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Supermodels
Introduction
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Portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Francisco Goya
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They weren't always called "supermodels" but they have been around for a long time. During the centuries there were celebrated models for artists, some of them even, as in the case of Goya's "La Maja Desnuda" a very naked Duchess of Alba, from the noblest family in Spain (who was also painted with her clothes on). During the thirties when slick fashion magazines used photos to show the fashionable clothes, they were often worn by socialites. In the late forties and early fifties models such as Lisa Fonssagrives (married to fashion photographer Irving Penn), Jean Patchett, and Dorian Leigh emerged, and their names were well-known in the fashion and advertising industry, and sometimes appeared in the New York gossip columns.
The Miss Rhinegold contest plastered the faces and names of many models and aspiring models on New York's busses and subway cars during the fifties, and the yearly winner became famous, at least in the New York area. John Robert Powers and Harry Conover were among the first model agents, but Eileen and Jerry Ford took the business to the next step in the early fifties, and made Suzy Parker, Dorian Leigh's younger sister, into a star. For more than twenty years Eileen Ford's taste in feminine beauty dominated ads and fashion pages in U.S. publications. In those days there was a very distinct division between "house" models (who worked full-time for the fashion houses), "show" models (who wore the new fashions on the runway during the twice-yearly fashion shows), lingerie models, and "print" models, who posed for photographs, considered the top of the class. A "print" model would NEVER do a runway show or pose for pictures wearing underwear.
 The writer of this article, who was Gucci's first director of Public Relations, from 1968 to 1970, may have been the first person to hire "print" models from the Ford Agency to wear the first Gucci evening dresses during a benefit evening at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York in the spring of 1970.
The six models, including Dorothy McGowan, strolled through the "Street of Shops" created for the evening and around the dinner tables, chatting with the guests. The models were paid their regular fees, if I recall, $ 70 an hour for three hours. (I won't tell you what a struggle it was to convince Aldo Gucci to accept my idea!) Believe me, this was pretty revolutionary stuff at the time. (Painting: "Primavera" by Botticelli).
In Italy, Valentino was one of the first designers to bring over some of the then-top photographic models to strut down the runway for his high fashion shows in the seventies. Nati Abascal, a stunning six-foot Spanish beauty was one of his favorites - she went on to marry the Duke of Medinaceli from her native Seville. Another Valentino favorite was Suzy Dyson. Valentino was also one of the first designers to invest lavish amounts of money in top New York fashion photographers and models for his advertising campaigs. He was soon followed by Gianni Versace, who bet all his first earnings of Richard Avedon for what became a memorable series of ads.
 There were a few exceptions like Twiggy and Lauren Hutton in the sixties-seventies, but it was not until the eighties that the real supermodels emerged, known to their non-industry fans as well as those in the business, and appearing on the runway as well as in photographs in ads and the fashion magazines.
Earnings also shot up, minimum day rates were introduced, the designers invited the top models to their after-show parties (a no-no before), celebrity models dated and married other celebrities, and girls competing in the Miss Italia contest started saying their ambition was to be a "Top model" rather than a "Movie star."
Made*In*Italy*On*Line presented the first web about fashion "Fashion & Design" on the web on February 28, 1995, and we included a page of links to webs dedicated to super-models. At the time most of these webs were maintained by students at universities, who have since graduated and presumably moved on to other things, so we've had to revise this page. We've put in some links we know about as well as a few sites with lists of other sites and we provide them below, but please don't hold us responsible if they don't answer or are slow or are not working.
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Fashion and Design from Italy has been on the web since February 1995. It was the first ever web about fashion. We're working on a new section about Italian Design - industrial design that includes furniture, ceramics, bathrooms, home and office accessories, automobiles and other articles that have won prizes throughout the world and are exhibited in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
