the swimsuit supermodel as you've never seen her before
For a woman whose perfectly honed, statuesque frame earned her the nickname "The Body," supermodel Elle Macpherson has a decidedly cerebral approach to her work. "As opposed to posing in a swimsuit, where there's more innuendo involved, nudity requires less implication," she says. "But this isn't about sex per se as much as it is an idea of sensuality." Best known to Americans for her sensational starring appearances in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, Elle is a national institution in her native Australia, where her form has a higher profile than Ayers Rock. Her TV special The Making of the 1993 Elle Macpherson Calendar was the ratings smash of the year there. Now nude for all the world to see--both here and in a new film, Sirens--Australia's darling is a bit concerned about the reaction down under. "Australians don't want to be disappointed by anything I do," she says. So why challenge their loyalty? "I've wanted to work with Herb Ritts for years--there's a purity to his work that I admire. And what we've done for Playboy parallels an idea in Sirens. It's not just 'Come fuck me' sexy." The idea is both purer and more fun, she says. "It's about the power of sensuality--but with a wink." Young Eleanor Macpherson never figgered (as Elle says in her lilt of an accent) to be a model. "I come from a strict academic background," she says. "My aunt was a model, but when people said I might be one too, I thought, Heaven forbid! My aunt wore weird clothes, slept a lot and didn't eat much." But after Elle won a slot in law school and was looking to pay for her textbooks, she sent her prom photos to a Sydney modeling agency. Suddenly she was off to New York for "a most unusual career." Aptly enough, Elle magazine was her first high-profile forum. Soon came bigger fame: four covers of SI's swimsuit issue. Now comes a new chapter: film roles and this meeting of sensual minds with photographer Ritts, which is sure to make some waves back home. "We studied old pinup photos," Elle says of her powwows with Ritts, "and tried to add a little camp to the sensuality." A determined actress whose only previous film role was a cameo in Woody Allen's Alice, she gained 15 pounds to play Sheela in Sirens. "Most women weren't lean in the Thirties, when Sirens takes place," she explains. But she melted those pounds before posing for Ritts. A Thirties look worked for the movie, but what you see on these pages was about "creating something modern, done with a very modern body." She hopes the photos are both stimulating and entertaining. Nudity is not sex or art or pornography. Such judgments depend on the beholder. For Elle, the beholdee, the idea is to strip away all pretense, giving herself and her public something new to think about.
