People: Still room for last year’s model
The modeling industry is all about who’s young, who’s hot and who’s next. Or is it?
Linda Evangelista, 41 and pregnant, is on the cover of the August issue of Vogue – the first model, not a Hollywood star, to be featured on the magazine’s cover in more than a year.
Sally Singer, Vogue’s fashion news director, says someone with a few (or more) years of experience is an even more effective model because women buying clothes, beauty products and magazines can relate.
“Readers and customers respond to images of older women – women who’ve had lives, women who they know something about.
“They’re more interested in a woman who’s had children and still looks great. It’s more inspiring than seeing a 14-year-old from a former Eastern Bloc country,” Singer says.
Evangelista, whose baby is due this fall, isn’t worried about her post-pregnancy figure.
“I’m not freaked out at all, I embrace it,” she says, adding: “I’m either doing yoga or exercising every day.”
Speaking of older models …
A second woman claims she had an affair with Peter Cook when she was 19, but before his marriage to Christie Brinkley.
Samantha Cole, a 29-year-old singer, says Cook proposed marriage to her in an attempt to win her back after she broke up with him in 1996. She refused, Cole says, and Cook became engaged to the supermodel a month later.
Earlier this week, 19-year-old Diana Bianchi, a former employee of Cook’s, alleged the architect seduced her with lavish gifts.
Brinkley, 52, last week announced her separation from Cook, 47, her fourth husband.
And speaking of loose screws …
John Cusack has won a temporary restraining order against a homeless woman he claims has been stalking him.
Cusack said the woman had been “throwing long letters of interest over my fence in bags with rocks and screwdrivers inside, making unannounced visits to offices of people I work with in an attempt to meet with me and listing my address as her own during a recent arrest.”
Sympathy for the devil
Arkansas is pardoning Keith Richards for being a reckless driver – 31 years later.
The state Parole Board has approved an application for clemency for the 1975 conviction submitted on behalf of the Rolling Stones guitarist by Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee, by the way, plays bass guitar in a band called Capitol Offense.
Dancing under the influence?
Country singer Mindy McCready, acquitted on DUI charges Wednesday, thought police had pulled her over to “give her a hard time.”
McCready testified that she used to live in the Nashville area where she was stopped in May 2005 and knew some of the officers well.
“Way back when – when I used to have hit records 10 years ago – I would get pulled over a lot and had officers ask me to do the strangest things,” she told jurors. “Once an officer asked me to dance for his camera.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Diana Rigg (“The Avengers”) is 68. Guitarist Carlos Santana is 59. Actress Donna Dixon (“Bosom Buddies”) is 49. Rock singer Chris Cornell is 42. Actor Josh Holloway (“Lost”) is 37. Actress Billi Bruno (“According to Jim”) is 10.