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JACOB BERNSTEIN
NYT Syndicte
she was at Madison Square Garden introducing Rihanna in late August at the Video Music Awards. There she was the next weekend at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of Franca: Chaos and Creation, a documentary about Italian Vogue's longtime editor, Franca Sozzani.
Seventy-two hours later, Naomi Campbell returned to New York and Madison Square Garden, where she took selfies with Kim Kardashian West at the Kanye West concert before heading off to Beyonc`'s 'Soul Train'-themed birthday party at the NoMad Hotel.
A day later, she made a guest appearance on Bravo's 'Watch What Happens: Live', then attended a slew of events for New York Fashion Week, including Tom Ford's show at the Four Seasons restaurant.
Beyond the party circuit, Campbell can be spotted on the current covers of Paper and Another magazines, as well as in a fashion spread in the August Italian Vogue, where she is photographed with a mammoth new coffee table book, simply called Naomi Campbell, which chronicles her 30 years in fashion.
Campbell can also been seen on TV, with roles in two hit shows: 'American Horror Story: Hotel' and 'Empire'. In each, she dialed up the camp and then died so glamorously, it was a wonder neither of her on screen murders was captured in a noirish spread for W, the kind she has done numerous times.
Less than a decade ago, this fiery supermodel was one of the industry's most notorious bad girls, an Azzedine Alaia-clad diva on the verge of becoming a tabloid joke after pleading guilty to aggravated assault twice in 17 months, first in New York for lobbing a BlackBerry at her housekeeper and second for scuffling with two British police officers at Heathrow Airport when her luggage went missing.
Today, at 46, Campbell is ubiquitous once again, walking her signature walk here, there and everywhere, while enjoying a career peak seldom seen in the youth-obsessed fashion world.
But Campbell's breakneck pace raises questions: How far can she ride this wave in a business that traditionally has had limited use for models over 40? Did her breakup with a certain Russian oligarch propel her to focus again on career? And what exactly does Campbell hope to achieve from all these appearances, all these campaigns and all these interviews?
Even she doesn't seem clear on the answer.
"There's no plan," Campbell said on a recent afternoon."There's no agenda. I know. There probably should be, right?"
Maybe. Maybe not.
Everyone in fashion knows Campbell's walk and the cock of the head to the right as she peers with insouciance at the photographers standing in front of the runway.
Growing up in a poor area of South London, Campbell took dance lessons, and that training is evident in her modeling.
"She feels the music like no other," said John Galliano, the fashion designer."When she appears to do a show, it's actually not so easy for the other models. Because she commands. She slays."
While in high school, Campbell was discovered by a modeling agent.
From there, things moved quickly. By age 22, she had been on the cover of multiple editions of Vogue and starred with Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford in George Michael's Freedom! u8242?90 video.
"I didn't even tell my boyfriend I was doing it, because I knew he wouldn't approve," said Campbell, whose famous partners over the years also included U2's Adam Clayton, Mike Tyson and Robert De Niro.
She was also notoriously difficult, a temperamental celebrity and an admitted abuser of cocaine and alcohol who arrived at photo shoots hours late.
Even people who stuck by her do not deny experiencing this side. The producer and director Lee Daniels recalled meeting Campbell for the first time in the early '90s, when he cast her for a public service announcement for 'Rock the Vote'.
"She showed up to the shoot three hours late," he said."The limousine door opened and she came out like Cruella de Vil. And I was screaming at her at the top of my lungs at the audacity of coming that late to my set, and she was screaming back at me. I fired her on the spot and fell in love with her there and then."
Her imperial sense of pride was on full display in 2010, before the International Criminal Tribunal against Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, who had gifted Campbell three gemstones (possible blood diamonds) in the late '90s.
Until the trial, Campbell had been often seen but rarely heard. But she wasted no time confirming the public's image of her. Wearing a cream-coloured Alaia cardigan and matching dress, Campbell sneered at the suggestion that she was somehow impressed by the gift, dismissing the diamonds that two men handed her in an unmarked pouch as"dirty looking stones."
