time people
who see me think I just look like Linda Evangelista."
The pace of success can also be wearing. "Sometimes I feel like I'm
going to cry," she says. "It's just amazing that my schedule is so
jam-packed. There's not a day off in sight. I told myself a couple of
years ago that I would start allowing time for myself and maybe work
three weeks and take 10 days off, or work two weeks and take a week
off. But that's not happening. I've just done four weeks straight. I
had the weekend off. My first weekend off in some time."
There is, though, a reason for all that activity--a very important
reason. "You do that because you're like an athlete," she says. "You
say that your time is now; it's not in 20 years."
But, she says, the relentless march of time in the fashion business
has eased somewhat in recent years; the shelf life of a model,
especially of a supermodel, is much longer than anyone would have
imagined a decade or so ago. "I used to think there was this clock
ticking over my head," she says. "The longest career span was three
years. But I started at the same time as many other top models, and
we're still here. We're still working. And I never, ever thought that
would happen."
She pauses for a moment, takes another sip of her Chianti, the ruby
red in the glass just a little brighter than the red of her lips. "I
think a lot of things have changed for the better in the fashion
industry," she says. "I'm so proud of the fact that we don't have to
be the stereotypical button-nosed, blue-eyed blonde beauty, that we
don't all have to be five foot nine. You can be whatever height and
still be beautiful. You can be whatever race and still be
beautiful. And you can be whatever age now, and I think that's
wonderful.
"We're like old shoes now," she says of herself and her supermodel
compatriots. "Yes, you buy new ones. New ones are fabulous. You wear
the new ones. But every once in a while you go and put on the old
ones. Because they're comfy. And they fit. And they make you
happy. And I think that's what happens in our business. They bring us
back."
There's something to say for the thirty-something generation, she
says, even though youth also has its advantages. "New models are
incredible to watch, because they do things that are so different. But
at the same time, if there's a problem with the garment, I know how to
fix it with my body. It's just that practice makes perfect. I don't
mean I'm perfect, but I've gotten better, much better, at what I do."
She is, she believes, much better in other ways, too. "I don't have a
problem with turning 30," she says. "All my friends turned 30 and were
completely freaked out by it. But I was happy to turn 30. I would
never want to be 22 again. I've grown, and I've learned a lot. I like
myself better now than I did back then. I'm not in such a rush
anymore. I used to be in such a rush for everything. There's still
much to improve on, but I'm content."
She has, for instance, no burning desire to do what several other
models have tried to do--make it in the movies. "I'm not going to say
I'm not interested, but my dream was to be a model. It wasn't to be an
actress. I don't think all models become great actresses. I get
offers, but the stuff I've been offered is not anything I would care
to do. If a beautiful script falls from the sky, and it has a major
star and a major director, of course I would say I'm interested. But I
think people who are born to act should be actors. I don't know if I
was born to act."
Part of her contentment comes from her personal life. Her relationship
with MacLachlan began in late 1992. She has just bought a house in
Greenwich Village, but her main home is in California's Hollywood
Hills, where she heads whenever she has time off. And where she loves
to cook.
"Basically, you'll find me in the kitchen," she says. "Mostly
Italian or healthy Mexican food. Very healthy food: turkey burgers and
stir-fry. All my favorite dishes I can't eat, like pizza and pasta. I
love pasta."
Her other hobbies include gardening, playing the accordion and
photography. "When I'm home, I'm busy editing photos and printing them
and working on them. But basically, when I'm not working I really just
veg out. And then I end up doing all the stuff I was supposed to do
and all the chores--the banking, seeing the accountant, the dry
cleaning." She smiles. "And every once in a while I will get a
facial."
She adores wine. "I'm really into wine," she says. "I have at least
a glass a day. Sometimes two. Sometimes more. I especially like French
wine. My favorite is Lynch-Bages. Actually, my favorite is Petrus, but
I can't afford to drink it every day."
Pretty soon, though, considering her still growing success, Petrus may
well become an everyday event. And so may a good cigar.
She takes a final sip of her wine. The interview is over. She gets up,
pushes away her chair, and heads out of the garden. Heads turn. Linda
Evangelista, supermodel, is making her exit, graceful as ever. She is
something to appreciate, and to be appreciated. A model of perfection.
Mervyn Rothstein is an editor at The New York Times and a
frequent contributor to Cigar Aficionado and Wine
Spectator.
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