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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