party lines

Helena Christensen Had to Drag a Naked Matthew Barney Around With Ribbons Once

Modeling for one of Calvin Klein’s famously sexy ad campaigns must be one of the more awkward ways to make a living. “Being doused in baby oil from head to toe and trying to pretend that that’s normal is a little strange,” Eva Mendes once told us about shooting her Calvin campaign with model Jamie Dornan.

So at the fall 2010 Calvin Klein show yesterday, we quizzed some oft-photographed folks about awkward moments. Helena Christensen almost quit modeling after her very first job, an art-installation shot by Annie Leibovitz in which she had to dress as a bride and pull silk ribbons attached to artist Matthew Barney, who wore hoofs and horns and was basically naked. “I had to drag him out onstage via these silk ribbons that I only later on, during the show, realized were attached to a very special part of him,” Christensen said. “Because it was one of my first jobs, I strongly considered changing careers,” she added.

Kerry Washington recently was forced to jump up and down on a trampoline for a Glamour magazine hair story. “So in order to get the hair really bouncy, I was jumping on a trampoline for, like, ever,” Washington said. “You bounce on the trampoline, your hair flies up.”

Later that evening at the Calvin Klein party, Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model Brooklyn Decker said the magazine always calls her before her shoot to tell her to eat some cheeseburgers. “I always get that call. You get there, and they’re, like, okay, babe, time to eat a piece of pizza, dinner. And I’m like, ‘I’ll eat the pizza, but it’s the salt that messes me up the next day,’” she said. “But SI is always telling the girls to eat a little bit more, which is nice and refreshing.”

For True Blood star Alexander Skarsgård, who had female (and male) partygoers gazing lustfully at him all evening, any sort of sexy Calvin-style campaign would be nothing compared with his racy scenes on the HBO hit. “I’m pretty much naked on every other episode now,” he said. “I think people get sick of that.”

Helena Christensen Had to Drag a Naked Matthew Barney Around With Ribbons Once