“Pretty Women,” by Jonathan Van Meter originally appeared in the October 1990 issue of Vogue.
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On a Saturday night in April, just before the winter collections in New York, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington were out with their usual posse of photographers and models at the Roxy, a huge nightclub in lower Manhattan, to swing—literally.
After a little coaxing, the two supermodels (whose best-girlfriendship has recently been made public on the cover of British Vogue and on the runways of Paris) climbed onto the Roxy’s infamous swing, which hangs from the ceiling down into the center of the dance floor. Linda got on first, then Christy mounted the swing, straddling Linda’s lap, her skirt hiked up to her waist. Face-to-face, the two women, pushed by clubgoers, sailed through the air in disco revelry, screaming and laughing to everyone’s delight.
It made the papers the following Monday in a way that would have made, say, Andy Warhol wish he had been there. “I’m still, today, hearing about the swing episode,” says Linda. “People come up to me on the street and say, ‘I saw you on the swing with Christy at the Roxy.’ Everyone got a little too into it. If I had known it was going to be such a big deal I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
Come on, Linda. Of course you would have. That’s what being a big-time, ridiculously overpaid celebrity model is all about: making a scene.
Not since the seventies have two models that aren’t dating Mick Jagger been so internationally recognized as Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington are. What makes their fame-beyond-the-fashion-world even more impressive is that neither has gone, or plans to go, to Hollywood (e.g., Isabella Rossellini, Andie MacDowell); neither has been linked in the tabloids with a controversial sports figure (e.g., their friend Naomi Campbell); and neither is married to a rock star (e.g., Paulina Porizkova, Christie Brinkley). They are famous merely as faces. And now, as “best friends.”
The fact that they are physically similar creatures—cut from the same dark, vaguely ethnic cloth—has also added to the intrigue. Theirs is the look of the hour: brunette, short hair, olive skin, and faintly slanty eyes. It is a classic beauty that relates to a different era, inviting multiple comparisons to Hollywood legends. Linda gets Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida.