Linda Evangelista after being interviewed by Tim Blanks for FANE at Cadogan Hall - photo courtesy FANE

Linda Evangelista on her new Steven Meisel edition, playing Pink Floyd songs on the accordion, and why youth is not sustainable - but beauty is

Her whirlwind visit to London culminated in an open-hearted and often funny talk with Tim Blanks at FANE. Here are some of the highlights.

On the weekend that Phaidon launched a very special limited edition photographic print of her, shot by Steven Meisel, Linda Evangelista came to London for a handful of select, sold out events.

Her whirlwind trip included a visit to Central Saint Martins for a talk with Anna Wintour in front of 400 fashion students and alumni, including designer Christopher Kane. Linda and Anna also took time out to visit the school studios and meet with student designers.

The next day, Saturday, she was at Dover Street Market signing copies of her new book Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel. Attendees had flown in from far and wide for the signing, with visitors from: Brazil, Ireland, Portugal, and Ukraine. Dover Street Market and Comme des Garcons CEO Adrian Joffe also stopped by, to say a personal thanks to Linda for coming to his store.

The following day, Linda was interviewed at Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square, by the esteemed fashion writer Tim Blanks, in front of an audience of over 900 people in a live-streamed event. You can watch that stream here.

Below, we bring you edited highlights from what was a fascinating, open-hearted, and often funny exchange between the two friends and colleagues, in which Linda talked warmly about her close working relationship with Steven Meisel which has resulted in the new edition Steven Meisel: Linda Evangelista, Paris, 1990 (2023) and book Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel.

20 things we learned from the Linda Evangelista talk with Tim Blanks at FANE

Steven Meisel: Linda Evangelista, Paris, 1990 (2023) is presented in a luxurious black cloth-wrapped clamshell box with a tipped-on image of the print on the front. Limited to 25, each edition comes with a numbered print, a certificate of authenticity (signed by Steven Meisel), and a signed and numbered copy of the book Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel (signed by Linda Evangelista and Steven Meisel).

20 things we learned from Linda Evangelista's chat with Tim Blanks

She remembers flying over from Paris to meet Steven Meisel for the first time, "with my fingers crossed, thinking I hope he likes me. It’s very easy to work with a photographer once, because they’re curious. But to get re-booked over and over and over they have to love you.”

At that first shoot, Meisel and Vogue Fashion Director, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, commented on her knees. She was teased her “whole life” about her legs and knees “because they were so thin. And so I thought they didn’t like them. But they actually did. They also talked about my gums – 'they’re so shiny!' Out of all the things that excited them! But I got a lot of pages.”

What we see is what they got. "With Steven he would take a polaroid, and look at it, and build on that to see what could be improved, and what we could do better, or whether to give up on it. There was no retouching. The lighting had to be beautiful. There was no post-production.”

“There’s almost a mental telepathy. I look at him while he’s shooting me and sometimes, just by a little gesture he does, I know what he’s looking for. I can just tell what he wants, and we feed off each other. And he really never lets me down. I trust him.”

She changed her hair colour 17 times in five years. She only had red hair for three months. "It was a very difficult colour to maintain.” She bleached her hair with Steven Meisel the night before the George Michael video. “We did that at 4am in my kitchen.” It was Steven’s idea to bleach the top of her head and have a Warhol look. "Then he was like, we might as well go all the way and bleach it out."

“I don’t like doing the real me, those are the hardest photos to do. When he has me laughing, those ones feel real. There’s one in the book where I’ve got my chin up, I’ve got very short hair and I have just a little brow. That felt like me.”

She “never really wanted to do movies. Because I couldn’t imagine being in the same outfit for two months.”

20 things we learned from the Linda Evangelista talk with Tim Blanks at FANE/ for FANE Linda Evangelista photographed by Steven Meisel. Barneys New York, Fall/Winter 1991 © 2023 Steven Meisel. All rights reserved. Hair: Garren, Makeup: François Nars

She plays the accordion. “I do polkas and waltzes. Nick Knight of SHOWstudio said 'choose a piece you’d like to play, pick your favourite song.' So I chose Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon. How did it sound? It didn’t go viral!”

“I can’t take a selfie, because I look stoopid in selfies. I don’t wanna look like me, I wanna look like a character.”

On her Barney's campaign shoot with Tony Bennett: “He just oozed grace, and he knew he had to help me. We’re gonna sing together and I’m like, I’m singing with Tony Bennett. I hope he’s deaf!”

On what she would have done differently: “I would not have turned down some jobs. I turned down Helmut Newton because I didn’t see myself that way. I would have listened more, instead of saying, 'I've got this.'”

She would have loved to have been a teacher if she hadn’t become a model.

She's never had a cavity in her life, "but I’ve had holes in my lungs from genetic mutations.”

She believes that “youth is not sustainable, but beauty is.”

She goes to a lot of sports games with her son. “We don’t sit court side, we buy our tickets and sit with the fans, because it’s so much more exciting that way.” (And no, she doesn’t get a hot dog.)

She has ‘borrowed’ things from a set – but always with permission. She was stopped by security at the door of a Chanel show with some big bags. She went to Karl Lagerfeld who told the security guard: “Miss Evangelista takes what she wants!"

She does a family reunion picnic every year.

She got that photo kissing the monkey by popping a candy into her mouth. “They said to me 'whatever you do, don’t let go of her.' She was looking at the pipes on the ceiling and all she wanted to do was swing. They asked: 'Do you think you could get her to kiss you?' I popped a candy in my mouth, and when she saw that candy, she got so happy! And the picture was done.”

20 things we learned from the Linda Evangelista talk with Tim Blanks at FANE/ for FANE

The yellow Galliano dress was her favourite. She used to have it on a mannequin at the end of her bed. “When I opened my eyes, I’d see this sunshiny, happy dress. It’s now in Anna Wintour’s Costume Institute in the Met, New York.”

If she could have done things differently, she would not have made that infamous 10,000 dollars quote. “It was not a nice thing to say. It backfired on me how I said it. And they’re right. Today people are allowed to show their worth, flaunt their wealth, wear their worth. But it’s OK because they’re worth it. We’re in a moment today when you flaunt it.”

She’s been on five September issue Vogue covers. “I don’t know if anybody’s done that. It means something to me.”

Just like us, she likes to hold a book. “I don’t wanna swipe. I love flipping through the pages.”