Before the rise of Kendall Jenner, Gigi and Bella Hadid, and Karlie Kloss, the fashion world belonged to six original supermodels: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, and Christy Turlington. They dominated glossy magazine covers, billboards, and runways around the world in the 90s. Two decades after the term “supermodel” captured the zeitgeist, however, the era of social media has paved the way for the new generation of models including Jenner and Hadid. However, former model Rebecca Romijn, 43, told Entertainment Tonight last April that Jenner and Hadid “are not true supermodels,” and that she found it frustrating that social-media stars are now considered supermodels and setting style standards. Vanity Fair asked one of the original six, Stephanie Seymour, if she agreed, at Thursday night’s amfAR Inspiration Gala in New York.
“They are completely different than we were,” she said. “Supermodels are sort of the thing of the past. They deserve their own title. [Kendall and Gigi] are beautiful girls, and I support all of them, but they need their own title.”
And what should their title be? “Bitches of the moment!” Seymour said with a laugh. “That would be a good title for them.”
Seymour was at the event to support her longtime pal Naomi Campbell, who was honored with amfAR’s Inspiration Award. Seymour was joined by her two sons, Peter and Harry Brant. After mingling with guests that included Leonardo DiCaprio and Whoopi Goldberg, Seymour admitted to us that her days as a top model were demanding and challenging.
“I gave up my childhood and worked very, very hard from the time I was 14, and there was a lot of pressure to succeed—especially when I was younger,” she said. “It was hard, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s made me who I am today and I’m proud of my career and what I have accomplished.”
Designer Zac Posen also weighed in on what the term “supermodel” means for these modern stars.
“They are certainly supermodels, and they are absolutely representative of the global social-media movement that we are living in,” Posen told Vanity Fair. “I think they work very hard and are concentrated and driven. So I think they are pretty big super stars.” He said he doesn’t hire models based purely on the number of social-media followers they have. “I hire models based off of their work, their talent, and their personality. It’s a collaboration, and I look for longevity. To me, there needs to be co-branding. It’s about the vision of the work that I’m doing, and the models I’m working with bring it to life.”
While the debate rages on, Seymour is thankful that her modeling heyday happened before camera phones and photo sharing made anonymity virtually impossible.
“I’m so glad social media didn’t exist during our time. I’m a private person, and sharing everything feels odd to me,” she said. “And because there weren’t cameras around us all the time, we got away with so much more and had so much more fun. We didn’t have people watching us all the time, and we weren’t putting ourselves out there in a way that was turning the media against us or for us in any way. We still had our privacy, and there was more of an illusion behind the girls. You lose your illusion when you give much of yourself away, and that’s what I don’t like about it. I’m so glad it didn’t exist back then. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the girls today.”
Seymour was probably especially glad there were no camera phones around the first time she met Campbell in London in the early 90s.
“We were listening to Wham! and shooting for this catalogue in England. After work we would head into a taxi and drive around London,” she recalled. “And Naomi would scream out the window, ‘God save the Queen!’ After that, we immediately became best friends.”
