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Naomi Campbell, even after modeling for more than 40 years, still gets nervous before walking a runway.
“I don’t take anything for granted,” Ms. Campbell, 54, said on a call last week from Claridge’s hotel in London. She was speaking ahead of an event with British Vogue during London Fashion Week for “Naomi: In Fashion,” an exhibition about her career at the Victoria and Albert Museum running through April 2025.
Ms. Campbell said she channels a new persona each time she participates in a fashion show, like the recent Ralph Lauren show in Bridgehampton, N.Y., where she modeled looks including a cropped white T-shirt styled with an elaborately beaded ball skirt. Such personas cannot be rehearsed.
“It happens there on the spot,” she said. “I feel the vibrations. I’m a performer.”
The Ralph Lauren show preceded an eventful New York Fashion Week for Ms. Campbell, during which she received an award from Harlem’s Fashion Row, an initiative that promotes diversity within the industry, and sat front row at shows including Alaïa’s.
As can sometimes be the case with Ms. Campbell, her presence at the Alaïa show drew outsize attention after people shared footage online of Rihanna walking past Ms. Campbell at the event, seemingly without acknowledging her. Some claimed the performer was snubbing the model.
“I’m not about to let the world pitch two Black women against each other,” Ms Campbell said. “We are two women with two children, mothers.”
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