Linda Evangelista’s second chapter as fashion’s beloved muse.
Returning to fashion for the second chapter of her career, runway legend Linda Evangelista steps before Willy Vanderperre’s lens for the very first time. ‘I didn’t need another picture of Linda - I wanted a picture of Willy.’ she tells fellow model Amber Later for Perfect Issue Six.
Linda Evangelista wears Fendi throughout.
A photographer once told me a story about working with Linda Evangelista. As the supermodel exited set, he tried to snap a candid of her unguarded. Evangelista sensed the camera lens trained on her and turned to face the photographer before he could take the photo. ‘But I wanted it to look spontaneous,’ he explained. Evangelista, consummate professional, told him that in that case he should instruct her: be spontaneous. For the next 20 minutes she roamed around the space, guided by his direction while also seemingly oblivious to his presence, talking to herself and interacting with the furniture in a wholly unselfconscious way. When the photos were developed, one would never have known that she was acting. He had asked for spontaneous, and that’s exactly what she gave. ‘I love direction,’ Evangelista says of her approach to photoshoots. ‘I’m not like a wind-up toy that just goes.’ She knows that the best images are collaborations. ‘I’m only as good as my team. My team is so important to me, and it is all teamwork.’ Once Linda Evangelista does get direction, though, she makes it her own and, like a kite lifted by wind, can ride any current into stratospheric heights.
The title of ‘world’s greatest’ might be impossible to objectively assign to a fashion model, but if such a debate were ever held, Evangelista would be among the obvious frontrunners. The clichéd but apt epithet of ‘chameleon’ has probably been applied to her more often than any other model – her periods with brunette, blonde and red hair are all equally iconic. Her face commands a range of expression only rivalled by the greatest actresses, occasionally aided by a technique of incorporating speech into posing (‘Sometimes it’s just jibber jabber and sometimes I’m having a conversation, sometimes in my head and sometimes out loud’). She has served as a muse to Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, Steven Meisel and countless others, and has remained a major force in fashion and culture writ large since the 1980s.
As a child, she decorated her bedroom walls with pages torn from magazines. These images were like a premonition of a world to come, a promise of the person she might one day be. ‘I would envision myself in those clothes, and try to do my hair and make-up like that. The Versace really stood out to me. There was Iman, and Janice Dickinson… I loved all the cover girls then, like Kelly Emberg and Nancy Donahue. And I loved Joan Severance – they told me I look like her and I couldn’t believe it.’ Fashion and, more specifically, modelling, represented for Evangelista a chance to be someone else. ‘It’s so weird, because I am kind of shy. But if you point a camera at me…’
While some models only find themselves in the occupation by chance, or see it as a means to some other end such as a career in acting, Evangelista loves modelling on its own, and understands it as a unique craft and profession unto itself. The early years of her career, pre international recognition, were filled with setbacks and detours, but Evangelista did not give up or lose interest. ‘I wasn’t a good model when I started. I had to learn my way.’ Even after initial success, Liz Tilberis, when she was editor of British Vogue, told Evangelista her look was too ‘classic’ for a cover. When Tilberis took over at Harper’s Bazaar a few years later, Evangelista was one of the first models she booked for a cover. As the industry races into the future, many models’ careers last as long as a flash of lightning. For Evangelista, the industry took time to catch up to her, not the other way around. Rejection turned into acceptance, and Evangelista proved she was here to stay.
Early on in her career, Evangelista’s mother scraped together tuition for modelling classes where she learned how to walk a T-formation runway and take a jacket off with one hand, popping the buttons one by one. Contemporary casting initiatives champion a more diverse range of models than in the past but, ironically, models today are rarely given the opportunities to express what makes them unique on the runway, rarely asked to do anything besides a brisk walk down and back, with posing kept at a minimum. ‘They don't have you take your jacket off any more. Back in the day, we did take our jackets off. And model! We modelled when we were doing runway. We did pivots!’ Beautiful is something one is. Modelling is something one does. And no one loves to model more than Linda Evangelista.
In 2003, Dominique Issermann photographed Evangelista as a prize fighter in a boxing ring for Elle France, staring down her opponent with a snarl equally sexy and tenacious. In 1994, photographer Nick Knight and stylist Camilla Nickerson transported her from Fashion Week runways onto another kind of runway at Stansted airport in London for a Vogue editorial, where she sauntered around the tarmac in a range of leather looks like an international woman of mystery. Her favourite shoots have always been those that depart from her personal reality in some way. ‘When I get there, I’m hoping they don’t want natural pictures of me. I’m hoping for a character, or an era, or a look. I’m hoping for that because it’s a good escape for me, an escape from my very own life. And this is something I’m realising is why I enjoy going to work and look forward to it. Because it’s a chance to get away from me.’
