But you can read about the business end of the fashion show anywhere else online; what we’re interested in is the less reported and arguably more interesting stories from the past couple of weeks.

‘Hellish’ and ‘disaster’ were two of the words used to describe the predicament of of some of the U.K’s foremost models on Monday when the Eurostar was held up by heavy snow.  The snow, which fell in Northern France, brought down power lines which meant that the Eurostar ground to a halt.  Fortunately the twittersphere was alive with the painful tweets of the poor darlings who informed us that the worst hit had to spend around 11 hours with nothing more that ‘cheese and ham toasties’.

Eurostar in the snow

We know that Kanye West has been working on his ‘collection’ for some time but Paris was the first opportunity we had to check it out.  It was a fairly late affair and not the most well attended show we’ve ever seen.  Those who were in attendance seemed to be mainly celebrity mates of West such as Alicia Keyes, Jay Z and Kim Kardashian.  The clothes?  OK, but must do better next time.

Kanye West in Paris

We saw what might be seen as the unfortunate continuation of a disturbing trend – that of model Brad Kroenig’s young son Hudson strutting his stuff up and down the catwalk.  It first happened at Chanel’s 2011 Spring show when Hudson was just two years old and since then he has been in some demand amongst those magazines looking for something different.

Hudson Kroenig

Lisa Fonssagrives on Vogue

To catch up with our previous article, the 1960s and 1970s were the decades when the term ‘supermodel’ came into common public usage.  Where fashion magazines had previously printed photos without names, it now became common to print the model’s name beside the picture, adding another layer of characterisation to the person involved.

In 1974, Lauren Hutton started to earn big bucks when she became the face of Revlon – the first tie-in with a cosmetics company, then in 1975, Margaux Hemingway became the perfume industry’s first mega-earner when she was appointed as the face of Fabergé’s Babe perfume.  The first black supermodel was probably Naomi Sims who appeared on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in 1968, although Donyale Lune in the mid-1960s and Beverly Johnson in the early 1970s could stake a claim to that title.

Lauren Hutton

French model, Inès de la Fressange, was the first model to be exclusively ties to a fashion house when Chanel signed her up in the early 1980s, but many others began to endorse products both inside and outside the fashion industry.  As we stated in Part One, once the models began to become recognisable to the wider public it was an obvious step for non-fashion brands to use them for marketing purposes.

By the 1990s, the era of the supermodel was in full swing.  They were not always popular; Linda Evangelista’s 1990 comment to Vogue that “we don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day” did not go down well in all quarters.  She may have been joking but her contemporaries were indeed earning vast sums for modeling and other appearances.  This was the era of Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Cindy Crawford; absolute superstars of the catwalk.

Jessica Stam

As the 1990s drew to a close, there was something of a sea change in the way that supermodels were slowly replaced by ‘celebrities’ from other industries on magazine covers.  Perhaps the power of the elite group of ladies at the top of tree became to annoying for the magazine editors and fashion designers or perhaps contemporary culture was just gradually changing.  Whatever happened, the heyday of the supermodel was over and they were replaced on magazine covers and billboards by equally pretty pop stars, actors and actresses.

Towards the middle of the 2000s, there was a re-correction again and models began to reclaim some of the cover space.  A change of attitudes from a new generation of models such as Coco Rocha, Hilary Rhoda and Jessica Stam led to a mellowing from the editors but the term ‘supermodel’ is one which no-one wants to apply to themselves or anyone else.  The word is a throwback to an era when common sense seemed to fly out of the window and the models were all-powerful.  Those days are gone.

Anita Colby

which occurred around the mid-1980s, references to the term can be dated back to not just the last century, but the one before that.  In 1891 in an interview with The Strand magazine, wildlife painter Henry Stacy Marks referred to a particular type of “theatrical’ male model as ‘the super model’.  This seems to be the earliest recorded use of the phrase but of course it doesn’t really relate to what we think of as a modern supermodel.

The 1940s saw several references to supermodels in magazines which described something which was closer to what we know.  Perhaps the first woman to be described thus was Anita Colby, the highest paid model of the era.

By the 1960s the term had well and truly entered the modelling world.  Twiggy is often regarded as the first U.K. supermodel, a model and celebrity who’s name meant more than being just a attractive clotheshorse.  There were regular uses of the word on both sides of the Atlantic by this time – Vogue, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post were all familiar with the term.

American actress and model Janice Dickinson claimed ownership of the term in 1979,

Janice Dickinson

despite all the previous evidence.  She says it was a combination of the words ‘Superman’ and ‘model’ and in a conversation with her agent said “I’m a supermodel honey, and you will refer to me as a supermodel….”.  Again, contrary to all the previous facts, Dickinson thinks she was the first supermodel.

The point at which a ‘model’ becomes a ‘supermodel’ must surely be when the general public recognise that person outside the modelling context.  They become written about in gossip columns, recognised in the street, stalked by the press and, most importantly for them, command gigantic fees for strolling up and down the catwalk or advertising some cosmetic product.

Part Two follows….

Black Model Melodie Monrose

All the way from Martinique, the new stunner Melodie Monrose is doing the catwalk now. December was a specially busy month for the young shy girl: she did a gig for Dazed&Confused (picture above), and modeled for photographer Sølve Sundsbø, together with our favorite model Anais Mali. Check out the images below:

Leomie

Just wanted to share with you a new picture of model Leomie Anderson. Girl is a young woman now, with great styling, don’t you think? Love her shorts!

Check out the pictures from the runways:

The girl is a stunner, and my readers can now enjoy her beauty. I chose some of the best sexiest pictures of Jourdan Dunn, and it’s not an easy task.

One of Jourdan's sexiest takes, in the bus

Jourdan Dunn does Gautier while pregnant

...And she doesn't skip the pregnancy nude photo as well!

Black Spring in Vogue Italia

Jourdan Dunn very first fashion show, age 17