Linda Evangelista is a Canadian model, born from Italian parents. Throughout her career as a model, Evangelista has been featured on over 700 magazine covers.
Being advised at school to take modelling courses, a teenage Evangelista began modelling in her hometown.
Being advised to do so, Evangelista tried her luck going to Japan to model. However, when things went from “posing with clothes” to “posing nude”, they 16 year old Linda panicked and with the help of the Canadian Embassy arrived home safe and sound. The experience almost got her to quit modelling for good.
However, she later attended the Miss Teen Niagara beauty pageant, which she didn’t win but manage to catch the eye of a scout from Elite Model Management. Her modelling career began slowly, with few surprises. Linda to this day didn’t expect her to be one of the “Supermodels” with coverage on the Vogue magazine. As a matter of fact, the first big job for Evangelista was for the French Vogue magazine. Soon, other magazines would follow and want to book Linda.
Peter Lindbergh was the one that suggested to Linda to cut her hair short, after seeing her trying out a short-haired wig. The photograph done by Lindbergh himself with a short-haired Evangelista in a white shirt was a great success. While initially the haircut was not seen as great by the fashion industry (16 fashion shows cancelled on Evangelista), one year later and the haircut was everyone’s favourite haircut.
Linda Evangelista took a break from modelling for a couple of years, since 1998 until 2001, when she made her comeback on the September issue of the Vogue magazine.
After a couple of relationships in the 1990s, Linda gave birth to her son, Augustin James in October 2006. Evangelista refused to tell the press who the father is, until she filed court papers in 2011 that revealed the boy to be the son of François-Henri Pinault, French billionaire and husband at that time of Salma Hayek. After fighting in court for child support, with the whooping amount of $46,000 being what Evangelista was asking from Pinault as monthly child support, the two of them settled outside of court in May 2012.
