She disappeared from the limelight for five years after body remodeling surgery disfigured her, but now that she decided to share her story, Linda Evangelista back on the cover. The model, one of the world’s catwalk queens in the 1980s and 1990s, is hip British Vogue September caused bumps on her neck, arms and legs after a beauty treatment.
The photo session with Stephen Meisel is her first Vogue cover and fashion photo shoot in a while: five years to “hide” because, she claims, a procedure for freezing fat, cryolipolysis, left her “brutally disfigured.” So he decided the only way out was to tell his story. “I couldn’t feel that pain anymore,” she says. “I knew I had to change something and the only change was to speak my truth.”
The 57-year-old Evangelista, the daughter of Italian immigrants, grew up in Canada, in the town of St. Catharines, Ontario, where her father worked for General Motors and her mother was an accountant. In the golden years, Linda, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington were dubbed The Trinity before Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer joined the almighty line of super-supermodels. A career that began in 1984 when Elite Model Management was hired. The following year he had a home in Paris in addition to New York and began working for Chanel. “Carl [Lagerfeld] it was a journey,” he recalls. “There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.” Arthur Elgort photographed her for Vogue Paris and soon after he was working with all the greats from Meisel, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon to Herb Ritts and Peter Lindberg (who ingeniously suggested cutting her hair short when everyone else was wearing it long). She appeared in multi-million dollar campaigns for Revlon and, thanks to Gianni Versace, was one of the first models to switch between modeling and the catwalk, which was a separate industry until then.
Speaking to People magazine for the first time about her failed surgery in February, she said she was tired of hiding
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“I’m done hiding.” After almost five years away from the spotlight, Linda Evangelista is ready to share her story. (HAND)
And now she is back in front of the photographer’s lens. And he has no problem admitting the photos are retouched: “These aren’t my jaws and neck in real life.” In the pictures taken by Steven Meisel, Evangelista always wears a scarf around her face that hides her ears and hair, while makeup artist Pat McGrath gently pulled back her face, jawline and neck with tape and rubber bands.
“I try to love myself for who I ambut with fashion photography I think our job is to create fantasies, create dreams,” she said in the Vogue interview, explaining that she was drawn to the CoolSculpting process for her own vanity: “Those commercials were going everywhere aired and they said, “Do you like what you see in the mirror?” They talked to me.”
“They promised no downtime, no surgery, and … I drank the potion, I did it because I’m a little bit vain, and it backfired,” she continued, revealing, “if I had known the implications of collateral.” It could include losing your livelihood and risking being so depressed that I hate you… I wouldn’t have taken that risk.”
In September 2021, the model filed a $50 million lawsuit against coolsculpting company Zeltiq Aesthetics, which she later settled in July.
With Vogue, Evangelista reminisced about her early days as a model and when she rose to fame. When asked if she was aware of her beauty and if the boys wanted to date her, she replied: “No. I had a lot of friends, but no. Do you know what was there? I was tall and people would say to my mom, ‘Oh, she’s tall. She should become a model. ‘Then I became obsessed with fashion.’
And when asked if she was mentally healed, she admitted, “Absolutely not, but I’m grateful for the support I’ve had from my friends and from my industry.” Support came from her colleagues Gwyneth Paltrow and Marc Jacobs . Art director Kim Jones was among the first to send her a letter, which resulted in her starring in one new Fendi campaign“. You won’t see me in a bathing suit, that’s for sure – he concluded – and it will be difficult to find work with the protuberances without retouching, compressing or using tricks.”