Naomi Campbell was already a fixture on the international runway by the time she walked Vivienne Westwood’s fall 1993 show in Paris. She was 22, wearing a striped corset mini dress, black opera gloves and a pair of platform heels that pushed the boundaries of both engineering and, some would argue, common sense: 5-inch soles topped by 9-inch stilettos, part of Westwood’s now-infamous Super-Elevated Gillie collection.
Mid-stride, her footing gave way, and she crumpled down the the floor with her feet out in front of her. After a heartbeat of stunned silence, Campbell paused, flashed a wry smile and started laughing, smoothed her dress and carried on as though nothing had happened.
Naomi Campbell walking the Vivienne Westwood Fall 1993 RTW runway show.
Guy Marineau/Conde Nast via Getty Images
“I was embarrassed because also it was not the right time of the month for a woman to fall,” she told
“British Vogue” 26 years after the infamous fall. “And I felt like I should have practiced more … there’s a trick to walking in your shoes. The most important thing is that I said to myself, ‘Get up and keep going—that’s all you have to do.’”
Naomi Campbell trips on the runway at the Vivienne Westwood Fall 1993 RTW runway show.
Guy Marineau/Conde Nast via Getty Images
The fall quickly became a fashion-world artifact. Vivienne Westwood, never one to downplay spectacle, later called it “beautiful,” adding, “It was like a gazelle.” Campbell, unfazed, turned the moment into more than just a meme. She used the footage in two different commercial campaigns — one for insurance, the other for chocolate.
“It was in Paris, and I worked really hard, and anything can happen to you,” she told David Letterman in a 1995 appearance on his eponymous talk show. After playing the clip, Letterman remarked, “What’s frightening about that is it looks like you could have broken both of your ankles.” Campbell agreed: “I could have broken both of my ankles.”
A pair of Vivienne Westwood designed Mock-Crock Elevated Gilllies from 1993 in which Niomi Campbell famously tripped on the catwalk are displayed prior to ‘Vivienne Westwood Shoes: An Exhibition 1973- 2010’ at Selfridges Ultra Lounge on August 25, 2010 in London, England.
Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
Letterman also pointed out what many others noticed at the time: “Nobody moved to help you.”
“No one moved,” she said. “No one moved a muscle in their faces—they were just nervous until I started laughing, and then they started laughing, too.” She continued the walk and finished the show.
The exact pair of shoes she wore that day was later auctioned at the Bowes Museum in 2011. A near-identical pair is part of the permanent collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where they’re labeled simply as “platform shoes worn by Naomi Campbell.”
The clip still makes the rounds — especially on Campbell’s 55th birthday, May 22 — not because she fell, but because of how she handled it. The shoes were extreme, the moment unforgettable, and the recovery entirely her own.