Sometimes, I feel just a tad guilty about doing a website about a Supermodel. Why? Well, because modelling is a strange business. For many people, their favourite pin up girls were movie stars like Marilyn or Michelle Pfeiffer, or pop stars like Debbie Harry or Madonna. You could hang their posters on your wall, and dream about marrying them, but ultimately, they were entertainers - and it would be through their art that you fell in love with them in the first place. So, yes, you could fantasise about Debbie Harry, but at the end of the day, it was her music that really captured your heart - anybody who had a picture of her on their wall also had a copy of “Parallel Lines” in their record box.
But with models, it’s a bit different. Unless you happen to be a woman (or a cross dresser!), you can’t really buy the “product” that these girls are selling. So, if you admit to being a fan of Kate Moss, is it purely based on her looks? Is it the same as being a fan of one of “The Sun” newspaper’s Page 3 girls? Are models entertainers in the same way movie stars or pop stars are?
Years ago, perhaps not. Apart from the Twiggy’s and Jean Shrimpton’s of this world, models were not really celebrities during the 60’s and 70’s. Most fashion magazines would have an anonymous model on the cover, of course there had to be something on the front, but it mattered not who it was. From a design aspect, there was obviously a thought process in how it looked, but the cover image was not necessarily being used to draw you in because of who it was, because invariably, the identity of the model was not obvious.
In the 1980’s, things started to change with the likes of Yasmin Le Bon becoming a known face on UK fashion mags. The term “supermodel” was not yet an official phrase, although fashion magazines through the ages had occasionally used the word. But at the start of the 1990’s, things changed. Fashion Models were starting to become well known faces, the likes of Cindy Crawford were just as recognisable as the likes of Kim Basinger. The use of Naomi Campbell on the cover of “Vogue” was deliberately done to reel the punters in. A cover of “Elle” with Helena Christensen would be expected to sell more than if it was just a nameless model. These girls were so famous, they were known only by their first names - Eva, Claudia, Linda, Christy - and the term “Supermodel” was coined. They started stepping out of the pages of the fashion magazines, and into the big wide world - pop videos, movies, fitness videos, you name it, these girls were proper superstars.
And despite the fact that these Supermodels were still ultimately fashion models, paid initially to model female clothes on the catwalks and in the magazines, they began to infiltrate other parts of the media - namely the MALE lifestyle magazines. Elle did “Playboy”, Cindy got onto “FHM”, Helena appeared on the front of “Maxim”. Maybe it was purely sexual - the magazine editors knew that putting a scantily clad Naomi on the cover of “Esquire” would generate bigger sales than if it was Pearl Jam. Perhaps it was a vague throwback to the concept of the old style glamour girl. After all, sexual attraction is only natural, so if the likes of “Penthouse” could do it, then why couldn’t “Arena” or “GQ“?
I suppose I quite liked the design aspect of what I saw at the start of that decade. Having initially started to collect magazines with the likes of Demi Moore or Sharon Stone adorning the cover, based on a love of their movies and the visual impact that some of these magazines had (the famous Pregnant-Demi “Vanity Fair” cover), I guess moving onto the supermodels was the next obvious step. Yes, I guess the “looks” played a part, but the design aspect was what I think really fascinated me. Show me ten Helena Christensen covers, and I would be able to rank them in “favourites” order, simply based on the design aspect. The “scratch card” cover of her “Dazed And Confused” appearance would be top, for example. Google it. So, I tended to view these magazines, both in terms of how the cover looked, and how the photoshoot inside looked, very much as a piece of art. Like my favourite movie stars and my favourite pop stars, I was also able to not only rank these covers in order, but I could put the models themselves in some sort of "Supermodel League Table", in terms of how their covers looked and how much I liked the editorials. So, Kate was ahead of Claudia, but Helena trumped them all. It was now 1996.
In February 1997, a hitherto unknown model called Sophie Dahl was featured in the tabloids after strutting along the catwalk at London Fashion Week. She was seen as something of a sensation, a statuesque 6 foot tall, Size 16 blond bombshell - the papers had never seen anything like her before. And neither had I. I was hooked. She looked like she had been sent down to Earth from another planet, and I fell in love immediately. Once Sophie had done her first cover, Helena thus got relegated to second place in the “Supermodel League Table“.
The first time I saw Sophie in person was in April 1997. For some years, I would go into London to take photos at film premieres, and I was told where the premiere for “Scream” was going to be. I had no idea Sophie was on the guest list. I remember her arriving, and she simply got out of her car, and wandered towards the building. The paps screamed at her to stop and turn around to pose - she hadn’t quite got the knack of this “posing for the press” lark just yet. I managed to grab a photo as she turned round, and realised she was just as much of a blond bombshell in the flesh as she was in print.
