ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993                   TAG: 9308050259
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


WILL SUPERMODEL NIKI TAYLOR BE GRACING HALLS OF HOLLINS?

Brooke Shields at Princeton. Jodie Foster at Yale.

Niki Taylor at Hollins College?

Rumors have been circulating for months that Taylor - 18-year-old supermodel, Florida native, recent high school graduate - would be attending the private, all-women college this fall.

The phones of the Hollins' admissions office have been jangling since March. Calls from sister colleges, congratulating Hollins on snagging Taylor. Calls from students from Seattle to Mount Pocono, Pa. "Is it true?" they asked.

Taylor herself said so, rumor had it, on MTV's "House of Style" swimsuit edition that aired from mid-May to mid-June.

The college checked. And checked.

"We tried and tried to track it down," said Stuart Trinkle, director of admissions. "One of our staff members who knows someone at MTV called them. They said they thought they'd heard something about that but didn't know."

The college found a "Nicole Taylor" on its list of prospective students with whom Hollins had recent contact. Like Niki Taylor, this "Nicole Taylor" was from Florida.

"We called her to see if she was the same one," Trinkle said. "We had a pleasant chat, but she was not Niki Taylor."

We'll quash this rumor here and now.

After a tough senior year juggling high school and modeling, Niki Taylor has put off college to pursue her modeling career full time, George Dassinger, one of her publicists, said Wednesday.

"The floodgates have opened for `Nik,' " Dassinger said. "She's got another calendar to shoot in either Hawaii or Australia. She's doing the Special Olympics for NBC.

"There's just so much going on, that college has been postponed."

Dassinger said he phoned Taylor on Wednesday to discuss business and mentioned a reporter's call about the Hollins rumor.

"She said, `I'm going to an all-girl's college in Virginia?' " Dassinger said. "She told me that at least it was a nice rumor, not like the one that had her dating someone completely ridiculous."

And the alleged MTV comment?

"She said then that she was thinking of going to Miami University," Dassinger said. "But not Hollins."

Besides, she'll probably attend a college close to the ocean because she wants to study oceanography, said Isabell Dassinger, another of her publicists.

Unraveling the origin of the Niki Taylor rumor has left many perplexed.

But one Hollins source, who asked not to be identified, bets it started at Hampden-Sydney College, a men's college near Farmville.

"They want to tell their recruits, `Oh yeah, Niki Taylor's coming to Hollins,' " she said.



 by CNB