Naomi Campbell, Ebony Goddess

What can I tell you about Naomi Campbell that you don't know... Ebony Goddess... Black Panther of the catwalks...

Born in 1970, nowadays she is still one of the queens of catwalks and publicity. She is well-known by her sculpted body and her overflowing beauty, but also by her bad temper and her notorious romances.

Scouted at the age of 15, in 1987 she became the first black model on the cover of British Vogue since 1966; and one year later she appeared on the cover of French Vogue, after her friend and mentor, designer Yves St. Laurent, threatened to withdraw his advertising from the magazine if it continued to refuse to place black models on its cover. It was obvious that little girl, who was featured at the age of 7 in the music video for Bob Marley's "Is This Love", was intended for succeed because of her beauty.

Is this love (Bob Marley)

Vogue Cover 1987

Exotic beauty, born in London, she is an Afro-Jamaican and Chinese descent, scouted while window-shopping in Covent Garden. She was part of a trio of models (the others being Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista) known as "The Trinity", who became the most recognisable and in-demand models of their generation. Even Linda and Christy threatened Dolce&Gabbana: "If you don't use Naomi, you don't get us" and finally Naomi worked with them.

The Trinity

Her friendship has lasted till today; even, in 2009, Linda and Naomi featured Dsquared Spring-Summer Collection, where they were fighting each other. They look marvellous.

D-squared

But not only she has showcased the creations of top designers, she is featured in music videos as George Michael's "Freedom '90" and, later, in Michael Jackson's "In the Closet" Here you can see the video's making-of, shot in California's desert.

Despite her success, however, Elite Model Management, which had represented Campbell since 1987, fired her, on the grounds that "no amount of money or prestige could further justify the abuse" to staff and clients. Elite founder John Casablancas described her as "manipulative, scheming, rude, and impossible."
We also could see her provocatively posing in Madonna's controversial book "Sex"...

She wrote a novel, "Swan", about a supermodel dealing with blackmail, but it was ghostwritten by Caroline Upcher, with Campbell explaining that she "just did not have the time to sit down and write a book" That same year, Campbell released her album "Babywoman", named after designer Rifat Ozbek's nickname for her. And even, with Claudia Schiffer and Elle MacPherson, she invested in an ill-fated chain of restaurants called "The Fashion Cafe"

Model, singer, business-woman... but this is not everything in her life: she is involved with several charitable causes. Campbell has been outspoken against the racial bias that exists in the fashion industry; she supports the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund; she also supports Breakthrough Breast Cancer (her mother has battled breast cancer); she founded the charity We Love Brazil, which aims to raise awareness and funds to fight poverty in Brazil through the sale of fabrics made by local women; she founded the charity Fashion for Relief, which has organised fund-raising fashion shows to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the India terrorist attacks in 2009, the Haiti earthquake in 2010, and the Japan earthquake in 2011.

And her love life... what about her love life..? Mike Tyson, Robert de Niro, Adam Clayton, Joaquín Cortés, Flavio Briatore, Badr Jafar and, finally till today, russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin.

Naomi Campbell and Joaquin Cortes

Naomi and Vladislav Doronin

She says that the the difficulty of her temper is due to the abscene of her father, that she never met because he abandoned her mother when she was four months pregnant... and she should add that drugs exacerbated it. Campbell was accused ten times of committing acts of violence against employees, associates, and, in one instance, police officers. Maybe she, in an attempt to recoup of that so explosive character, was decided to share a bit of her time and of her money with the needest ones. As she recognize in Interview Magazine: "I make many mistakes. Many mistakes. So I always get nervous when people speak about something that sounds like a role model, because I don’t know if I’ve been a great role model myself. I don’t think I have in certain aspects of my life"

She is 41 years-old. Hypnotic, beautiful to the core