Towering heels, epic fall: Remember when Naomi Campbell turned a catwalk catastrophe into career gold?

By Rosa Rahimi, CNN

(CNN) — What do they say about all publicity being good? When the world saw Naomi Campbell fall on the Vivienne Westwood runway, the supermodel was soon inundated with calls from other designers — asking her to do it again.

It was an iconic moment in fashion history: Vivienne Westwood’s “Anglomania” show in Paris, March 1993. Campbell was 23 when she took the tumble, wearing a pair of the designer’s “Super Elevated Ghillie” platforms that measured about 21 centimeters (8.2 inches) in heel height. (The brand still sells a similar pair for $1,125.)

The towering shoes, made of bright blue imitation crocodile skin and fastened with silk ribbons around the ankle, were inspired by styles from the 18th and 19th centuries. Campbell’s famous pair, now housed in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, are clearly identifiable: Her name, “Naomi,” is scrawled on the inner sole in blue ballpoint pen.

“It looks like you could’ve broken both of your ankles… that was a nasty, nasty fall,” said David Letterman when Campbell was a guest on his talk show, criticizing how no one came to the supermodel’s rescue at the time.

Campbell, who played off the accident with a smile, agreed with Letterman’s observation. “No one moved, no one moved a muscle in their face,” she said. “They were just nervous until I started laughing, and then they started laughing too.”

The ‘Great Fall’

The model has since said that the fall had less to do with extortionate heel height, and more to do with the pair of white rubber stockings she was wearing. In a 2024 video recounting the incident — dubbed her “Great Fall” — for British Vogue, Campbell explained that she couldn’t feel her feet or toes in the stockings.

Similarly, in a conversation between Campbell and Westwood filmed for British Vogue in 2019, the designer also placed blame on the stockings. “The reason you fell is because you had these rubber tights… and your thighs caught together and so you wiggled on the shoe. And you’ve only got to wiggle slightly and you’re over,” recalled Westwood, who likened Campbell’s “beautiful” fall to that of a gazelle.

“I was embarrassed… also it was not the right time of the month for a woman to fall,” said Campbell during their exchange, adding that she felt she should have practiced walking in the shoes more.

After her initial descent, the model went backstage and tried the runway once again, demanding that Westwood come and retrieve her if she fell a second time. This time, the stockings were off, and Campbell was given a walking stick to aid her — though she refused to use it and held it at her waist instead.

The next day, Campbell visited a newsagent in Paris with a group of models including Kate Moss and Linda Evangelista to buy the British papers reporting her fall. “We were just howling,” she recounted of the images detailing her tumble, step-by-step.

Lasting impact

Not long after, the Victoria & Albert Museum acquired the shoes to become part of their permanent collection. Elizabeth Murray, a curator at the museum, said in a video that someone from the V&A’s textile and fashion team got in touch with Westwood “almost immediately” after Campbell’s fall was seen around the world — recognizing it to be a historic moment.

In a newspaper clipping from the acquisition file for the shoe, the late Queen Elizabeth II reportedly saw them on a visit and said she wasn’t surprised Campbell fell in them, added Murray. Her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, said they looked like someone was walking on stilts.

Though the platforms became the star of the show, other parts of Campbell’s ensemble, which included a bright pink feather boa and a Scottish inspired kilt, were also made famous by the fall. The kilt’s tartan, called “Westwood Gordon Pink” was woven for the designer by Scottish manufacturer Lochcarron and has a listing on the Scottish Register of Tartans, an official government registry. “Naomi Campbell famously had a fall on the catwalk whilst wearing a skirt of this tartan,” reads its entry.

“There’s about 2,000 pairs of shoes in the V&A collection which span about 3,000 years of design — but no doubt these are possibly the most requested and most well-known pair of shoes in it,” said curator Murray. She noted that platform shoes have existed throughout history and were Westwood’s way of quite literally “putting women on a pedestal” and elevating their status.

Looking back on the fall, Campbell doesn’t seem too fazed. She was quoted by the V&A, which hosted an exhibition celebrating the model’s career earlier this year, saying, “That fall is part of me, so I own the fall. It’s OK, people make mistakes. The most important thing for me is just getting up and doing it again.”

On her Letterman appearance back in the 1990s, she also boasted that the fall led to her booking two commercials. The V&A sell memorabilia magnets of the moment Campbell fell down (they are currently sold out) and the model even sported the shoes once more on The Jonathan Ross Show, where the host surprised her with the exact pair in 2013 (she stumbled for a moment, but managed to complete her walk).

So, would Campbell ever fall on the runway again, as requested by media-hungry designers all those years ago?

As she recounted to Westwood, “I said absolutely not, it goes against everything that I stand for. I’m not falling purposefully.”

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