Naomi Campell: A model of privacy?

With any high-profile court case, people will find themselves rooting for one side or the other. But to the impartial observer, the case of Naomi Campbell v The Mirror for publishing details of her drugs rehabilitation presents a tougher decision than most. Who to side with - the fashion model or the tabloid newspaper?

With any high-profile court case, people will find themselves rooting for one side or the other. But to the impartial observer, the case of Naomi Campbell v The Mirror for publishing details of her drugs rehabilitation presents a tougher decision than most. Who to side with – the fashion model or the tabloid newspaper?

Neither is viewed in the collective consciousness with much sympathy, after all. The tabloid newspaper is regularly lambasted for its shameless intrusion into people's lives. The model is blamed for everything from a young girl's smoking habits to the betrayal of her fellow women by encouraging impossible images of femininity. But, of course, Naomi Campbell is not just a model. So when she decided to take on the tabloid press she only confirmed her status, once again, as the woman that tabloid readers and, indeed, the world famously love to hate.

To say that Campbell's reputation precedes her would be something of an understatement. Her outrageous demands, her legendary lateness, her relationships with Mike Tyson, Robert De Niro, Joaquim Cortes and Flavio Briatore and, most of all, her magnificent tantrums are known the world over, making her the most famous model by far.

Cool and kooky Kate Moss is a fashion plate par excellence – everyone wants to know what's she's wearing, who she's dating. She pouts prettily for the camera just as much as she needs to for the sake of politeness but generally gives the press a wide birth. Campbell, on the other hand, is rather less controlled. Only too delighted to display her diva credentials, she is willing to perform just the larger-than-life, inflammatory role that is expected of her at the drop of a (Philip Treacy) hat – and all straight to camera. The girl just can't help it, it seems. And so, for the past week, any dirt surrounding her name has been raked up once more, as she sits there, immaculately dressed and exuding expensive fragrance, batting her eyelids at the doddery old judge and generally behaving, well, beautifully badly.

The court was duly shown a video recording of a teeth-baring Naomi Campbell going for a fellow aircraft passenger who'd made the mistake of attempting to film her while sleeping, with a ferocity not normally associated with her profession. She was travelling to South Africa on a fund-raising trip at the time. Those in attendance were also reminded of the fact that she had assaulted her one-time personal assistant Georgina Galanis, bashing her unceremoniously over the head with – you couldn't make it up – her mobile phone. She famously carries, and often speaks into, two and even three at a time. Naomi Campbell was a hypocrite, the court was told – she had posed naked in a memorable anti-fur campaign before duly appearing on the catwalk in full-length fox not long after. Naomi Campbell wanted to have her cake and eat it; she was photographed naked in Madonna's book Sex and talked openly about her life on film but now had the bare-faced cheek to claim her right to privacy. "Maybe I am just a target again because of the stories about other models taking drugs. I am not like that," she said after reports that she had taken a barbiturate overdose in the Canary Islands in 1997.

But if Campbell has, once again, invested the news pages with more glamour than they could ever wish for – and infamy with a capital I, a winning combination if ever there was one – she has also exposed very little of her true self. As with any superstar, Campbell's media image looms so large that it threatens to render the woman behind it all but invisible.

Campbell was born on 26 May 1970 in Streatham, south London. Her part-Chinese father was unnamed on her birth certificate – he left when Valerie, her Jamaican-born mother, was four months pregnant. At the age of only 19, Valerie left her small daughter with a nanny and travelled round Europe with the dance troupe Fantastica, sending money back home to support Naomi. When Campbell was 10, she was accepted into the Italia Conti Stage School in London, where she studied ballet.

At 15, Campbell was discovered while out shopping in Covent Garden at the time. Her first fashion shoot was published in Elle magazine not long after. Sally Brampton, then the magazine's editor, remembers the occasion well:

"We had a model booked for a trip who cancelled at the last minute. Naomi came in and she literally just had these two smudgy Polaroids. All I remember was this glorious smile. She was all angular arms and legs and this smile. I remember, not long afterwards, meeting her in New York. Standing in the street with her was like being with a Bird of Paradise – a Bird of Paradise while we were all just little brown birds."

It is by now the stuff of fashion legend that Campbell went on to become famous for just the smile Brampton describes. Her early catwalk appearances were characterised by her beaming at audience and cameras while her contemporaries were rather too studiously aloof. Even today she is the only model uncool enough to display any emotion, from tears at Donatella Versace's first show after the death of her brother to laughter during the finale of Yves Saint Laurent's swansong collection in Paris last month when confronted by the over-zealous, over-the-top performance of her Seventies counterparts.

If Elle gave Campbell her first big break, it was the late fashion designer Gianni Versace who made her a star. He was introduced to her by Christy Turlington, who was, at that time, his favourite face. From then on there was never a Versace show without her. Campbell has since become an integral part of his sister's entourage.

