Ultimate 90s super Naomi Campbell has something to say about the new generation of Instagirls. “I just feel my generation of women, like Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Claudia, we had to earn our stripes and take our stepping stones to get to where we have gotten; to accomplish what we have achieved to this date,” the supermodel told The Meredith Viera Show. “I kind of feel like, ‘My God, we’ve worked so hard and we are still working at it – then it just comes like that for them.’ I am actually grateful for the way I had my career. I wouldn’t want it any other way. So that’s for them, this is me.”
Dubbed Instagirls in Vogue’s September issue, today’s generation of internet savvy models including Cara Delevingne, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, have been carving out careers for themselves through social media, quicker than you can take a selfie. Speaking to The Independent, Gigi Hadid (who has over 1.6 million followers on Instagram) argued that, “Social media is definitely something that is setting models apart because it makes someone relatable. Companies are going to look at your following and your ability to connect to different age groups and different people and if you can connect to a lot of people by just being relatable and by showing people different sides of your life and different sides of you then you’re going to be able to represent a brand because you have a voice and that’s what brands are looking for.”
But it’s not that it’s become easier for models to reach glittering heights of fame purely because they know how to use the right filter – it’s more because what we want from our models has changed. We no longer want the mystical, magical supers of the 90s, we want real, relatable, and, above all, accessible models, which is why the girls who are posting pictures of their quinoa-kale salad or cute snaps of their favourite pet are raking in the big campaigns of the moment.