Linda Evangelista (born May 10, 1965) is a Canadian model.
Early years
Evangelista was born to Italian-Canadian parents and was raised in a working-class, traditional Roman Catholic family in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, where she attended Denis Morris secondary school. She knew she wanted to become a model when she was 12 years old. Evangelista got into the modelling industry when she was discovered by a talent agent at the 1978 Miss Teen Niagara beauty pageant.
Career
Evangelista later moved to New York City and signed with Elite Model Management there. She then moved to Paris, France, to further her career. She also appeared in music videos with
George Michael.
Along with
Christy Turlington,
Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, Evangelista is regarded as one of the few, true supermodels that changed the face of fashion in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington comprised a trio of friends that 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."
Evangelista uttered the quote, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day" (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 Meter, 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 many dramatic hairstyle changes. Within months, she appeared on magazine covers everywhere and many women emulated the hairstyle.
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.
In 2007, she signed a multiple-year exclusive contract with the cosmetics company L'Oreal Paris. It was announced in early 2008 that she would be featured in the Prada Fall 2008 campaign seen in magazines internationally.
She is signed to DNA Model Management in New York City, and Models 1 in London.
Personal life
Evangelista was married to Elite executive Gerald Marie from 1987 to 1993. She has also dated actor Kyle MacLachlan (1992-1998), French football player Fabien Barthez (1998-2000), Italian oil mogul Ugo Brachetti Peretti (2003-2004), and former Formula One driver Paolo Barilla (2005).
Throughout her career, Evangelista has expressed her desire to have children.
On October 11, 2006, she gave birth to a boy, Augustin James. 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.
Biography courtesy of
Wikipedia
