Before Agyness, there was Kate. Before that, there were Linda, Naomi, Claudia and Christy. And even before that, there was a parade of impossibly glamorous precedents, each claiming to have a beauty - and modelling career - superior to all their peers.

Who was, though, the world's first supermodel? For many, it was Dorian Leigh, the Texan star of Revlon's Fire and Ice campaign of the Fifties, who died this week, aged 91.

Until Leigh, names were rarely put to the faces that adorned magazine covers. “Leigh was different because she was the first one to have a label, to be known by a name,” said David Bailey, the photographer.

The world's first professional mannequin is generally regarded as Marie Vernet Worth, a Parisian shopgirl who modelled clothes in the 1850s to help her fashion designer husband, Charles Frederick Worth.

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A century later, sensing that this might be thought an enviable career, agent Clyde Dessner used the term “super-model” in his 1948 manual, So You Want to Be a Model? But it was the power of Leigh's image to seduce consumers, and not least her audacious $1-a-minute rate, that helped to secure the future of the supermodel.

Leigh was not the only contender to the couture queen crown.

Lisa Fonssagrives, a Swedish dancer who once claimed to be “just a good coat hanger”, is considered by many in the fashion industry to be the world's first great model.

From the Thirties to the Fifties, she featured in most of the main magazines, including Town & Country, Life, Vanity Fair and Time. Her appearance on more than 200 Vogue covers also helped to boost the magazine's power to make or break modelling careers.

It was not until Lesley Hornby stuck on a pair of false eyelashes in the Sixties that the next generation of supermodels was born. Hornby also broke through to that particular stratum of fame where only one name is needed, in her case Twiggy.

The following decade was all about the Studio 54 glamour of Jerry Hall, Iman, Gia Carangi and Christie Brinkley, although their catwalk colleague Janice Dickinson would frequently claim the title of the first supermodel. Tellingly, the source of this claim is Janice Dickinson.

The gold standard was set by the “Big Five”: Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista. They were the first supermodels to be officially recognised as such by the fashion industry and their status was so secure they might as well have had kitemarks stamped on their bodies.

According to Schiffer, Gisele Bündchen is the only one of the current crop of supermodels whose charms earn her the right to the title. In Britain Kate Moss reigns supreme as the camera's favourite subject, but younger contenders such as Lily Cole and Agyness Deyn are snapping at her stylish heels.

The fashion photographer Barry Lategan believes that what makes these particular models super is the fact that they have managed to defy the fashion industry's notoriously short attention span. “They rose to the top because, unlike racing car drivers or jockeys, their success depended on the approval of others - the fashion editors, the photographers. The length of the career depends totally on how long they are accepted by the industry,” he said. “They triumphed in an industry that is obsessed with that ubiquitous adjective - new.”

So, who will be next?

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