Shane and Sia Barbi - Career

Career

Shane and Sia began modeling at the age of seven when they posed for a layout in the Sears mail-order catalog. As adults, their career has included fashion and mainly pin-up modeling. In the early '90s they modeled for Chanel, Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano and others.

The Los Angeles Times did a cover story about the Barbi Twins when their billboard went up on Sunset Boulevard in 1989 immediately catapulting them to world wide attention. According to their 2001 E! True Hollywood Story, the billboard, and the press that came from it, caught the eye of Hugh Hefner. The twins were put on the cover of Playboy magazine in the September 1991 issue which broke records by selling out in less than two weeks. In an unprecedented move, Hefner erected a billboard to promote the Barbi Twins and their second Playboy issue (which also broke sales records).

USA Today said that the twins career brought them “caviar dreams and champagne life styles of the rich and famous”. Playboy called their covers “legendary” and credited their subsequent television appearances with “the highest ratings,” remarking that the twins became Hollywood landmarks and global obsessions. The twins have also generated a degree of controversy - a Saturday morning cartoon and an MTV show were criticized for being “too sexy” or “too controversial".

Magazines and tabloids called them everything from "the sexiest twins alive” and "the best selling calendar models of the world” (Cosmopolitan UK) to referring to them as both “bizarre and bulimic” and “sexual icons and America’s cartoon sweethearts” (Entertainment Weekly) The London Sun said that the Barbi Twins “took the glamour world by storm”. They were a favorite for cover models appearing on the covers and inside not only Playboy but mainstream national and international magazines like Cosmopolitan and Redbook. Newspapers, magazines and tabloids like USA TODAY, Sunday Magazine’s News of the World, and the Daily Star, were plastered with articles and pictures of the twins.

Shane Barbi was among the many notable quotables when Newsweek’s “Overheard” section (syndicated from the New York Post, Page Six) picked up a quote from her during an interview, "You can ask us about our cup size or favorite positions but please no personal questions.” Stuff magazine gave the twins the title of “Sex Symbols for 1993” placing them in good company with other popular female icons such as Marilyn Monroe (1962), Farrah Fawcett (1977), Madonna (1991) and Sharon Stone (1992).

Redbook magazine took excerpts from the book “Diana’s Boys” which reveals how Prince William had his first crush on the Barbi Twins. The London Sun passed on a poster to the young prince autographed by the twins,“Love and Kisses, Shane and Sia”.

In the Caribbean, a riot ensued when inmates caught a glimpse of the twins doing a photo shoot nearby. Tourists were jumping out of ships yelling “Las Barbi’s”. After four years of the “best selling calendars”, photographs from a photo shoot were stolen from a NY film lab and "held for ransom" but were later returned.

In 2011 were featured and voted as one of MAXIM's Hottest Famous Twins, were featured in numerous movie posters on behalf of animal causes (see Animal Activism below) and on covers and featured articles in True Cowboy Magazine.