SUPERMODELS HIT THE WEB\Commercial sites target (mostly male) cruisers on the Internet.

Byline: Stephen Lynch The Orange County Register

Supermodels, they say, are dead.

As examples - Lauren Hutton's talk show, Cindy Crawford in "Fair Game" and the Fashion Cafe.

Shall we go on? Why not? Exhibit D: Spin magazine declaring "They're hot! They're sexy! They're dead! Supermodels are soooo over."

But, swooning over Brenda Schad, you wouldn't know it. This doe-eyed waif has skin the color of weak chocolate milk, cheekbones fit for a paleontologist's dream and lip gloss like lacquer. She's holding court in the Beverly Hills Planet Hollywood, shifting her legs like the San Andreas Fault and clicking through an Internet site filled with her image.

There's a World Wide Web of geekdom waiting to download her picture, but her mouse clicks are nonchalant.

"Worried?" she says of on-line admirers. "Does it worry me more than appearing in Victoria's Secret?"

Touche.

So forget conventional wisdom. Supermodels don't die, they just change media. And right now, the well-bred and Wonderbra'd are jumping from magazines and runways to Web sites and electronic archives. Supermodels are some of the most popular distractions of cyberspace, ranking up there with "Star Trek," software and sports. Sites such as Yahoo and Webcrawler, which allow users to search for virtual "pages" on the Internet, list almost 300 model homages - probably half the number of those not cataloged.

And much like billboards for underwear and perfume, supermodel sites are drawing advertisers and marketers looking to cash in on well-heeled (high-heeled, that is) images.

It's a love affair rooted in the early days of the popular Internet - say, 1991 - when college students and lonely engineers would construct archives of their favorite fantasies. Cindy, Claudia, Elle, Naomi - all perfectly pixilated photogenic pinups.

"People have this fascination with famous people," says Lorenzo Castro, who runs his "Virtual Gallery" from the University of Texas at Austin. "And the Internet is mostly comprised of men."

He lets the equation hang.

"You know, they're really intelligent, nice women," he adds apologetically. Yeah, and men just download their pictures for the programming code.

But as the Internet gets more popular, the big guns are taking over. Angered by teen-agers breaking copyrights by scanning in photos - and attracted by the nouveau way to peddle the pretty - Sports Illustrated, Elle magazine, modeling agencies and others are commercializing the cause.

The queen bee is supermodel.com, home of Schad and some well-limbed companions. Programmer and photographer Patxi Pastor hooked up with the family of model Nikki Taylor last spring to start the site, which now markets supermodel calendars and videos, and profiles come-hither looks from the likes of Dutch runway fodder Frederique.

While most college sites are purely libido-driven, Pastor takes an enlightened approach - batting eyelashes for profit.

"We're providing a personal element to the product," the Greenwich, Conn., entrepreneur says. "These models are like a product, a Nikki Inc., which you buy to help promote other products."

Schad, however, sees the virtual shift as humanizing. Cyberspace may be a universal pinup board for the poster girls of the '90s, but "we're not icons, we're real people," Schad says. "We're not some object from afar. You can ask questions, you can get to know the person."

In fact, supermodel.com plans to hold real-time chat events with models next year - after America Online brought in about 2,000 subscribers to talk to Naomi Campbell this fall. Plus, Schad says, the kind of guy who downloads her brown eyes is more sensitive than the mechanic who posts her picture in the garage.

"And if he's a really intelligent guy, he should give me a call," the 24-year-old says. She declines, however, to leave a phone number for all you guys who can recite pi to the 25th place.

So why, considering that the possibility of actually meeting beautiful women is remote, do so many students spend so much time scanning and posting pictures?

"I love to play with computers, and that's what I'm going to school for," says Sanjay Sukerkar, a senior majoring in computer science at Northern Michigan University. "And I was just impressed by how beautiful some people are born."

Sukerkar also has developed something of a fan club of Net surfers who send him photos and e-mail comments.

Castro, meanwhile, was bought out by supermodel.com and now can use his existing supermodel site to make a living. Plus, his Web designing skills are quite marketable and earned him an all-expenses-paid trip to Milan to orchestrate an Italian site

MODEL SITES

Elle Magazine: http://www.ellemag.com/

Supermodel.com: http://www.supermodel.com/

The Complete Fashion Index: http://www.kean.edu(tilde)lisajoy/fashion.html

Kathy Ireland page: http://www.main.com:80/(tilde)scheffe

Supermodel Galleria: http://netspace.net.au/(tilde)ashadi

Complete supermodel links page (to many different models): http://www.wam.umd.edu/(tilde)meteu/modellinks

And for the ladies . . . the men of Boss Models: http://www.bossmodel.com/

SOURCE: The Orange County Register

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO[ordinal indicator, masculine]CHART

Photo Photo Supermodel. com aims to sell products to models' on-line admirers. Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service Box MODEL SITES (See text)