When Georgina Cooper stopped breathing in Crete, at the age of forty-six, she had just married Nigel Smith, with whom she thought she would live a long love story. It wasn’t like that. On November 8, two of Georgina’s model friends, Jade Parfitt and Erin O’Connor, confirmed the sad news. At the same time, the model’s agent also corroborated her: “She died tragically (in Greece) about fifteen days ago (…) Georgina had not been feeling well since COVID, she had developed some health problems and had been in and out of the hospital ( …) But I had plans for the future. She had just gotten married and was excited about her life. Everyone is devastated. “He was a true superstar.” Georgina Cooper will be difficult to forget. She and Vanessa Paradis made bright smiles with diastema (that is, with a gap between the two upper incisor teeth) fashionable. For this reason, many knew her as ‘The Girl with the Gap Teeth’. She belonged to a daring generation of British models, the ‘Cool Britannia’, with Kate Moss, Jade Parfitt and Erin O’Connor in their ranks, who dazzled on the catwalks during the nineties, and who brought a touch to the fashion industry. ‘avant-garde’.
© Getty ImagesHer life seems straight out of a talent-discovering movie: at the age of thirteen, her mother entered her in the prestigious Elite Look of the Year contest… and she came in third place. Premier Model Management, the agency that brought such powerful fashion personalities as Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington, noticed her and… voilà! At the age of fifteen, she recorded a music video with Bon Jovi and the rest is part of her legend: historic photo sessions, with geniuses like Corinne Day or Elaine Constantine; magazine covers; fashion shows for top brands such as Armani, Calvin Klein and Helmut Lang.
A powerful generation
Her death, given her youth and her desire to live, has deeply impacted everyone who knew her. Carole White, owner of Premier Model Management, has spoken of Georgina Cooper in the following terms: “She was very funny. When I was young, I made a lot of money and had that daring streak of the time. “Everyone thought it was incredible how big a gap he had between his teeth!”
Georgina Cooper was always bold, as were her generation mates. They ate the (fashion) world to pieces and showed their talent and charisma on the catwalk. They showed that to be models it was not enough to have perfect measurements and pristine skin. Something more was needed: overflowing personality, self-confidence, loving your physical peculiarities, not hiding. Recently, during the last Victoria’s Secret fashion show, after six years without this unforgettable appointment with the ‘angels’, some of these models have returned loving their bodies, without complexes.
© Getty ImagesAdriana Lima was one of the great stars. She is not exactly from the nineties generation, but a worthy successor, who began her career in 2000. She dazzled with a great body after having three children. But, with Adriana Lima’s permission, older models like Eva Herzigovawho did not miss the event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Herzigova is fifty-one years old and has three children, the oldest seventeen years old. Herzigova, born in the Czech Republic, learned from her father, an Olympic swimming champion, what discipline means, and incorporated the iron discipline that she had learned at home into the world of modeling. Still, in all honesty, he has confessed that the world of fashion can be so complex and volatile that, sometimes, the determining factor is luck: “In this industry everything has to do with luck. You always depend on someone else’s point of view, on whether someone likes you.” On the other hand, we cannot forget that luck must be sought.
© Getty ImagesAlso at the big Victoria’s Secret date was a very close companion of Georgina Cooper, Kate Moss, the fascinating fifty-year-old British model, who rose to fame in 1992. Kate worked hard on the catwalks, but she also lived the ‘loca life’ of the nineties, in London, but also in other large cities on the planet. One of her most high-profile partners was Johnny Depp, whom she met in New York, and with whom she had a turbulent love story, which ended in 1998. Four years later, Kate Moss thought it was time to settle down and had a relationship. with journalist Jefferson Hack, editor of Dazed and Confused. With him she had her only daughter, Lila Grace, in 2002.
© Getty ImagesWell, Lila Grace has decided to follow in the footsteps of her famous mother and is a model. As is Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ daughter, Lily-Rose. The world of fashion has called them and they have answered its call, just like Kaia Gerber, already well established in the industry, and daughter of the iconic Cindy Crawford.
iconic moments
What can we say about those women who stepped forward and, above all, remained in a competitive and slave world? Because the slavery of bodily perfection requires very special discipline and mental strength. In 1990, Linda Evangelista uttered one of the most repeated phrases ever said about the fashion world of those years: “We don’t get up for less than $10,000 a day.” And three decades ago the world surrendered to the glamor and daring, to the creativity and magical possibilities of Haute Couture and Pret-à-Porter. Linda Evangelista hasn’t had a good time. Her battle against cancer positions her as what she has called herself “a survivor in waiting.” Curiously, he has found support in his most difficult moments in the actress Salma Hayek, once his enemy. It should be remembered that Linda Evangelista had her son Augustin James, on October 11, 2006, from a brief relationship with François-Henri Pinault, who months later had, with Salma Hayek, her youngest daughter, Valentina Paloma. However, in the end common sense has prevailed between both women and, for their children, they are very close and complicit.
© Getty ImagesClaudia Schiffer He reached the top in the fashion world. Her angelic face occupied covers all over the world, the big brands fought over her, she Germanically fulfilled her obligation and, after meeting her objectives, she carefully measured where to appear and for what. His height of 1.80 made an impact at the time. She succeeded professionally, but also personally. After a high-profile courtship with the magician David Copperfield, she fell in love with the British filmmaker Matthew Vaugh, they married in 2002, and they are parents of three children, Caspar, Clementine and Cosima Violet.
© Getty ImagesIf the all-powerful Schiffer has chosen this profile of calm and intimacy – in line with Christy Turlington –, Naomi Campbell, the ‘ebony goddess’, continues to be in the news Not only because of his talent, which he continues to demonstrate with a body of ten and an attitude of 1,000 in photo shoots and on the catwalks, but because of those scandals, big or small, that have plagued him since the beginning of his career. Mother of two little ones, after fifty, they have transformed her, as she herself has said: “My babies are everything to me. They are my one hundred and ten percent priority. I have to be there for them on their first day of school.”
© Getty ImagesThat generation of supermodels opened the gap for new generations. In 2017, during an interview for Vogue, Claudia Schiffer tried to clarify what made that generation so powerful and important: “People keep asking me why that happened, what the magic recipe was. And I can only say that we were all very different and that each one followed a very different path in her career; So there was no recipe, but there was a massive trend in fashion and very important changes.” Georgina Cooper lived through all of that and will not be forgotten.
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