1. LISA EONSSAGRIVES. The first ever top model and one of the longest lasting, Swedish born Fonssagrives originally trained as a dancer but started to model in the mid 1930s. In 1949, Time featured her on its cover as the world's highest paid model; a year later she married her second husband, photographer Irving Penn, with whom she remained until her death in 1992.
2. SUZY PARKER. Together with her sister Dorian Leigh Parker was one of the most famous models in the post War years and the inspiration for Audrey Hepburn's character in Funny Face (with Richard Avedon's role being taken by Fred Astaire). Before retiring from the business in 1963, she had tried acting, without much success. Now living in California with her husband, actor Bradford Dillman.
3. DOVIMA. Responsible for one of this century's most famous fashion photographs ("Dovima and the Elephants", taken by Avedon in 1955) Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba was the half Irish/half Polish daughter of a New York policeman. Despite her incredible success throughout the 1950s, she eventually ended up working as a waitress in Fort Lauderdale before dying of cancer in 1990.
4. JEAN SHRIMPTON. For many people the embodiment of the 1960s, the Shrimp was still a convent schoolgirl when she was first spotted by a photographer in 1958. At the age of 18 she met photographer David Bailey who became her Svengali, although she later lived with actor Terence Stamp. Never really happy in the fashion world, after dealing in antiques, she now runs a hotel in Penzance.
5. TWIGGY. Real name Lesley Hornby, she was the original waif (vital measurements 31-22-32), dubbed "The Face of 66" when first launched in the Daily Express. The first model to achieve international fame outside the fashion circuit, she subsequently moved to New York, and, like so many others before and since, tried acting. Now married to actor Leigh Lawson, she's back living in England again and even occasionally modelling.
6. VERUSCHKA. Countess Vera von Lehndorff her father was executed by the Nazis in 1944 for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler stands six feet one inch tall and was one of the most striking (and unusual) beauties of the 1960s, famous for her appearance in Antonioni's Blow Up. Long retired from the fashion scene, she now works in collaboration with photographer Holger Trulzsch.
7. LAUREN HUTTON. Famous for the gap between her front teeth, after almost a decade in the business, she became world famous in 1973 when she signed the first exclusive modelling contract with a cosmetics company for $400,000 (a record breaking sum at the time) paid over two years, Hutton agreed to be the face of Revlon's Ultima label. Yet another model turned actress, she can currently be seen on American cable television in Central Park West.
8. CHERYL TIEGS
The daughter of a Minnesota farmer, she was a favourite teenage model of the late 1960s (earning as much as $3,000 a week) and then became the best paid model of the 1970s with a daily rate of $2,000 by 1977. In 1979 she signed the largest cosmetics contract yet with Cover Girl reportedly $1.5 million to be paid over five years. Now a housewife and mother in California, she designs and manufactures accessories.
9. JERRY HALL. Over six feet tall, was only 15 years old when she packed a bag and moved to France looking for work as a model and was discovered by Tunisian born agent Claude Mohammed Haddad. After posing for the cover of Roxy Music's fourth album, she moved in with lead singer Bryan Ferry but then left him for Mick Jagger, to whom she is now married. He subsequently had a much publicised passion for Italian model Carla Bruni.
10. CHRISTIE BRINKLEY. Probably the world's highest paid model of the early 1980s, she was involved with champagne heir Olivier Chandon until he died in a car crash shortly afterwards she met Billy Joel, whose song Uptown Girl was dedicated to her. They married in 1985 but divorced nine years later just after she almost died in a helicopter crash. Since then, she has married - and divorced - California property developer Rick Taubman.
11. MARIE HELVIN. Hawaiian born Helvin came to London - and, like Shrimpton before her, met David Bailey, who she subsequently married. In the late 1970s, her face was ubiquitous in British Vogue, but eventually she ended both career and marriage and, now single, remains a familiar face on the London social scene.
12. IMAN. Daughter of a Sudainese diplomat, while a student at the University of Nairobi she was discovered by photographer Peter Beard in 1975, who brought her to the United States. The first black model to achieve super status, she was reputedly once paid $100,000 for a single appearance. First married to basketball star Spencer Haywood in 1978, she turned to acting in the 1980s before her wedding to David Bowie in 1992.