At 78, Cheryl Tiegs Reveals The 4 Most Naturally Beautiful Models of Her Generation

And nobody really knew who I was also. I mean, today everybody knows these girls by their first names. It took so long. That's why I was finally on the cover of Time Magazine because they'd seen my face for all those years and didn't really know who I was. And when I started modeling, beauty was a very different business. There were no filters, no little screen in your hand showing you the photograph two seconds after it was taken. You stood in front of the camera, the photographer looked through the lens and whatever you had was right there. And the women I remember most were rarely the ones who looked perfect. That may sound strange coming from someone who spent most of her life being photographed. But perfection could be terribly boring. The women who stayed in my mind had something you couldn't fix with makeup or lighting. Lauren had that wonderful smile that nobody could mistake for anyone else's. Gia had a kind of electricity that could make a photograph feel almost dangerous. Patty could walk into a room looking completely comfortable in her own skin. And then there was one woman who seemed to carry sunlight around with her. That's the difficult thing about natural beauty. You can photograph it, but you can't really explain where it comes from. I worked through an extraordinary period in modeling. I watched the idea of beauty change right in front of me. Some women became famous because they were glamorous. Some became famous because they were different. But a very small number made you wonder whether they had done anything at all. They simply arrived. The camera did the rest. These are the four women from my generation whose beauty always felt that way to me. And the woman at number one may be the clearest example of all. Patty Hanson had something photographers were always trying to create and almost never could, ease. You could put beautiful clothes on, Patty give her wonderful hair and makeup, place her in an extraordinary location, and somehow none of those things became the first thing you noticed. You noticed Patty. There was an openness to her face that felt very American to me. She could look glamorous without becoming distant. She could look sexy without appearing to be performing for the camera. That was much harder than people realized. Modeling can make you terribly conscious of yourself. There are people adjusting your hair, looking at your clothes, moving your hands, telling you where to put your chin. After a while, you can begin to look as though you're thinking about every inch of your body. Patty didn't give you that feeling. She looked comfortable. And comfort is surprisingly beautiful on camera. I think that's part of what made the women of that period so interesting. We weren't all supposed to look alike. Patty didn't need Lauren's face. Lauren didn't need Gia's intensity. Nobody had to become somebody else. Patty's beauty came from looking completely at home as Patty Hanson. There was youthfulness in it, certainly, but there was also confidence. Not the loud kind. The kind that says, this is who I am. When a woman has that, a photographer doesn't have to invent very much. He just has to be ready when it appears. Gia was different. You could see it almost immediately. There were many beautiful women working then, but Gia had an intensity that made ordinary beauty seem almost beside the point. She didn't always look polished. That was precisely why you kept looking. There was something unpredictable in her face. One photograph could make her seem incredibly young, and another could make her look as though she had already lived through far more than anyone knew. The camera loved that contradiction. With some models, you knew what you were gonna get. They understood their best angle, their expression, their way of moving. Gia could give you something you weren't expecting. Sometimes I think natural beauty has less to do with perfect features than people imagine. It's about whether a face can make you feel something before you've had time to understand why. Gia could do that. She had those extraordinary dark features and that presence, but underneath it was a vulnerability that photographs seemed to find. You couldn't manufacture it, and you certainly couldn't teach it. There was also something modern about Gia. She didn't seem interested in becoming the traditional idea of a beautiful model. She brought herself into the picture, including the rough edges. That made her unforgettable. Her story became much sadder than anyone would have wanted, and I don't think you can look back at her photographs without feeling some of that now. But I prefer to remember what made people stop in the first place. Before everything else, there was this remarkable young woman standing in front of a camera, and suddenly you couldn't look anywhere else. Lauren Hutton never looked as though she had been designed by the fashion business. That was exactly what made her so important. There was a time when people believed beauty needed to be corrected. If something was unusual, somebody would immediately try to hide it. Lauren did the opposite. That famous space between her front teeth became part of the reason you remembered her. But it wasn't only that. There was something wonderfully alive about Lauren's face. When she smiled, you didn't see a model giving you a smile. You saw a woman who seemed genuinely amused by whatever was happening around her. That difference matters. A camera can tell when you're pretending. Lauren could wear expensive clothes and still look like someone you might actually know. She never seemed trapped inside the fashion. She made the clothes come into her world. I always admired that, because when you're young and working as a model, it's very easy to believe that you need to become whatever everyone else wants you to be. More glamorous, more sophisticated, more perfect. Lauren showed that the things people might ask you to change could become the very things that made you unforgettable. She had confidence, but she also had humor. And humor changes a face. It relaxes everything. That's why so many photographs of Lauren still feel fresh to me. They don't seem like pictures of somebody trying to represent beauty. They look like Lauren enjoying being Lauren. You can't teach that, and you shouldn't try to fix it. And then there was Christy Brinkley. If Patty had ease, Gia had intensity, and Lauren had individuality, Christy had something else entirely. She had light. I don't mean lighting from a photographer. I mean, there was a brightness about her that seemed to come from inside the picture. That smile was part of it, of course. Everybody remembers the smile. But Christy represented something that became enormously powerful in American modeling. She looked healthy. She looked happy. She looked as though she had just come in from somewhere wonderful. There was nothing fragile about her beauty, and that mattered. Fashion could sometimes become very serious. Everyone wanted to create an image. Everyone wanted the photograph to say something important. Then Christy would appear smiling and remind you that beauty could simply make people feel good. I understood why America responded to her. She wasn't intimidating. You could see her on a magazine cover and imagine that she might laugh with you five minutes later. That's a rare quality. Some beautiful people make you aware of the distance between you and them. Christy somehow removed that distance. And the remarkable thing is that it never seemed forced. You can't fake warmth for very long. Eventually, the camera finds out. With Christy, the warmth was simply there. People sometimes ask, what made certain models last while hundreds of other beautiful women disappeared from memory? I don't think there's one answer. But with Christy, I think people remembered how she made them feel. Optimistic. Young. Maybe even a little happier. That's more powerful than having a perfect face. Faces change. Fashion changes. The definition of beauty changes. But when somebody makes you feel something, you tend to remember her. That's why Christy is number one for me. She didn't merely photograph beautifully. She made beauty feel joyful. Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to work during that period. Patti Gia, Lauren Christy. Put those four women beside one another and they don't look like variations of the same idea. That's what I love about them. Each woman brought something that belonged only to her. Patti had ease. Gia had electricity. Lauren had individuality. Christy had light. Nobody needed to erase those differences. The differences were the reason we remembered them. Perhaps that's what we've forgotten when we talk about beauty today. We spend so much time trying to define it. The right face. The right body. The right photograph. But the camera has always been interested in something much more mysterious. Personality. You can change someone's hair. You can change the clothes. You can find better lighting. But you cannot manufacture that little spark that makes somebody unforgettable. I've watched fashions come and go for most of my life. I've seen one definition of beauty replace another. And eventually they all disappear. What remains are the faces that made us feel something. Those are the women I remember. Not because they were perfect. Because they never needed to be.