I began to collect material about Sophie, and did it to a greater extent than any of the other models who were in that league table. She didn’t even need to be on the cover of a magazine - even if she was just somewhere inside it, that would do for me. She looked so different to everybody else, almost like she didn’t really belong to the modelling world, even she seemed bemused as to how it had all happened. The fact that she was also still a bit left field, and maybe not famous “enough” seemed to add to the allure - whenever Kate Moss did another cover, it was just another Kate Moss cover - maybe a good one, maybe a not so good one. But when Sophie made the front page, it felt incredibly exciting, like an underdog rising up to the top. Even when she went dark in 1998, going back to her natural hair colour, she still looked fabulous. A Brunette Bombshell.
My first attempt to meet Sophie failed. In June 97, she had arrived at the Empire in Leicester Square for the “Fifth Element” premiere, and me and my friends were given a tip off that the after party that night was at the Café de Paris - a walking distance away. It meant that in order to get from the cinema to the party, everybody was going to have to walk through the Square. So, we got ourselves a perfect stalking position midway along, and nabbed various autographs from whoever walked past. But as the crowds died down, I realised we hadn’t seen Sophie come past. It was a heartbreaking failure.
The first time I did meet her was in September that year, when she turned up for the “Audience With Elton John” event. She stopped to sign autographs for everybody who asked, and there was a palpable sense of excitement as she got closer and closer. Eventually, it was my turn. She signed my book, handed me my pen back, and I just froze in sheer terror/exhilaration/wonderment. I dropped my pen as my senses went numb, she thought it was her fault, said “sorry”, and bent down to pick my pen up off the floor to hand it back to me. It was the single greatest moment of my life so far.
When our house connected to the internet in 2001, the first thing I did was to trudge through the net locating as much info and as many photos as I could find. I began to really build my fledgling collection, and started to fill in the gaps - magazines I had missed were bought from eBay, photos were printed/saved to disc from photosites. Research revealed this that and the other, and by the end of 2002, I had become something of an expert on Miss Dahl. I had a photographic record of more or less every celebrity shindig she had attended, all relevant video footage officially available had been obtained. I later made the effort to get into London to the one cinema that was showing “People I Know” on it’s day of release, ensuring I witnessed the first screening just after lunchtime. I went to the one cinema in Birmingham that was showing “King Of Bollywood” in it’s first week of release, despite being rather dramtically told that if I was to walk there from the nearest train station, I would probably get killed due to the “undesirability” of the area, despite it being broad daylight. I got the bus straight to the cinema entrance instead just in case.
In early 2003, I noticed that whenever I switched my sister’s computer on, and the Freeserve Webpage popped up, it had a link on it - “Build your own website”. It grabbed my attention. I thought to myself, ”if I was to build a website, what would it be about?” They say you should write about what you know. I loved music, but I wasn’t a total expert on any one band, or any one singer, although I did have quite a hardcore Madonna collection - just not as hardcore as the really hardcore obsessives. But Sophie? Well, I knew it all (nearly). By this point, Sophie was not just a model, but was a writer, actress, radio play starlet, theatre veteran. But of the two fan websites that existed, one had stopped updating after she had stopped being “the fat model”, and the other one seemed to have lots of photos scanned in from some magazines, but not much in the way of “meat”. Sophie really needed a proper site, a reference site, something that told you what she had done, and when she had done it. And I realised that if you want something done properly, you may as well do it yourself. And so, in April 2003, “Sophie Dahl Rocks” was born. It was very much the same as what you see now, only with less pages and less pictures. It was also, in parts, just as DIY and slightly rough around the edges as this version of the site is. But, for all it’s faults, I am quite proud of it. Nobody else has really done anything along the same lines, and although the hit count is low - it’s like the fan website equivalent of the original pressing of “Scott 4” - the lady herself knows it exists. I never planned this. I was told she did her first book on a typewriter because she didn’t own a computer, let alone the internet. I always thought that if she knew I had built a website using photos of her that I didn’t actually take myself, I would get taken to the high court or sent to the gallows or something. Although, post-Tumblr, everybody else would be there with me. So the fact that she not only knows it exists, but actually told me once it was “an honouring thing”, is possibly the second best thing to happen to me - after my wedding day naturally.
So that’s why I ended up doing a website about Sophie Dahl. Strangely, two months after I started the site, that’s when I met my future wife, but you know what they say - “I’ve started, so I’ll finish”, and that’s why I’ve kept it going. As I type this, it celebrates it's 10th birthday this year. If you asked me, “if you had to be a Mormon and marry another wife, who would it be?“, then I’d pick her. Although we might argue about if she does or doesn’t wear fur, and why she used to write for right-wing leaning broadsheets. And she wouldn’t pick me of course. She was my “Debbie Harry”, the dream pin up girl who made you go weak at the knees. Even now, as my wife and I look after our pets, and Sophie and her hubby have more and more kids, she’s still the same blond bombshell that caused my jaw to drop all those years ago. Enjoy this website and tell your friends about it!
