As presentations of next fall’s collections wrap in Paris and issues of C Magazine‘s March issue with cover girl Amber Valletta hit stands, a bit of fashion history comes to mind. In the spring of 1992, steps from the Place de la Concorde, a young stylist called Elizabeth Stewart—who now works with Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock—alongside a young editor (moi) shot Valletta in front of the Crillon Hotel for her debut W cover. We were promptly told by The Powers That Be back at the Fairchild Fortress that these perfectly petite new girls in town, “The Waifs” (as kid-sized Kate Moss and Valletta had been dubbed), would never last on the runway beside the towering Supers: Linda, Christy, Naomi…. The two of us looked at each other like, “Are these @#*+%#@# insane?” And so began a very spirited fight for that cover. “We won, it ran. We were very persistent, to the point of becoming hysterical,” Stewart said from her home in Santa Monica, a few blocks from Valletta’s current residence. And, as history has proven, the Amber Alert was small pommes frites indeed.

By Brian D. Leitch

Pictured: Amber Valletta shot for the March 2014 issue of C Magazine.
Photo by Christopher Ferguson

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