Just days after HBO canceled the gloriously fun period-piece basketball soap opera “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” we’re getting a new limited series about some unusually tall and uniquely blessed figures who burst onto the scene in the 1980s and 1990s, carved out a unique place in pop culture history and took the world by storm as they became world-famous, heavily scrutinized icons.
Their names are Naomi, Cindy, Linda and Christy. Of course, just as the Magic/Kareem era Lakers were by no means the first pro basketball dynasty (hello, Bill Russell Celtics), this quartet did not pioneer the concept of the supermodel, as they followed in the footsteps of the likes of Twiggy and Donyale Luna, Iman and Beverly Johnson, Lauren Hutton and Gia Carangi. But as we see in the initially glossy but eventually more substantial four-part documentary series “The Super Models” on Apple TV+, Naomi Campbell, DeKalb’s own Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington collectively emerged on the scene at a time when runway shows were becoming high-concept spectaculars, the media were expanding with the advent of cable TV, and the fashion industry was gradually and in some cases grudgingly acknowledging that models were more than just breathing mannequins.
