A Life Renewed: Anna Bayle on the Era She Defined and Her Renaissance Online

It’s nine in the evening in Manila and the small loading animation on the Zoom waiting room has been spinning for two minutes. Suddenly, the screen switches, and a regal voice rises. “Good morning, Nathan,” she says. A few moments later, the screen finally renders. Anna Bayle’s image emerges, her famously long, silky hair falling over a floral-printed shirt and a face straight out of a Paul Gauguin painting. She looks at me with the brightest smile, from her home in New York.

After exchanging some more formalities, she thanks me for my interview questions sent over a few days prior. “I’ve been interviewed so much in my life,” she says, “it’s good to have a different take and a different energy.” Her praise catches me off guard, and even worse, causes me to fumble my words right in front of her. “Don’t worry. Just think that we’re just making kwento because that’s what I do when I get anxious,” she shares. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re my friend. I’m just talking to you.’”

We haven’t started the actual interview yet, but this moment captures who Anna Bayle is: majestically gorgeous, genuinely warm, and incredibly professional. And yes, a supermodel.

Bayle is one of fashion’s most famous figures and a favorite among seasoned historians and archivists of the form. She tells me that she is grateful for their support, name-dropping some of them, such as @inangreynaniyo on Instagram and Xénasève Laguérria, best known in the online fashion archive community for her important work on Pinterest and the fashion forum site Bellazon. But it has been almost two decades since the 67-year-old supermodel was on the industry’s radar, with her last appearance being at a Zang Toi show back in 2007. 

In the last few years, interest spiking again in 2024, young fashion enthusiasts are discovering her for the first time, in large part because of videos circulating on social media. Content creators on TikTok and Instagram talk about how her signature move of flipping her hair on the runway (most notably at Louis Dell’Olio’s Spring/Summer 1991 show for Anne Klein) inspired Naomi Campbell’s own hair flip at Donatella Versace’s Atelier Versace Fall/Winter 1999 presentation. 

Bayle has indeed seen these videos. Her friends and acquaintances who often send them to her. “Oh, you’re bursting on TikTok,” she imitates them. “But I can’t take credit for all of the things that they say on the internet,” she adds, pausing for a moment, “I do know I started [that move of] pulling the hair to the side. No one did that. That’s a very Filipino move, a very self-love kind of move.”

Where did the inspiration for her famous move come from? “My aunt,” she declares. “She had long hair, and in our country, [Filipino women] put coconut oil [on it] and they groom it. This was what [I saw] growing up. That was the influence,” Bayle says.

She further expresses how “being Filipino” influenced her, even seeping into her equally famous walk. Woody Hochswender once described in a 1988 article for The New York Times as “crushing a cigarette butt with each step down the runway.” That couldn’t be further from her truth.

 “Washerwomen! Batis women in the Philippines,” she exclaims. “They wash their clothes in the stream, and there’s stones. Then what do they do [after]? They put it on top of their heads, but they don’t walk flat. If they walk flat on the stones, they’re gonna trip. So, they tiptoe.”

The effect made the ensembles Bayle wore on the runway look “longer” and “more flattering,” she says, especially in photographs. This is the type of fashion adroitness that makes you understand why she became one of the best in her field, a muse to many of the fashion greats during what she describes as the golden age of fashion. Now, thanks to social media, there is a renaissance of appreciation for her body of work.

The power of the medium is not lost on her. “It reanimated my career,” Bayle says, and emphasizes again how grateful she is for her supporters. She jokes that with all the pictures of her that people have posted over the years, a lot of which she has collected, she could create a coffee table book.

But a book about Anna Bayle would not be complete without her stories. There is a multitude of history in her makings: from being the first model Thierry Mugler ever shot on location for his otherworldly campaigns as well as the only model who came with him on four different trips: Los Angeles, Arizona, Las Vegas, and Greenland. She was backstage at shows with a then-assistant of Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, singing Broadway tunes and reenacting scenes from the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

“I grew up in Azzedine Alaïa’s atelier.”

At the time, she worked for him as his only in-house fitting model and was always in his atelier at 60 rue de Bellechasse. “We were like this,” she says, intertwining her fingers.

However, her close relationship with him ceased after Bayle turned down his hefty demand of doing three of his shows a day for a whole week and only allowing her to walk for four other designers of his selection.

“It was a career choice,” she says resignedly, “then I was banned from Azzedine Alaïa.” This was just one of the many more difficult decisions she would make in the pursuit of being at the top. Another was passing up an at least two-million-dollar exclusive contract with Calvin Klein at the behest of her agent in fear of getting “nixed by all the other designers.”

But her hardest choice was leaving modeling at her peak after more than a decade. It was a feat in and of itself, considering a three-year run for a model was commendable. “It was not easy,” she confesses, “I had withdrawal symptoms.”

