ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: ROY H. CAMPBELL KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Forgive supermodel Tyra Banks for not sitting through hours of makeup, hair styling and fittings of curvy couture gowns.
Don't be disappointed if the slight artifice of her public persona, sizzling sex symbol with bright personality, isn't evident today; no widening bedroom eyes, no pouty lips, no hip-churning strut.
``Getting dressed up is work and I'm on vacation. No photographs,'' Banks says when she walks barefoot into her living area, a room with lavender walls, African sculptures and homey furniture.
She's still beautiful without a trace of makeup. And there's no hiding those curves, even in the simplicity of her denim wrap skirt and ribbed tie-dyed T-shirt.
This chilled-out appearance is more in keeping with the true, down-to-earth Tyra Banks than the sultry vamp she portrays professionally. This is the woman away from the cameras, who shops at the Beverly Center mall or cheers in the stands for her favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers.
That it's difficult to imagine Tyra Banks not dripping with sex appeal is testament to the image she - with help from her manager-mother - has painstakingly created. With a laser-like focus unusual for one so young, the 23-year-old Banks has gone from top model to television and movie actress to sexy marketing icon - a glamour hat trick never before performed by a black woman.
With her solo appearance on the cover of the recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, Banks has established her place among the beauty elite whose mere pose on a poster turns lust into lucre - as the likes of Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs and Farrah Fawcett can attest.
On this afternoon, Banks offers a hug, the kind one reserves for an old friend, then crawls under an old quilt on her favorite recliner. She's relaxing, nursing a cold in her $500,000, five-bedroom house high in the Hollywood Hills, and taking a rare but much needed two-week break following the frenzy that accompanied the release of the SI swimsuit issue.
Who doesn't know by now that with its publication Banks made history? No black model has, until now, ever appeared solo on the annual's cover. Indeed, the swimsuit issue's color barrier - not one black cover model in its 31 years - was broken only last year when Banks shared the spotlight with Valeria Mazza, a white model.
And the SI cover is just one of many recent triumphs. Banks starred in Pepsi and Nike commercials that debuted during this year's Super Bowl. She flaunted a milk mustache last summer for those celebrity milk ads. GQ magazine February '96 made her the first black female model to appear on its cover, a best-selling swimsuit issue.
Victoria's Secret paid its tribute by putting her on the cover of its swimsuit catalog last month.
She is now such a household name that she was an answer on ``Jeopardy!'' and in a TV Guide crossword puzzle.
Banks is already sharing the bounty of her meteoric success. She has endowed a scholarship fund at her high-school alma mater, Immaculate Heart High School in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. She's on the lecture circuit, appearing so far at Howard University and Georgetown University in Washington and nearby Johns Hopkins University. And she has raised thousands for her favorite charity, the Center for Children & Families, a New York agency that nurtures at-risk children.
But more than anything else she has achieved in her six-year climb to the top, it was the Sports Illustrated cover, that sizzling shot caught in the Bahamas in January after a disappointing session in Turkey the month before, that confirms the rightness of her decision to aim for heights previously unreached by a black model.
Along the way, rejections (yes, there were some!), the media's chronicling of her love affairs with celebrities, personal sacrifices, the hard work - all, she says, was worth it for this moment when she is the most-talked-about, gawked-at model in the world.
Landing that coveted cover could open doors for other black models, she says.
``Black models didn't make a lot of money in the fashion world because in order to make real money, you have to have the advertising,'' Banks said, voicing a common complaint.
But Banks' approach to the modeling industry has always been about understanding the business.
Says Banks matter-of-factly: ``These people aren't really loving Tyra. It's just the girl in the pictures that they are loving. My mother taught me to not believe the hype. She told me years ago, and I know that it's true, that the phone may be ringing today but it can stop ringing tomorrow and that has kept me so grounded from the beginning.''
Her rise to the top
She was just 17. It was an autumn day in 1991 at Orly Airport outside Paris. Banks, as fresh-faced as any other all-American teen-ager, waited patiently in a long departure line, giddy with excitement after causing a sensation in the French designer collections. Now she was on her way home to the United States to work the New York runways for the U.S. designers.
