Skinsuits

Ah, summertime. There's something about the very sound of the word that conjures up images of sand. And sun. And swimsuits. In fact, so sultry is the season that most people begin fantasizing about it long before spring has even sprung. Well, this is no midwinter daydream--it's the real thing, presented to you at the height of the heat wave. We found one model, one setting and a few delightfully disappearing bathing suits to come up with a pictorial just as blistering as the July weather itself. Naturally, the project would not have been possible without the very best talent around--both those who work behind and those who work in front of the camera--to brazenly challenge the sun to a torrid contest of heat generation. Indeed, the duo we finally enlisted is something special: famed fashion/fine-arts photographer Herb Ritts and the staggeringly beautiful supermodel Cindy Crawford. It was perfect. Ritts photographed such steamy celebrities as Madonna, Kim Basinger and Tina Turner and won fans among Playboy readers with his electrifying pictorial of actress Brigitte Nielsen (Gitte the Great, December 1987); and Cindy was no stranger to scorching display: She was among the lovely ladies languishing along the Thailand beaches in the 1988 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Even before Ritts's first roll of film was loaded, the temperature had begun to rise.

Although Cindy's corporeal debut in S.I.'s 1988 swimsuit issue (on page 99, to be exact) might have caused cardiac arrest among unsuspecting males, it was her face that made her famous. In the first three months of this year, she graced the cover of just about every top women's magazine, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle--and probably some others she has forgotten ("If I don't like the way the shots turn out," she says, "I don't bother to buy the magazine"). But Cindy, of course, is no stranger to caprice in the modeling industry, having pursued her ambition since her earliest high school days in De Kalb, Illinois. "I was always juggling my schoolwork and my career," she says. "And it wasn't easy. Then, after one year of college at Northwestern, I realized that I couldn't keep dividing my energies. I knew I had to make a choice and, well, modeling won out." The decision made, she packed up her make-up kit and moved to New York, signing up with the prestigious Elite agency. Indeed, it was when fellow Elite knockout Paulina Porizkova appeared on the pages and the cover of the August 1987 Playboy that Cindy herself became an overnight fan of the "Entertainment for Men" magazine. "I was suddenly buying Playboy to see Paulina," she says, laughing, "but I never imagined that I'd actually do a layout in it one day. But then I saw what Herb Ritts did with Brigitte Nielsen in the December issue. And I thought, Wow, if he can make her look that good, I'd love to see what he could do with me. That's when I decided to go for it."

The shoot, it was decided, would take place along the sands of Kona and Kanapala, Hawaii--a backdrop, we thought, perfectly suited to Cindy's volcanic sensuousness. "But with the exception of nailing down that particular locale," says Playboy Photography Director Gary Cole, "we made no other rules: Herb and Cindy would be on their own." Few artists can command such confidence: Ritts is one, this generation's master at capturing the moody sexy essence of Hollywood's stars. "You never want to direct a photographer like Herb Ritts," says Cole. "He has his own special vision of erotica and womanhood--his own idea of what he's going after--and we didn't want to interfere with that. In fact," he adds, "we didn't even tell Herb whether we wanted him to use color or black-and-white film. We just said bon voyage and sent him on his way."

Although the sessions lasted only three days, both the photographer and the model recall that they required equal measures of stamina and stimulation. The decision to shoot in black and white seemed as natural as Cindy herself; the results, long before they reached our Chicago office, promised to be memorable. "Even before I saw one Polaroid from the shoot," says Cindy, "I knew it would turn out to be special. We put a ton of energy into this thing--going at it all day--yet it wasn't torture, by any stretch of the imagination. After all," she says, smiling, "it's not unenjoyable trying to make beautiful pictures. And Herb knows how to do that." Yes, he does. Thank you, Herb. And thank you, Cindy. Here's to a hot summer.