Luckily, she also had a great support system led by her oldest sister: “You know, you didn’t lose your worth just because you stopped modeling,” she reassured Bayle.

She retired in the spring of 1994, with Christian Lacroix’s Haute Couture show that season being the highlight, one that she had already orchestrated with the couturier years prior. After, she ventured into other fashion avenues: having her own lipstick business, working with fashion journalist Elsa Klensch in CNN, and writing for both Lookonline.com and her own blog in the noughties. She expertly navigated the different areas of the industry as if it was just another day on the catwalk. And each turn was a successful one.

With an outstanding resume, Bayle’s pride remains being the first Asian supermodel, originally named by The Wall Street Journal. She has helped open the doors for countless other models of Asian descent after her to achieve and maintain success in the fashion industry. But Anna Bayle does not take credit for it all: “I believe it is just the sign of the times. Asians are big consumers of luxury. It’s only fitting that the industry would use models that speak to their target market. [The door] was going to open anyway.”

What she can take credit for is Asian models using her career as a guidepost, especially Filipinos such as rising star Lukresia, the first Filipino model since Bayle to walk for Mugler. “I’m happy to be an inspiration for them. But all I can say [is] they have to work a lot harder to achieve [what I achieved].” She clarifies that she is not coming from a place of arrogance, rather a position to motivate. “You also need the want. You must want. For them to surpass me, they must want to surpass me.”

Listening to Bayle’s stories, you realize that, like everyone else’s, it has its peaks and valleys. She knows the value of learning from both. Since her modeling days, she writes 20 things to herself daily to feel grounded, her “code of life.” She shares three with Vogue Philippines.

“Know your worth,” Bayle says.

“Knowing your worth means never forgetting how valuable you are: your time, your energy, your presence, or your talent. Don’t settle for less just because other people don’t see your shine. Walk away from anything that does not treat you right. When you believe in yourself, everyone will see and believe you, too.”

The second: “Do not do things because you have to do them; do things because you want to do them. Do things because they matter to you, not because you are trying to please someone. When you choose to do things with intention and not pressure, then you are making choices for yourself, not for anyone else. This is giving worth to yourself.”

As for the third, she says simply: “Give everything and everyone good energy, and you will get it back.”

The years after her departure from the fashion industry have made Bayle wiser and more spiritual, believing that there are always signs and messages from the universe around her. “Today, [while preparing] for this interview, [as] I was dressing up, I saw a robin in front of my window,” she recalls. “[Then] I googled, ‘meaning of robin.’” The answer? Renewal.

“I was looking for the opposite, the antonym, of the term ‘jaded,’” she says, continuing, “I’ve given so many interviews that sometimes it could feel like that.” But for this one, Bayle has found the right word: “It’s renewed.” Now, a touch misty-eyed, she scrunches her nose and chuckles another sweet “thank you.”

A renewed interview, a renewed career, and a renewed perspective on life.

But maybe hold your hope on a fashion comeback from her. Many have asked, and many have tried.

Mugler invited her to walk for his legendary 20th anniversary show, and she declined; Saint Laurent was willing to fly her first-class to be in his all-star retrospective show, and she declined; magazines throughout the years have asked her to be on their covers, and, yes, she also declined. Now, it’s my turn: “That is a resounding no!” Bayle affirms, laughing.

She is keen to add that it’s not that she’s now far removed from fashion; rather, she’s just more interested in its interrelations with other fields like social media, dance, and art. Photographer Mark Seliger’s eye for portraiture was a tipping point in finally persuading the private Anna to once again cross into the public spotlight. Who best to capture the beautiful and the proud enigma.

Still, don’t be fooled into thinking she’s returning to fashion, even with her career highlights seeing a renaissance on social media and a Vogue cover story to celebrate her history. She is not a phoenix rising from the ashes.

But she is instead, Anna Bayle, timeless, renewed, in the process of sharing her life with a select, precious few. Then, with everyone else.

Maybe, she’s going to make a book after all. Anna Bayle shares: “It’s funny, I wrote ‘I am… dot, dot, dot… to be continued.’ My life is to be continued.” 

Photographs by MARK SELIGER. Deputy Editor PAM QUIÑONES. Fashion Editor DAVID MILAN. Styling by DANIEL EDLEY. Talent: Anna Bayle. Deputy Editor: Pam Quiñones. Fashion Editor: David Milan. Stylist: Daniel Edley. Executive Producer: Anz Hizon. Beauty Editor: Joyce Oreña. Makeup: Francelle Daly. Hair: Adam Markarian. Studio Executive Producer: Ruth Levy. Studio Producer: Madi Overstreet. Nails: Nail Technician Honey at Exposure NY. Tailor: Susan Balcunas. First Assistant and Digital-Tech: Romy Kirchauer. BTS Videographer: Adam Dowling. Stylist’s Assistant: Grace Providencia Wagner.