Marie Claire EIC Joanna Coles: "(The New Supermodels) just aren’t as interesting as the classic ones"



(image via hearstcorp)

We are something of a connoisseur of the supermodel, but not, we think, in the creepy sense. As Vladimir Nabokov wrote in "Ode to a Model," "Ballerina, black-masked/ near a parapet of alabaster./
'Can one -- somebody asked --/ rhyme ‘star’ and ‘disaster’?'" (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment) And so when we read the names Helena Christensen and Iman, well, you know. And then, of course, there is Marie Claire Editor-in-Chief Joanna Coles kind of dissing the new crop of mannequins (She's right, Giselle Bundchen is no Bev Johnson). From Fashionweekdaily:

"Helena Christensen, who photographed a few of her supermodel friends for the August issue of Marie Claire, was fêted Wednesday by the magazine with a cocktail party and auction of the statuesque brunette’s images at Milk Gallery. Guests, including Chanel Iman, Leif Sigerson, Leslie Fremar, Mazdack Rassi, Amy Sacco, and Sean Penn, who arrived early to pay his respects before darting out, also had the opportunity to bid on a retrospective of 25 years of photos from past Guess campaigns.

"Proceeds from the sale of each photo benefited the charity of the model’s choosing. The sale of Christensen’s self portrait will be donated to the Chernobyl Children’s Project ... Marie Claire editor in chief Joanna Coles, despite some recent riveting news of senior staff departures, was nevertheless nothing less than thrilled with how the spread turned out ... Coles marveled at the mix of inner and outer beauty. 'Irina Lazareanu built a school for girls in Haiti and Sophie Dahl flew herself in from London for the shoot,' she said. 'All this talk about the new supermodels is silly; those girls just aren’t as interesting as the classic ones.'"