Monday, January 6, 2014

Six Degrees of Ashley Richardson

Ashley is a good collaborator. She’s done shoots with Judit Masco, Angie Everhart, Rachel Hunter, and more.

I began to see her as the Kevin Bacon of the swimsuit issue. If you look at who she’s posed with, and who those girls have posed with, you create a web that encompasses a not-insignificant percentage of SI models.

Let me try something. I’m going to go to Wikipedia and click the “random article” button. We’ll see if I can link that topic to Ashley somehow.

. . .

Okay, I came up with Dara Torres. You remember her, the Olympic swimmer who showed grace in competition when she delayed a race so a fellow swimmer had time to address some swimsuit problems?

But how to link her to Ashley? Hmm, I may have bit off more than I can—

Wait! Dara was in the swimsuit issue, back in 1994! Here she is, flanked by Kathy Ireland and Elle Macpherson.

Of course, Elle and Kathy were on the cover of that issue, along with Rachel Hunter.

And that’s Rachel in the pink suit, way in the background, while Ashley jogs in her green suit in the foreground. 

Here’s a probably poorly designed and possibly incomplete chart of Ashley’s influence. By my count, you can connect her to 40 other models.

If it’s true that the 50th anniversary issue will feature some veterans returning, who knows? This list may explode. If we could link Ashley to the Brazilian beauties from 2007, or to some combo of Jessica White/Julie Henderson/Brooklyn Decker/Chrissy Tiegen, her web will just get bigger.

Unfortunately, SI doesn’t do multiple-girl shoots much anymore. So connecting the models is a dying art.

In any case, if you assign an “Ashley Richardson Number” to each model based on her distance from Ashley, you come up with the following:

Ashley Richardson Number: 0
Ashley Richardson

Ashley Richardson Number: 1
Rachel Hunter
Louise Vyent
Michaela Bercu
Anna Getaneh
Maria von Hartz
Akure Wall
Vendela
Shana Zadrick
Gail O’Neill
Roshumba Williams
Angie Everhart
Judit Masco

Ashley Richardson Number: 2
Stephanie Seymour
Elle Macpherson
Kathy Ireland
Veronica Blume
Rebecca Romijn
Paulina Porizkova
Tyra Banks
Stacey Williams
Cheryl Tiegs
Christie Brinkley
Heidi Klum
Veronica Varekova
Daniela Pestova
Elsa Benitez
Carolyn Murphy
Yamila Diaz
Valeria Mazza

Ashley Richardson Number: 3
Georgiana Robertson
Monika Schnarre
Jean Pelton
Dara Torres
Kelly Emberg
Britta Dubbels
Ingrid Seynhaeve
Petra Nemcova
Girl in the Pool with Christie (UPDATE: It's Maria João)

Ashley Richardson Number: 4
Kim Alexis
Carol Alt

Thank you for bringing us all together, Ashley. You are a beacon to us all.

2 comments:

John Rotten said...

That picture of Carol... O M G. There is a woman.

Swimsuitologist said...

Yeah, that's a great one. I'd never seen it before the Swim Daily slideshow from September:
http://swimdaily.si.com/2013/09/27/carol-alt-video-healthy-eating/

There are a few other rarities in there too.