The images accompanying this article are the product of the first ever collaboration between Evangelista and photographer Willy Vanderperre, and she was eager for the chance to be reinterpreted by a fresh imagination. ‘I don't need another picture of me, Linda. I wanted a picture of Willy. You know what I mean?’ Linda Evangelista knows who she is. Her desire to see herself transformed is not a symptom of self-consciousness, but rather the explosive potential of a fully realised being eager to transcend the everyday.
Asked to describe her life, she says, ‘It’s normal, just normal. Normal with health problems. It’s funny – anybody would want to escape that.’ Despite her name being synonymous with a glamorous, cosmopolitan lifestyle, Evangelista has of late built her life around simplicity and self-sufficiency. ‘I had an assistant for a few years and that didn’t work out. I found out it’s just better for me to have to do things myself. This is so boring, but it’s better for me to take my blouse to the dry cleaner, because it keeps me grounded. So I don’t have an assistant. People ask to call my assistant and I’m like, “OK, here’s my number.”’
Throughout her life, Evangelista has dealt with health issues affecting her lungs, and more recently has contended with multiple cancer diagnoses and widely publicised complications from a cosmetic procedure. One challenge of being revered as an icon is that people may come to resent your vulnerability. When you become a symbol of vitality and perfection, people may see your humanity as a betrayal. Speculation about Evangelista’s health and body continue to prove nothing other than the fact that people will confidently claim authority over subjects they have no understanding of. She recalled a recent newspaper article where one comment claimed Evangelista had ‘obviously had breast augmentation’ because of a visible scar on her chest in the photo. But the picture was an old one, from many years ago. ‘The scar was from my chest being opened up to fix my lungs. And I have very small breasts, so I’m thinking, “Did I make them bigger? Did I make them smaller? What exactly did I augment? If I did have them done, would I have had them done like that?” I got upset, but then I was like, “Linda. You didn’t augment your chest.”’ Her only rebuttal was to turn the other cheek. ‘I just can’t care about people's interpretation. I leave all the bad comments on my Instagram. I don’t like to delete them, because I don't want to interact with them.’
Due to health issues, Evangelista has largely remained out of the public eye over the last decade. She credits her reemergence to designer Kim Jones, who insisted she make an appearance at the Fendi Resort 2023 show. ‘I’m sort of back living my dream again, for another round. I thank Kim Jones for that, because I never, ever thought I would work again. I had come out with my story, and he saw it and wrote me a letter. He said, “I think you’re beautiful and I want to work with you.” I didn't get it. I didn't understand. Then we did a Zoom call and I thought, well, he’s gonna change his mind. But he said, “No, we’re gonna do this.” He was assertive and supportive. I couldn't believe it. And because of that, I reached out to Edward Enninful, who for five years was trying to get me to do British Vogue. I took, like, this courage pill, and I did the two jobs back to back. One was a Monday, one was Tuesday. It was so good for me, emotionally.’
Now she is eager for the next phase of her career. Instead of being set in her ways, she remains imaginative and elastic, capable of adapting to the ever shifting landscape of reality. ‘I like new people to talk to because relationships come to an end, even important relationships. It doesn’t have to be your lover, your boyfriend or girlfriend. Even friendships come to an end, unfortunately. You outgrow each other or you’re disappointed. I’m always into making new friends. Always.’
Life is unpredictable, and adaptability is the only way to stay afloat. Even when the most experienced model shows up to set, she rarely knows exactly how the shoot will go: what will she look like in the published photos? Who will she become that day? Likewise, every day is a new day and life has a talent for surprising even the most worldly and experienced individuals. ‘You can talk and talk and talk and talk all night with someone every day, and think you know them, but you don’t know them until life happens. Get a flat tyre in the middle of the night on a desert road and see how that goes. Experiencing life with someone through the ups and downs is how and when you get to know them.’
One of my final questions for Evangelista was what kind of life she imagined for herself in the future as a young girl. ‘My Barbies got married all the time. I thought I was going to be married with lots of children. It didn’t go to plan. I certainly found out that life doesn’t go to plan, but I also found out that I’m a great parent. I have a remarkable son. One thing I feel secure and good about is who I am as a mother.’ Evangelista told me when she moved a few years ago, the most important factor in deciding on her new home was the view. What was inside her room was less relevant than the outside landscape that her eyes could rest on at the end of the day. The icon today is still a dreamer, still the little girl falling asleep to the Versace campaign posted on her wall. She is still the young ingénue flattered by comparisons to her heroes. The real reason Linda Evangelista is such a major contender for the title of world’s greatest model is not because of her beauty, or diligence, or intellect, though all of those are indeed crucial factors, but because she embodies the universal dream of fashion: the devout belief that another life is possible, that another, more beautiful world is suspended along the borders of our own, and that dreams are meaningful and necessary – those that come true as well as those that don’t.
