Posts Tagged ‘Cover Girl’

No one personifies the All- American surfer girl in a swim suit more than uber-model Christie Brinkley. Here she is catching rays in a red-white and blue flag inspired one piece.

The 1981 cover of Sports Illustrated Swim edition showed off her sculpted physique and natural glamor in a pinky lavendar bikini that captured the feathery look of the pelicans and seabirds behind her on Captiva Island.

Her 1000 kilo-watt smile, perfect features, tawny golden locks and athletic,womanly form made her the choice for three consecutive covers for Sports Illustrated‘s famed Swim Issues from 1979-1981, the first time anyone appeared three times in a row.

For more than thirty years, Christie has graced over 500 covers of the world’s leading fashion magazines and held the longest contract for modelling as the face of Cover Girl cosmetics nearly as long, for 20 years, signing back in 2005 to represent the maturing market.

Though born in Michigan, she was raised in the Pacific Palisades/Brentwood area of Los Angeles, California, and after attending the French Lycee there, left to study art in Paris in 1973. Discovered in a Parisian post office by a photographer who introduced her to the legendary Elite Modelling agency, her modelling career zoomed to stratospheric proportions at Ford making her one if not the most recognized faces in the world.

Of her new-found status, Christie quipped later: “I was basically a surfer girl from California. I never looked like a model.”

Christie has also appeared in films as ‘the girl in the red Corvette’ in National Lampoon‘s Vacation and reprised her role in a sequel Vegas Vacation. Hosting television shows, writing books, promoting products such as jewellery, perfume and home gym equipment in infomercials, selling patterns, and campaigning for animal rights has kept this vegetarian mother of 3 toned and active and engaged in her still-vibrant career.

But modelling is still what keeps her at the top of the lists when she was voted the number 3 rank in AskMen.com’s  Top 10 Supermodels of all Time, and on Playboy‘s list of 100 sexiest women of the 20th Century.

Perhaps the most enduring testament to her golden girl looks came in 2005 when she was featured in the special Sports Illustrated 40th Anniversary Issue’s Hall of Fame, celebrating the most revered figures in the magazine’s history.

Christie’s posters, covers and calendars are still beaming her sunny beauty to all her many admirers.

More designer swimwear

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