Celebrated twice a year, Paris Fashion Week 2022 has finally come to an end this season. However, the legacy of Bella Hadid at the Coperni show will last a lifetime. Stepping out in nothing but a flesh-coloured G-string, Bella Hadid stole the show that night. For its closing look, Hadid was surrounded by a team of people spraying a liquid fibre onto her body, forming the outline of a beautiful off-shoulder, white dress.
Following the viral spray-on moment, Women’s Wear Daily revealed that just 48 hours after the show, the media impact value of the event amounted to 26.3 million dollars! Social media has been flooded with comments and videos of appraisal for the model, some even saying the show will go down in fashion history all thanks to Bella!
Despite that, the nepotism baby also received criticism, with many questioning the greatness of Hadid’s Coperni moment. Fashion critic, Rachel Tashjian, reduced the moment to, “a gimmick, and nothing more.”
All this talk has led to a debate among fashion writers, and even social media users, about whether Bella Hadid has achieved supermodel status following this year’s Fashion Week. Has Hadid given life to the modern-day version of the 90s supermodel? Of course, she has been walking down the runway for some of the biggest fashion names in the industry for years including Chanel, Versace, Dior, and more, but does this warrant a crowning of the supermodel title? Many think not. Janice Dickinson, who has referred to herself as the world’s first supermodel could not disagree more.
“The Instagram models that get famous, and they (get) put into Vogue, the Kylie Jenners and the Gigi Hadids and the Bella Hadids…I mean they are very pretty women, but they are not supermodels.”
Many share Dickinson’s distaste for modern-day, nepotism models such as Kendall Jenner and the Hadid sisters. Undoubtedly, much of their notoriety can be attributed to their Instagram followers and their family name, however, the question lies in whether their entire fashion careers can also be attributed to that. The answer to that will not be the same for each model. We cannot paint these nepotism models with the same brush and deny that some of them have truly worked to break into one of the most gatekept industries in the world. The Hadid sisters for one, have walked almost every major fashion show since the beginning of their modelling careers. It’s hard to pick up a magazine or watch a runway show that does not feature at least one of the sisters. This season, Bella was impossible to avoid. She truly is everywhere. This season alone she walked 21 shows, was on two September covers and has been the face of countless billboards, campaigns, etc. Doesn’t this warrant her supermodel status? Let’s take Elle’s characterisation of a supermodel, who has an
“indomitable commitment to their craft, their prevalence in the mainstream media and above all else their social currency, which sees them anywhere and everywhere, all at once,”
So can we deny Bella that status when her face has been impossible to avoid especially this fashion season? Of course, we cannot deny her mother’s status has given Bella a huge advantage in the gruelling industry but she has proven time and again that she is more than Yolanda’s Hadid’s daughter, more than just an Instagram model. As Elle says, “the pipeline from burgeoning wanna-be high fashion starlet to Instagram It-Girl and now a supernova sensation isn’t one that everyone successfully crosses.”
Yet Bella has done just that this Fashion Week, cementing her supermodel status, and bringing a modern-day aura to the Supermodel aesthetic.