Christy Turlington Recalls How She Was Talked Into Posing Nude at 17 on ‘The Super Models’: “I Shouldn’t Be Doing This”

Apple TV+‘s The Super Models is a fascinating look at the careers of four of the most influential models who have ever lived: Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Linda Evangelista. All four women revolutionized the way we think about fashion, femininity, and beauty, and all four women are remembered for posing nude in iconic images snapped by some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. While each of the show’s subjects talk about how they enjoyed posing nude with the right photographer, Christy Turlington shared how Patrick Demarchelier talked her into doing so when she was still underage. Turlington doesn’t necessarily regret the experience, but she does reveal that she had no idea the image would be printed on the cover of Photo magazine.

“Eventually that image came out on the cover of Photo magazine, which is not like huge circulation or anything like that,” Turlington said, “but it was like, ‘Oh gosh.’ Because I don’t know what I thought it was for, but I definitely didn’t think it was for a cover of a magazine.”

The first episode of The Super Models, “The Look,” details how each of the women profiled were “discovered” by the fashion industry. Teenaged Christy Turlington went from being spotted at a California stable to flying to Europe to pose for Arthur Elgort. As she booked more and more high fashion work, she eventually started to do cover tries for Vogue.

As it’s explained in The Super Models, it used to be that many models would try out at a time for any specific Vogue cover. You’d do a shoot with a prominent photographer and find out months later whether or not you or another model shooting a similar cover try got the gig. After first posing for Italian Vogue, Turlington made the cover of British Vogue.

“I was probably 17 by then. Patrick Demarchelier shot it. Donna Karan had just launched her new brand, and so it was a cover story wearing her first collection,” Turlington recalls before revealing what happened next.

“After we finished the shoot, we took a portrait, and I had these extensions in my hair, so it was this very long hair. And we did a portrait you know, where I was like this —” she said as she crossed her arms across her chest,”— kind of the classic covering yourself.”

“My arms went down a little bit lower, a little bit lower. ‘Could you put your arms down a little bit lower, a little bit lower?’” Turlington says Demarchelier asked.  

“I remember being like self-conscious, but I didn’t feel necessarily bad. I felt good from that shoot. I felt pretty in that moment. Patrick didn’t give me the creeps, per se, but I do remember being like, ‘Oh my gosh! I’m not so supposed to be — I shouldn’t be doing this.'”

Turlington didn’t realize that Demarchelier would shop the portrait to a magazine and that it would become a cover. She also pointed out that in the 1980s, there wasn’t the same attentiveness given to protecting underage models.

“I don’t think there was any age that you were supposed to be in order to have a nude picture out there. Like, I don’t think there was anybody monitoring or regulating any of that,” she said.

“I can’t say that I was so savvy the whole time, but I know my mom would say much later that, ‘Oh, you were always gonna be fine. I knew you had your head on your shoulders, and you were going to be fine.’ But I don’t know that there was every guarantee that I was gonna be fine.”

In subsequent episodes, we learn that while Turlington managed to stay at Jean-Luc Brunel’s Parisian apartment without getting sexually assaulted — for which she says she feels “survivor’s guilt” — many other models weren’t so lucky. Linda Evangelista later recalls the abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband and agent Gerard Marie and Naomi Campbell credits her “Papa” Azzedine Alaïa for protecting her from the unwanted advances of creeps in the fashion world.

Part of what makes The Super Models so ferociously fascinating is learning how this quartet of women managed to overcome the sexism and misogyny that run rampant in our world to establish themselves as paradigms of power and beauty.