British supermodel Naomi Campbell reflects on career

Model Naomi Campbell photographed during a video interview at home in Los Angeles. PHOTO: NYTIMES

LOS ANGELES • Despite struggles with the race-based inequalities too long unchecked in fashion, supermodel Naomi Campbell has not only remained in the public eye for three decades, but has also reinvented herself as a digital media phenomenon.

Campbell, who was born in London and recently turned 50, has kept busy during and beyond lockdown at a friend's house in Los Angeles.

Reached by telephone on a Friday evening last month, she talked about what it is like to be her.

FASHION'S CONSCIOUS BIAS

"Of course, it is race-based," Campbell said of the bias in fashion that has kept the deck stacked against black creators whom fashion editor Anna Wintour recently conceded had not been given enough "space" in places such as Vogue.

"But I never expected things to come to me easy," she added.

"I've always been raised, by my mother, my nana, the wonderful strong women in my family, from this strong ancestry to understand that, whatever I was going to do, I had to do it 110 per cent."

Campbell's heritage is a combination of Afro-Jamaican and Chinese Jamaican.

NOT A SURVIVOR, BUT A PRAGMATIST

"It's adaptation," she said. "Back in the day, I would say: 'Why am I doing this if I'm not getting treated the same as my counterparts? Why am I not earning the same money?'

"Luckily, I had wonderful people like Bethann (modelling agent Bethann Hardison, Campbell's lifelong guide and protector) that I would call. She would explain to me why it would be beneficial to go forward and do it, and we'd see the results in the long run."

"If I thought things were unjust, I had to say something," continued Campbell, whose record on the subject is somewhat mixed.

It is true that Campbell was a founder of Black Girls Coalition, a group organised to address race-based inequities in fashion.

But it is also true that she once tried to squelch the career of a newcomer named Tyra Banks.

She said: "The point is to try to make the best of the situation you're dealing with. I don't look at it as surviving. I look at it as life."

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

"I am blessed with the people I've had in my life, the influences of their wonderful great minds, spirits and beings," said Campbell.

Tunisian couturier Azzedine Alaia, who effectively parented Campbell throughout her career and whom Campbell called papa, died in 2017 at 82.

"I was really thrown," she said. "But then this strength came to me from somewhere - I don't know, I can only say from him. I realised I had to do more, help more, be there more."

ROUTINE QUEEN

"I have a routine I kept during quarantine," she said. "Get up, pray, shower, work out. In times like this, you need that sense of familiarity and routine to keep your mind and spirit in a safe space."

STICKLER FOR CLEANLINESS

"I never made that to go viral," Campbell said of a clip of her pre-flight sanitising ritual last year, which has more than 2.9 million views on YouTube. Though it may once have seemed extreme, it ought to be required viewing for anyone planning to board a plane again.

NO RUNNING AWAY

"This virus, the lives it has taken, is devastating. And yet being still and being in one place can be amazing," said Campbell. "If there is one thing I've learnt in this lifetime so far, it is that there's no getting away from anything. We've got to face our fears and go through the emotions."

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 01, 2020, with the headline British supermodel Naomi Campbell reflects on career. Subscribe