Breastless, hipless, and perennially skinny, Brit Kate Moss brought in the "waif" look and changed the shape of modeling in the 1990s. In contrast to more buxom models such as Cindy Crawford, she was a scrawny fourteen-year-old when an agent discovered her in a New York airport; her ability to retain that figure well into her twenties would catapult her to fame and a reported $1.2 million contract with American designer Calvin Klein. Though Moss modeled extensively in England, it wasn't until 1992, when Klein selected her to represent his youth-oriented CK line, that her career took off; a series of semi-nude photographs appeared everywhere from magazine pages to bus shelters (where passersby occasionally scrawled "Feed Me" across her belly). Despite her controversial slenderness, Moss became one of the top six faces in the world, and for many people her glamorous lifestyle of all-night parties with actor boyfriends defined what it meant to be a supermodel.

Further Reading:

Gross, Michael. Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. New York, William Morrow & Company, 1995.

Tresniowski, Alex. "Out of Fashion." People. November 23,1998, 132-40.