Linda Evangelista

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Linda Evangelista
Linda Evangelista, August 12, 2004.
Date of birth	May 10, 1965 (1965-05-10) (age 43)
Place of birth	St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Height	5 ft 9.5 in (1.77 m)
Hair color	Dark brown
Eye color	Blue-green
Measurements	86-61-89 (EU); 34-24-35 (US)^[1]
Weight	55 kg (121 lbs)
Dress size	36-38 (EU); 6 (US)
Shoe size	40 (EU); 9½ (US); 7 (UK); 25½ (JP)

Linda Evangelista (born May 10, 1965) is a Canadian supermodel.

1 Early life
2 Career highlights
3 Hairstyles
4 Miscellaneous
5 Personal life
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Linda was born to Italian parents and was raised in a working-class, traditional Catholic family in St. Catharines, Ontario. ^[2] She knew she wanted to become a model when she was 12 years old. Evangelista got into the modeling industry when she was discovered by a talent agent at the 1978 Miss Teen Niagara Contest.

[edit] Career highlights

Linda later moved to New York City and signed with Elite Model Management there. She then moved to Paris, to further her career. She also appeared in music videos with George Michael.

Along with Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, Linda is regarded as one of the few, true supermodels that changed the face of fashion in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The triumvirate of model friends that comprises Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington was affectionately dubbed "The Trinity" and is commonly credited as responsible for sparking supermodel mania. The Trinity pushed for better wages for models and for better projects and subsequently Evangelista was called the founder of the supermodel "union".

“

We don’t ‘vogue’; we are vogue^[3]

”

Linda uttered the quote, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day"^[4] (often misquoted as: "We don't get out of bed for less than..." or "I don't get out of bed for less than...") Spoken in Vogue (1990) to Jonathan Van Meyer, talking about money and how she and a few other models were calling the shots and changing the game.

In the late 1980s, she cut all her hair off to brandish a little-boy style haircut and was promptly cancelled from all the important runway shows that season. This was the first of her many, many dramatic hairstyle changes. Within months, she appeared on magazine covers everywhere and many women emulated the hairstyle.

She is signed to DNA Model Management in New York City.

[edit] Hairstyles

Evangelista is known as "The Chameleon", both for her frequent hair changes (style, length and colour) and for the way she can transform herself in front of a camera. The time line of her hairstyles:

until 1988 long medium brown hair
1988 THE famous cut short brown
1989 barber shop crop
1991 platinum blond
1992 red
1992 dark brown asymmetrical cut with long bangs and razored sides and back
1993 Dutch boy bob
1994 mid-length blond
1995 mid-length peroxide blond
1995 mod cut dark brown
1996 mid-length brown

[edit] Miscellaneous

Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld once said of her, "There is not another model in the world as professional as she is." He also said, when comparing models, that Evangelista was the "top of the tops".

In 1990 and 1992, she appeared in George Michael's music video Freedom '90 and "Too Funky".

In 1996 she won the VH1 Fashion Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2005 she was honored as a World Style Icon at the Women's World Awards held in Germany.

When she is not on the catwalk she is an advocate for AIDS and breast cancer awareness. She has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.

In 2005 New York-based AID for AIDS honored Linda with its annual HERO Award for her commitment in helping to eradicate the disease throughout the world.

[edit] Personal life

Evangelista was married to Elite executive Gerald Marie from 1987 to 1993. She has also dated actor Kyle MacLachlan (1992–1998), French soccer player Fabien Barthez (1998–2000), Italian oil mogul Ugo Brachetti Peretti (2003–2004), and Formula One driver Paolo Barilla (2005).

Throughout her career, Evangelista has expressed her desire to have children. ^[5] In 1999, she suffered a miscarriage after six months of pregnancy (the father was Barthez).

To her delight, on October 11, 2006, she gave birth to a boy, Augustin James. The father is an unnamed New York architect. While pregnant, Evangelista appeared on the August 2006 issue of Vogue magazine. She was the first non-actress/singer model to appear on Vogue in over a year. In the issue, Evangelista said she was "pro-cosmetic-procedure" and admitted the use of Botox, but said she had stopped during her pregnancy. ^[6]

She also plays the accordion, and was a cigar smoker before she gave up smoking and drinking altogether.