Lifestyle | Fashion By any measure, that the V&A has chosen to profile Naomi Campbell with a dedicated exhibition is impressive. The only cultural figures it has previously documented with their own shows are David Bowie and Kylie. After walking through the stages featuring over 100 looks worn by the 54 year old supermodel over the course of a 40 year career, her significance is unassailable.
Yes, this is about Campbell, but it also serves as a comprehensive visual history of the fashion industry as a whole over the past four decades - the duration of which she has been a central conduit. It opens with the plucky 15 year old ballet student from Streatham, spotted by Beth Boldt after school in Covent Garden so the legend goes. She’d bunked off and was wearing her mother’s jacket and shoes speaks Campbell on a voice over of her modelling origin story.
She didn’t tell her mum, not wanting to alert her to her careering around the city unbound. Her ascent quickly decimated the lie. She was on the cover of ELLE before she turned 16.
At 17 she was living in New York, at 18 the first black model to appear on the cover of French Vogue. The first cabinet features her old ballet shoes, a school photo as well as a Concord boarding pass and backstage pass for Yves Saint Laurent. ‘It wasn’t unusual for me to be in New York on Monday, leave that night for Paris, come back on Tuesday and criss-cross the Atlantic up to three times that week.
’ She is quoted. A dressing room set up .