Posted on 06/14/2024 6:08:23 PM PDT by nickcarraway
An Instagram account spent "countless hours" in search of the original reference for the seminal illustration by Patrick Nagel
The model from Duran Duran‘s ‘Rio’ cover has finally been identified.
The iconic artwork was originally painted by American artist and illustrator Patrick Nagel, and then designed by Malcolm Garrett to resemble classic ’50s cigar packaging. However, despite becoming one of the most memorable album covers of all time, the subject has remained a mystery – until now.
An Instagram account called @nagel_angel has spent “countless hours” in search of the original reference photo used by Nagel. They have now identified model Marcie Hunt (now known as Marcie Dinkel) as the subject of the renowned portrait.
Though Nagel passed away two years after making the illustration, his assistant Barry Hahn reportedly confirmed that Hunt was the original inspiration.
Duran Duran themselves took to social media to repost @nagel_angel’s discovery, upon which Hunt herself commented below. “This is so cool! I absolutely did not know until now that this photo of me was used for the Rio cover,” she wrote. “Very exciting! Love Duran Duran, and danced to their music often in the ’80s… and later at my wedding.”
Take a look at the two photos below:
Hit song from early 90’s...but yeah, had more of an 80’s vibe.
Ok, I can’t disagree. But still not too shabby.
Patrick Nagel, creator of the portrait for the Rio album cover, is one of my all-time favorite graphic artists.
I was trying to look up some people I knew back in the 80s so I set up a classmates.com account.
Why? There's Facebook? Sure. However, despite being mostly an email harvesting site, classmates.com actually has perhaps the greatest repository of complete full-page scanned high school yearbooks from nearly every high school in America going back to the early 80s.
Down the rabbit hole I went, clicking page after page of various 80s-90s yearbooks of schools that I never went to.
And, damn. Life was different back then. And so were the girls.
The chick I posted up above? She was on every high school cheerleading squad forty years ago.
Then Robert Palmer brought them to life in videos.
I know. I remember.
The miniskirts they wore were as short as bathing suits.
And there were so many.
This one?
Or this one?
I’ll see that and raise you one - “Whipped Cream & other Delights” by Herb Alpert!
..I change my mind…
Martin Denny’s “Primitivia”!
Yes I remember that album! I played trumpet/coronet and many other brass instruments 5th, 6th, and 7th grades (’67-’70) and Herb Albert was a big deal for me. Tried hard to copy his style.
I never thought about that but you're right.
They were all Nagel girls.
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