A Delia’s Girl Dishes On Catalog-Modeling In The ’90s

After school let out, the only thing more exciting than a Costco-sized box of Pizza Rolls in the freezer was a fresh Delia's catalog in the mailbox. With recent reports of the brand's decline, there's been an outpouring of nostalgia for all those ball-chain necklaces, ripstop parachute pants, and glitter decals, which — though rad by themselves — really came alive thanks to the book's roster of models. Executing silly poses with makeup and hair looks the average 13-year-old could actually achieve, these models not only showed us the true versatility of platform shower shoes, but that the secret to their late-'90s cool was not taking yourself too seriously.

You might not have known the girls by name, but you definitely recognize their faces. There's the brunette with the baby bangs and bob, the tomboy with eyebrows and jaunty poses, the lanky one always in board shorts with the beautiful fro…and then that girl. With mermaid hair down to her waist, a knack for looking both beautiful and weird, Kim Matulova was like your best friend's older sister who skateboarded to high school and always took her student photo with cross-eyes. She's the face we'll forever associate with Delia's. And, it turns out, the real-life Matulova isn't that far from how we always imagined her.

Said Matulova to MTV about her initial casting, "I probably had a skateboard with me. I was skating-heavy at the time." As for shooting those wacky poses, it's just as we thought: "I just always remember it being really fun... We'd be dancing, we'd be jumping all around. I think that I was definitely known for being that girl that made the crazy faces..."

We were also encouraged to hear that the cast of Delia's characters wasn't just something we made up in our heads while noshing on those pizza bagels, but an integral part of the catalog's mission. "As teenage girls, we look for something to kind of idolize and [Delia's] built characters out of us. It was also nice because you could see how one girl or the same few girls could transform themselves and look so different just with clothes and accessories and doing different hair. I think having a set of characters was definitely part of that appeal. You see it today with Victoria's Secret; they have the Angels, and people have their favorite one and buy what she's wearing."

Click through to MTV for a brief walk down Matulova Memory Lane, for her take on those mIxEd cAps Mad Libs, blow-up furniture, and some thoughts on what's inspiring Cara Delevingne. (We have a guess.) (MTV)