|
 One of the strategies of Revlon’s new
spokesmodel was
to abbreviate her name from Caroline Ribeiro Magalhães
to Caroline Ribeiro since the last name is very hard
for a foreigner to pronounce.
By Francesco
Neves
At Revlon it’s the end of an era.
It’s goodbye time to American Cindy Crawford, 35, and welcome party for Brazilian
Caroline Ribeiro, 21. Caroline is the new Revlon Girl. Cindy has been spokesmodel for the
cosmetic giant since she was 23. About her departure, a Revlon spokesperson declared,
“It's a new era. We're moving with the times and we need a new face to reflect
that." Revlon, before settling on Caroline, considered hiring two other Brazilian
models for the post: world’s number one supermodel Giselle Bündchen and Luciana
Curtis. The company announced that Ribeiro will receive $6 million to be Revlon’s new
face. Crawford was being paid $3 million a year for her work.
Rogério Chain, Revlon’s manager of
marketing in Brazil explained: “Revlon is rejuvenating its image and that’s why
it decided to separate the name Revlon from Cindy Crawford, whose face is directly
connected to the feminine posture of the end of the ’80s and beginning of the
’90s, a time in which women yearned to be the strong sex and were trapped into
specific beauty patterns and coordinated colors. The contemporary woman has free spirit
and wants to show herself to the world in her true essence.”
Caroline had a hard time as a model and
almost gave up after trying to make it in São Paulo, Tokyo and then New York. Agents
complained about her protruding teeth and lack of curves. When she arrived in New York in
June 1999 the model rented a $350-a-month single where she had to share the bathroom with
other residents. One of her strategies to succeed was to abbreviate her name from Caroline
Ribeiro Magalhães to Caroline Ribeiro since the last name is very hard for a foreigner to
pronounce. She was ready to go back to Brazil when Tom Ford chose her to be the model for
Gucci, his company. Soon she would be a supermodel. The Gucci gig opened the doors of
Chanel, Louis Vuitton and more recently Valentino.
Caroline is from Belém do Pará, in the Amazon region. She
was born on September 20, 1980. That’s the way she once explained the reason of her
success: “I think my face is different, it’s exotic—not like normal beauty.
I don’t have what you would call perfect beauty. My eyes are a mix of Indian and
Portuguese. I can have either a Mexican face, or a Japanese or a Brazilian one. With a
face like mine I can play around.” Colleagues and journalist have raved not only
about her beauty, but also about her pleasant personality.
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Hope (Diplomat)