It was, of course, Versace who was ultimately responsible for the birth of the supermodel. With models swiftly taking over from Hollywood starlets as household names, he realised that a famous face appearing exclusively on his catwalk would generate column inches worth their weight in gold. To stipulate that that model appeared for him and him alone, however, meant paying outrageous fees. The path was set for Linda Evangelista's famous 1990 quip: "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day."

Ironically, no sooner had she said it than there were rumblings that the supermodels had had their day. Recession bit hard and the caring sharing Nineties brought with them a new breed of far less difficult women, most famously Kate Moss. Not only were the new generation characterised by their more demure personalities but also they were physically half the size of their Amazonian, gym-toned elder sisters. The industry swiftly gained back control just in time to prevent the supermonsters it had created taking over. Naomi Campbell's supersisters – Cindy Crawford, Turlington and Evangelista – gradually appeared less and less, began behaving like professional women as opposed to spoilt girls and settled down to money-spinning advertising contracts that were far more lucrative than any catwalk shenanigans and far less like hard work.

Campbell, though, the youngest and most impressionable of them all, has held on to her supermodel status – and with it any requisite outrageous behaviour – to this day. But then life has been rather more difficult for Campbell than for her Caucasian counterparts.

While, during the latter part of the Eighties, they had all graced more magazine covers than most of us have had hot dinners, Campbell, famously, and despite the fact that she was equally beautiful and as, if not more, high-profile, was pushed to one side. While their faces were plastered all over billboards advertising big-brand cosmetics the world over, Campbell wasn't given a cosmetics contract until as late as 1999. This is because Naomi Campbell is black. It can only be a good thing that Judge Morland felt moved to describe the description by Mirror columnist Sue Carroll of the model as a "chocolate soldier" as "extremely rude and offensive", however anodyne the intention behind it may have been.

Naomi Campbell is undoubtedly difficult. She is also a lone voice in a notoriously prejudiced world and has been for many years. Nelson Mandela named her his honorary grand-daughter and she has been responsible for enough fund-raising and campaigning in South Africa to put Geri Halliwell to shame. If the tide appears to be turning, somewhat, and more young black models are appearing in global campaigns today than they have done then this is, at least in part, due to Naomi Campbell paving their way.

André Leon Talley of American Vogue is a high-profile black journalist working in the industry. He puts it thus:

"Being black is difficult. What she represents to a lot of people is a success story. She's like all the great black divas. If you are a black woman and you have that kind of status, you obviously represent the development and evolution of the race. Naomi has done just that for modelling. Just like Oprah Winfrey in her field and Toni Morrison in hers. She is a role model. She has a responsibility as a black woman to herself and to what I think she thinks about more and more these days, and that is to be an icon and to be a person who gets things across for black people."

Naomi Campbell has now worked as a model for more than 15 years, surviving any supermodel backlash and achieving recognition worldwide. In February 2001 she even launched her own fragrance. If ever proof were needed of her iconic status then this must surely be it. Whichever way you look at it, she's come a long way from her roots, and to have done so is extraordinary. But then Naomi Campbell is an extraordinary person, that rare thing, a one-off. And for that she should be applauded.

"When I was at school," she once said, "I gave as good as I got. If they threw stones at me, I threw stones at them. I would stick up for myself."

Some things never change, it seems.

Biography

Born: May 22 1970, London.

Parents: Valerie Morris, a dancer. Naomi took the surname Campbell from her mother's second marriage. Her family was originally Jamaican and her father's mother was of Chinese ancestry (family name Ming).

Family: One brother, aged 16.

Education: Italia Conti stage school, London.

Career: A model since she was 15.

Naomi's model: Iman.

Linked romantically to: Mike Tyson, Robert De Niro, Mohammad Al Habtoor (businessman), Joaquim Cortes (dancer), Flavio Briatore (Formula 1 manager) and Adam Clayton (U2 bassist).

Appeared in: Michael Jackson's In the Closet video; Miami Rhaposdy; Girl 6; Invasion of Privacy.

Singles: "Love and Tears"; "La-La-La Love Song" (with Toshinobu Kubota); appears on the "Heaven's Girl" track on Quincy Jones's album Q's Jook Joint.

Books: Naomi (autobiography); Swan (novel).

Agency; Elite.

Vital stats: 34;23;24.

Dress size: Six.

Shoe size: Nine.

Weight: 122 lbs.

Height: 5ft 9.5in

Business venture: Fashion Café, with partners Elle Macpherson, Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer (it went into receivership in 2000).

She says: (on celebrity life) "It's OK. It's just difficult when people invade your privacy. I think you should never be famous just for the sake of being famous. You should be famous for something that's well-remembered."

They say: "Naomi is one of the most truthful and generous friends I have known" ­ Kate Moss; "An unreliable witness" ­ Mr Justice Morland.