On The Cover: Naomi Campbell
MY BEAUTY ISN’T ONLY skin deep is the fighting message Naomi Campbell is sending critics following her conviction for threatening and abusing airline staff earlier this year.
The supermodel’s new charity work includes raising awareness of the needs of pregnant women in the developing world — working alongside the British prime minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, in the campaign, White Ribbon Alliance.
She also plans to give some of her designer clothes to the people she met in London’s Whitechapel Mission soup kitchen, where she did community service as part of her sentence for an air rage incident. It’s an effort on the part of the 38-year-old British supermodel to clean up her image after assault charges threatened to overshadow her career as the most successful black model ever.
But there’s another reason why Naomi is keen to soften her image, and to launch herself as a paragon of virtue and a pioneering model whose presence on the catwalk has contributed to ethnic models getting work. Naomi is in love, and talking about having a baby.
After years of reportedly suffering from infertility, the model has allegedly been given the go-ahead to conceive and wants to start a family before turning 40. And she believes she has found the right man to begin a family with.
Friends and family say Naomi has been glowing since becoming involved with Russian billionaire property developer Vladislav Doronin — who has been dating Campbell for months — and it was reported that he was ready to propose at Naomi’s charity catwalk show Fashion for Relief, but then decided the setting wasn’t romantic enough. Doronin was reported as saying: “Naomi is wonderful. Will I put a ring on her finger? Maybe very soon.”
Later that evening, Doronin spent €40,000 on a couture gown for the model in a charity auction. And when asked whether a wedding was in the pipeline, Naomi replied: “Oh no, no pressuring that poor man like that. He’s a wonderful gentleman and he’s got great qualities.”
Vladislav has also allegedly bought Campbell a €12.5m penthouse apartment in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A source quoted in the New York Post said: “Naomi told Vladislav how much she loved Brazil and that she really wanted to settle there.”
Naomi and Vladislav were first linked after they met at this year’s Cannes film festival. The couple have since been photographed hugging and sharing intimate gazes by Brazilian newspaper O Dia.
So will remodelling herself as a humanitarian rather than an abuser make Naomi more lovable in the long-run? We’ll just have to wait and see.
source: herald.ie
Add comment September 25th, 2008
