The Cyclical Model Face

Caroline Evans wrote in Fashion at the Edge: spectacle, modernity and deathliness that “a consideration of historicism in 1990s fashion enables the articulation of a series of metaphors to think about fashion time and how it operated – crumpled fabric, the labyrinth, the telescope and the tiger’s leap” (Evans 22). She reminds us of the turns and returns to fashion trends, such as the corset, and our unquenchable desire to conjure up nostalgia through runway shows and collections. Yet, while Evans is speaking directly to fashion, the same can actually be attributed to the models who wear the fashion. The model of today can be regarded as a reference to our past, specifically past tastes.

Although in 2020, newer and fresher faces have hit the runways such as Duckie Thot and Ashley Graham, there is still something to be said about the desire to re-create our past. The Big Six or Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington reigned in the 90s-modeling world (Instyle Mag). These “It-girls” changed the modeling world to a more competitive industry where names mattered. They presented luxe lifestyles that allured attention. Today; however, we could replace those 90s models with today’s Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber, Cara Delavigne and see an eerie similarity. It's the tale as old as time Euro-centric standard of beauty and thin physique, accompanied by a large following who fawn over this dreamy life.

On another note, this sameness within the modeling industry can be identified by modeling heritage and surgical doppelgängers. With Carla Bruni and Bella Hadid's near identical faces and Kaia Gerber and mother, Cindy Crawford's strong genes, there is a cyclical sense of what the model look consists of. Especially in terms of Gerber and Crawford, the supermodel mother breeds the supermodel daughter. Her “It-factor” can descend just as strongly from her name as from her model features.

And, while agencies may claim to have a specific eye for talent, it is more important to comprehend, as Bourdieu acknowledges, that these looks are garnered by our learned and cultivated tastes. Knowledge and cultural tastes of the 90s supermodels very well seeps into today’s modeling agencies.

Carla Bruni side by side Bella Hadid Source: Google Images

As former fashion model and writer Ashley Mears writes in Seeing culture through the eye of the beholder: four methods in pursuit of taste,

Fashion editors and model scouts use discourses of intuition to account for their sense of “good girls,” which they explain as the outcome of their “eye,” an embodied skill they deploy to recognize the future direction of fashion in the hundreds of new faces they screen for modeling jobs each year. However, interviews misrecognize as intuition what network analysis reveals to be macro structural alignments in the field, as well as contingent interactions that unfold through ethnography (Mears 3).

Kaia Gerber side by side with mother Cindy Crawford. Source: Google Images

So, looking back at models from earlier times allows us to understand why, conceivably, models of today are filling their shoes. This cyclical taste and consistent returns to nostalgia reminds us that modeling mirrors fashion in this sense. Both industries are obviously interconnected as one truly can't fully exist without the other.

Looking into the past is not necessarily something malicious, but it can very well prevent fashion and modeling from being more accessible. There is a plethora of critique and arguments that can elongate this conversation; but the fact of it is, modeling, like fashion, is a visual medium, and through seeing, we are accustomed to types, movements and shapes. At the end of the day, we become used to seeing the Hadid sisters or the Victoria Secret Angels on the luxury runways and seem to settle into the idea of sameness and normalcy without questioning why.

Left: Michaela Bercu for Vogue 1988, Right Gigi Hadid for Vogue.com 2014