Next to the tall teen-ager stood a striking older woman with jet-black hair and carefully applied makeup. That was Carolyn London, manager of the photography laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Los Angeles, acting as escort for her only daughter.
Months earlier, Carolyn London had consented, at the advice of a model scout, for her daughter to defer college to see whether Tyra could make it as a professional model in Paris. The 5-foot-11-inch teen had modeled for local department stores and teen magazines while in high school. London's only other child, a son, Devin, had joined the Air Force and was out of the country.
``I went to Paris because they [Tyra's modeling agency] were very concerned about [Tyra's] success happening so rapidly. They wanted me to come there so that they could school me about the industry and although I had a full-time job, I took vacation and went,'' London recalled.
Banks had met instant success in Paris. Magazine cover offers poured in and 25 designers selected her to wear their creations in their shows, unheard of for a neophyte.
``She's the next Naomi Campbell,'' declared the fashion insiders as they applauded Banks' every turn.
But in that first year on the runways, after just a taste of the backstage jealousy, the cliques, the insecurities, Banks decided that she wanted to do what no black model had achieved.
``My idols weren't Naomi Campbell or even Linda Evangelista; they were Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. They took their name and made it into a business and that's what I wanted to do,'' Banks says, warming to the subject.
``I didn't want to be another model waiting for the phone to ring and hoping that Karl Lagerfeld, as much as I love him, would use me for his collection. I wanted to be in control of my career,'' she says.
But she couldn't do it alone.
About a year after Tyra's stunning Paris debut, Tyra called her mother and ``begged'' her to become her manager.
They hired a publicist against the advice of Tyra's agents at Elite Models in New York.
What followed were personal appearances, a recurring role on ``The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,'' carefully placed media interviews, music videos, a Cover Girl contract and more runway appearances. She moved to IMG, an agency that works to build multidimensional careers for models.
Because she was more shapely than her reed-thin counterparts, she was also able to capture more ad work.
``My body not being that thin, and women not hating me because my body was a lot closer to the average woman helped me to go more commercial and cross over to the kind of endorsements that black models never got, and I was from a normal background and I am articulate. I'm just all-American,'' Banks says.
Determined not to be the typical stage mom, London maintained a low profile. And even as her daughter began molding herself into a sex kitten, even as the fan letters poured in from men, even as Banks' body was revealed ever more, she didn't worry.
``That whole vampy image that they created, I don't look at that as my daughter,'' London said.
``When we come home we eat ice cream and she's my little Ta-Ta, as I call her.''
The supermodel downside
Banks says her sexy persona has its downside. Male celebrities want her on their arm at public events. And she has been pursued by major athletes who think all models are easy prey, she said.
Dating has been a fishbowl affair, she says. In 1993, she met John Singleton, director of 1991's ``Boyz N the Hood.'' It was the first of her very public romances. When he gave her a lead role in his 1995 movie of campus racial strife, ``Higher Learning,'' rumors flew that Banks' romance with Singleton was just a career move for her.
They split about two years ago just as Banks began seriously emerging as a sex symbol. She dated crooner Seal for a while and now, although she won't acknowledge it for the record, she's seeing Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson who, she says, ``likes me because I'm sexy and innocent.''
And then, there's that discussion about her physical assets: Are they real or are they implants?
``You can tell by the way that they hang that they are mine,'' she says, not at all annoyed.
Although she's trying not to think of work while on this break, offers are pouring in - everything from her own sitcom and movies to a talk show and lucrative advertising jobs in foreign countries for major companies.
First she has to finish a beauty book and autobiography aimed at boosting self-esteem in girls, which HarperCollins hopes to release in the fall. Banks' aunt Bernetta Washington is setting up a fan club.
Of everything that has happened to her daughter, London said she was most proud of her daughter's perspective: ``She is breaking ground in such an unselfish way. She says she is breaking ground not just for herself but for our people.''
LENGTH: Long : 179 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: A Tyra Banks gallery: 1. Wearing a milk mustache (farby CNBleft) color. 2. and a beret (left) 3. On the runway (below) color.
4. and on her pioneering cover for this year's Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue (bottom). color.