Supermodel Naomi Campbell is working to launch benefit fashion shows in February to help raise funds to fight Ebola.
Campbell exclusively told Page Six in New York this week she wants to stage one star-studded show during New York Fashion Week in February and another to follow in London.
“I’m scared,” admitted Campbell of the spread of the disease, adding she has a home in Kenya and already works with three orphanages there. She added she wants the charity fashion shows to help victims and educate the public because, “people don’t have a clear idea about what Ebola is.”
Campbell has previously created Fashion for Relief shows to benefit relief efforts in Haiti and Japan, with participants like Kate Moss, Agyness Deyn, Rosario Dawson, Karolina Kurkova, Jane Fonda, Geri Halliwell and Dame Shirley Bassey, and supporters Diane von Furstenberg, Kelly Osbourne and Dasha Zhukova.
Campbell — who led the models in the DVF show during September’s New York fashion week and is on the cover of Vogue Italia’s and Interview’s September issues, as well as W magazine’s October issue — hatched the philanthropic idea on Tuesday night after attending her friend Charlotte Tilbury’s makeup launch at Bergdorf Goodman.
For Campbell’s 2011 Fashion for Relief show in Cannes, she persuaded Jane Fonda to strut the catwalk, and told us that she has another, surprise grand dame in mind for her upcoming, as-yet-unnamed shows she said.
With the events still in the planning stage, Campbell added she’s interested in reaching out to Jeffrey Wright — the “Boardwalk Empire” and “Hunger Games” actor who’s been pioneering “ethical and sustainable” mining in Sierra Leone — to help with a charitable partnership. For her Japan relief shows, Campbell commissioned Dolce & Gabbana to create T-shirts, with proceeds from sales going to the Japanese Red Cross.
The beauty added that as a black woman, she feels a responsibility to fight the Ebola crisis, and has also been gravely concerned as a globe-trotter. “Ebola does not discriminate,” she said.
