The word "supermodel" was first used in the 1940s, but the supermodel phenomenon belongs to the 1980s and 1990s, when a few women epitomizing glamour and opulence captured the American popular consumer's imagination. For most of the supermodel era, the pantheon included Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington—all of them tall, architectural, and distinctive in appearance—who represented both the triumph of unadulterated image and the mass marketing of fashion.

Models had been famous before—Suzy Parker in the 1950s, Twiggy in the 1960s, Christie Brinkley in the 1970s—but the supermodels were touted for taking charge of their own careers, marketing themselves assiduously, and commanding huge fees for themselves and their agents. They cast themselves in discrete roles: Crawford was the confident sexual one, Moss the waif, Schiffer the one who looked like Brigitte Bardot. Like most models, they...