‘The Super Models’ Proves Linda Evangelista Should Stop Apologizing for Saying She Wouldn’t Get Out of Bed for Less Than $10,000 a Day

The Super Models is Apple TV+‘s gorgeous four-part docuseries about four of the most influential women of the late 20th century. Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington forged incredible friendships in the ’80s and ’90s as they ascended heights in the fashion world no models had ever conquered before. At the pinnacle of their power could create new fashion stars as easily as they could spark headlines. One such headline, however, has haunted Linda Evangelista for her entire life and she’s still apologizing for it in The Super Models.

In the October 1990 issue of Vogue, Evangelista was quoted as saying, “We have this expression, Christy and I. We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.” It was a glib way to encapsulate just how much power she, Campbell, Crawford, Turlington, and fellow supermodel Tatjana Patitz had in fashion at the time and it soon sparked blowback, being called the “let them eat cake” moment of the supermodel era.

In The Super Models Episode 3 “The Power,” the now 58-year-old Evangelista professed extreme regret for saying it.

“I’m not the same person I was 30 years ago. But… I just don’t want to be known for that. I don’t want to be known as, ‘She’s the model who said that quote,'” Evangelista says. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know. That quote — that quote makes me crazy. It makes me crazy. I don’t even know how to address it anymore.”

The Apple TV+ docuseries then cuts back to a television interview from the 1990s where Evangelista is already apologizing for what was perceived as her great gaffe. “I said it, and, um… around the world I’ve apologized for saying it. I did say it,” she says.

What’s interesting is that when Evangelista repeats the quote for The Super Models‘s cameras, she cuts Turlington and her fellow super models from it. Now it’s simply, “I will not get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” It seems that for whatever reason, the implied shame of the quote has only followed Evangelista.

And do you know what? Linda Evangelista has nothing to be sorry for when it comes to that quote. If anything, the overarching narrative presented by The Super Models proves that she and her contemporaries were rare geniuses at modeling. They could literally show up and walk a young, impoverished designer’s show as a favor and turn such designers — like Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui — into fashion heavy-hitters. Their ad campaigns sold luxury products and rebranded whole companies, as Turlington’s work for Calvin Klein did.

Besides their innate beauty, incredible sense of the camera, and captivating personalities, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington were all working in a unique era where print modeling was king. There was no photoshop to retouch images. The talent to model on film at these women’s level was a rare superpower in a time when magazines were the mainstream form of media. And corporations, from Pepsi to Revlon, took advantage of these women’s looks in their ad campaigns.

The directors of The Super Models, Roger Ross Williams and Larissa Bills, seem to intuit this reality. That $10,000 a day wasn’t an unreasonable fee considering the millions these women were making for their employers. To wit, Williams and Bills include another Evangelista interview clip from the ’90s, one in which she’s not contrite at all about her financial haul.

When Evangelista is told that some people find it amoral that she made a reported $1 million per year, she says, “I never gave a figure about how much money I make a year. I provide a service and, I mean, the people I’m working for make a hell of a lot more money than I do. My fee is only a very small percentage of what an advertising budget consists of. It’s not that high compared to what they have to spend on a campaign. And you should see what they get back.”

It seems that even now there is a part of Evangelista who doesn’t want to apologize after all for saying the infamous line. “If a man said it, it’s acceptable to be proud of what you command,” she says with a shrug during her contemporary interview.

Evangelista is right that there is an element of misogyny to the complaints about the quote, but it’s also indicative of how much these women became the faces of the culture. Instead of indicting the various fashion houses and advertising agencies who paid tens of thousands of dollars to these women — in an attempt to recoup far more than that fee on their investment — the public turned on the models. The supermodels’ ability to embody a brand betrayed them when they in turn became the embodiment of the excesses of ’80s and ’90s culture to an increasingly cynical public.

What The Super Models manages to capture isn’t just the story of how four women’s beauty captivated the world, but how their work ethic, savvy, and camaraderie made them active participants in their rise to power. These women weren’t just famous for being pretty. They harnessed their ambitions, redefined the role of a model, and advocated for one another every step of the way. Out of context, Evangelista’s infamous quote sounds precariously out of touch. However, when you understand just what these women were accomplishing, it sounds like she and Turlington and company were lowballing the clients.