Over the next few years, Campbell's life slowed somewhat. She was entering her 40s and less frequently in the spotlight.
She took on activist causes, including a push to increase diversity on the runway. She signed on to host the Oxygen reality show 'The Face', on aspiring models. And she found love with Vladislav Doronin, a Russian oligarch said to be worth around $1 billion.
The two met at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, and they had a romance that was well documented by the paparazzi, who trailed them around the Mediterranean and wherever jets landed and yachts moored.
Campbell even brought him along to visits with Nelson Mandela, who had been a kind of honorary grandfather. In 2012, Doronin held a giant 50th birthday party in Jodhpur, India, attended by many people in her formidable address book, among them Kate Moss, Bob Geldof and Diana Ross, who came out of semiretirement to sing before the crowd of 200.
By this point, Campbell had largely gotten a handle on her addiction and her anger issues. She even began operating as an unofficial sobriety captain for some of fashion's biggest names.
"You know, I took a bit of a break from the industry, and she was there at every turn," said Galliano, referring to his 2011 exit from Dior."It's thanks to Miss Naomi Campbell that I actually got to Arizona," he added, referring to his time in rehab.
"Well, me, too," Marc Jacobs said."She teamed up with my business partner Robert Duffy, and Anna Wintour, and the three of them did my intervention. Naomi started it all. She recognised I was having terrible problems. When I've relapsed, it's been like telepathy. I mean, she's parked in front of my house when she thought something was wrong."
Then, in 2013, the relationship with Doronin imploded.
In an"All About Eve" moment in a reality show era, Doronin was photographed aboard his yacht with a model named Luo Zilin, who represented China in the 2011 Miss Universe pageant, and who had been mentored on 'The Face' by Campbell.
As friends tell it, she was devastated.
"It was a tough one," Galliano said.
But as Campbell has proved time and time again, she is a fighter who knows how to bounce back. Her singular ability to get into trouble is superseded only by her knack for getting out of it.
Days before the yacht photographs were published, Campbell made a triumphant return on the Milan runway, walking in her first Versace show in 14 years, wearing a black leather micromini, her hips swaying, her hair sashaying as people in the audience rose to applaud.
When 'The Face' was cancelled in its second season, and Campbell heard that her friend Daniels had a new drama for Fox, she lobbied for a part.
After 'Empire' became a hit, Campbell was invited to a dinner for Burberry designer Christopher Bailey at the Los Angeles home of Bryan Lourd, a Hollywood power agent, and was seated next to Ryan Murphy, one of the hottest producers in television.
The next day, Murphy's team began writing a part for Campbell as an aggressive fashion editor on 'American Horror Story: Hotel', while her friends in fashion signed her up for all sorts of gigs.
Some may wonder just how far a 46-year-old model breaking into acting can take all this, but it's clear people are rooting for her.
One is Wintour, who said of Campbell:"There's been a lot of talk about Naomi over the years. But what's always impressed me is how motivated she is and how hard she works. She's a fighter for herself, for women of colour and for the causes she believes in."
Another supporter is Daniels, who said that part of the reason people remain in her orbit, despite all the ups and downs, is because she's fiercely loyal, surprisingly attuned to others and great fun."I think she's just getting started," he said.
Vestiges of the old Campbell remain. As with many addicts in recovery, she is both preternaturally driven and utterly disorganised. She vacillates between extreme confidence and near-paralysing insecurity, and friends say they cannot predict which they will experience: Naomi, the fiery tiger; or Naomi, the meek schoolgirl."Neither can I," she said.
At an April release party at the Diamond Horseshoe for her book, Campbell was a puddle of tears at the prospect of giving a toast, surrounded by friends like Wintour, Jacobs, Andr` Leon Talley and Gayle King.
"She's a Bambi," Galliano said."She collapses."
