He was a gentleman; he always has been. The theme was gold and I was in Chanel. Afterwards, I always took my own foundation and powder. Three months later, I got the cover of French Vogue , which was an even bigger deal. In the end, it was shot by Demarchelier in a studio in New York. I was glad I only found out afterwards that I was making history.
Otherwise, I would have felt far too much pressure. Then, in September the biggest issue of the year , Anna Wintour put me on the cover of American Vogue.
It was nerve-racking, because I understood the importance of being a black model. That was her first September issue as editor-in-chief, and I think she was given a lot of flak for it. I will be for ever grateful. I first met Christy Turlington in London in , on a shoot for the Warehouse catalogue. I was still at school, so I turned up in my uniform. By December, we were living together. A few months later, I met Linda Evangelista at a show in Paris.
I remember seeing her across the room with her long hair framing those incredibly beautiful eyes. As a friend, she was always the most maternal among us. I was lucky to have Linda and Christy stand up for me.
They told certain designers that if they wanted to have them in their show, they had to book me, too. That kind of support was unheard of. It was taken by Roxanne Lowit after a Versace show. We started joking around in the bathtub and Roxanne was there to capture it. The year was one of the worst of my life. So many close friends passed away. And Michael Hutchence died. He was such a good soul. It really hit me hard when Gianni Versace died.
But that only made things worse. I saw Gianni for the last time at a dinner at the Ritz in Paris after his final Atelier Versace show. Gianni liked Mike Tyson. A dance career did, in fact, take her around the world when Campbell was young, and during those years Ruby stepped in to care for her.
The closeness between the two only intensified in recent months. I know how to cook. I know how to clean. Campbell was raised communally, surrounded by a clear narrative about the power of women and by examples of unapologetic—and dramatically beautiful—Blackness.
Naomi has taken so many models under her wing. She is the blueprint. The designer Kenneth Ize, who first met Campbell in at Arise Fashion Week in Nigeria, tells me that her support of his eponymous brand drove his success. Naomi is an activist—she tries to make sure that everyone is okay. The mode of delivery, however, has been gaining in directness. There is a sense that Campbell is unapologetic about her outspokenness by force—in part, at least, due to the ceaselessly hostile press coverage she has received in her home nation.
There were facts: two convictions for assault—for throwing a mobile phone at her housekeeper in , and for assaulting two police officers after being ejected from a flight in There were stints in rehab for addiction. As a law professor, I taught students about her ultimately successful battles with the press: When Campbell sued a tabloid in for photographing her attending Narcotics Anonymous, she set a new constitutional precedent over the right to privacy.
She contends that another tabloid newspaper had been illegally hacking her cell phone for a decade. I ask anyway. Well, I have always spoken. Campbell has spoken, but today she does so with a greater intentionality. She seems aware, perhaps more than ever before, that she is a Black woman with unparalleled influence.
I think more of my culture and my race, as opposed to thinking about just me. At the same time, Campbell has long had a command of her own voice. It was Before meeting Campbell, I revisited a news clip from almost two decades later, on Channel 4 News, one of the U. In an interview, Jonathan Rugman, known for his expertise in international crises and disasters, seems to imply that Campbell is personally responsible for not having made the fashion industry more diverse. And I see the things newspapers go for.
Here, she shares an extract, detailing what really went on in the '90s supermodel era, when she, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and a young Kate Moss reigned supreme. There were wild nights in New York, glamorous parties and frenzied fan moments, but ultimately this was just a group of girls, albeit with inherent aesthetic gifts, navigating their way through what was to become a historic moment for fashion.
None of us really understood what impact we were having, particularly when we appeared together in the George Michael video or the Versace show. We had no idea how those things were being received.
We were in the middle of it, too busy travelling with work. It was shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, who I never got to work with but always wish I had. Then a disaster: People magazine asked to interview Linda, Christy and me for their June issue. When the piece came out, we understood we should never do interviews together again. Everything came out wrong. We wanted to show the journalist a fun evening in New York: first dinner at Punch then a night on the town.
So, we were dragging a heavily pregnant woman around with us to these different places trying to show her how cool we were. We took her to nightclubs and up to the West Side Highway to meet a couple of transvestites and then our friends from the House of Xtravaganza.
Basically, we came across as brats. We wanted to show her how much fun we were having. None of us had PRs to advise us. Up until then we had spoken to the press quite freely, but after that we realised we had to be careful. Things could easily be misinterpreted. It was a valuable lesson to learn.
Everything we wore and every restaurant we went to was written about in the papers.
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