Bombshell, businesswoman, brand: after 34 years as the world’s most glamorous supermodel, CINDY CRAWFORD still reigns supreme. Ahead of the launch of her first book, she tells CELIA WALDEN about the lessons she has learned at the top.
Even before the exquisite face, man-bait mane and sculpted double-denim-clad body makes its unavoidable impact when we meet, one thing hits me about Cindy Crawford: she is shy. This fashion icon I have grown up with – who has graced over 1000 magazine covers and sold more clothes, cosmetics, couches and aspirational fantasies than any of her contemporaries – is shy. I know this because of the slight bowing of her head as she walks across the sun-dappled patio of Café Habana, the Malibu restaurant owned by her husband of 17 years, businessman Rande Gerber. I know it from her gentle handshake, her tentative manner and because, although the grilled corn “is delicious”, Crawford decides against it, afraid that “it will be too messy to eat during an interview”.
This girlish self-consciousness comes as a double surprise with the knowledge that, in six months, Cindy Crawford turns 50. Hard to believe in principle, harder still when sitting across from a woman whose beauty is as arresting as it was at 16, when she was first spotted by a local photographer as she modeled clothes for a high- street shop in her native DeKalb, Illinois (and not, as fashion legend has it, shucking corn in a field).
“Of course I’m different,” shrugs Crawford. “And I don’t mind being different. So I decided that, rather than run and hide from the fact that I’m turning 50, I would embrace it.” Hence the publication of Becoming, her new 250-page coffee-table book of photographs and essays about the lessons she has learned throughout her life and 34-year career.
“Doing [2014 TV show] Oprah’s Master Class really helped me look at everything I’d been through,” she explains. “Coming from Illinois, losing my brother [Jeff, who died of leukemia when Crawford was 10], and my parents splitting up. And, of course, I’m still learning.”
Although Crawford’s agent had been “bugging” her to write a book for years, the supermodel had never felt ready until now. “And who knew that modeling would have got me all the way to 49?” she says, smiling. “I remember thinking at age 25 that I had, at most, five years left...”
And perhaps Crawford’s career might have ended at 30, if she hadn’t been smart enough to turn that face and body into a $100m brand, encompassing a best-selling exercise video series, her Meaningful Beauty skincare range and the Cindy Crawford Home furnishing lines. I’m not sure Crawford ever needed the “business daddy” she says she once craved. It was, after all, against her agent’s advice that she took on a six-year run as MTV’s House of Style presenter in 1989; and, against everyone’s advice, she disrobed three times for Playboy, a decision that in no way impacted the perception of her as a wholesome, all-American female role model. And that’s because, for all the male lust, women only ever feel admiration for Crawford.
“I started to see myself the way the world saw me,” she says of those choices. “And, fortunately, that brand lined up with the person I really am – it’s not like I’m secretly smashing up hotel rooms.”
That self-awareness made Crawford the enduring icon she remains today. “Although, I’ve always liked to challenge how people see me,” she says. “When I did the Vanity Fair cover with K.D. Lang [in August 1993, with a swimsuit-clad Crawford shaving the singer, who was dressed as a man], it upset and surprised people. But I couldn’t understand why people would take it so literally. Really, there is no such thing as a ‘true’ picture – even paparazzi shots aren’t real.”
In February last year, a ‘behind the scenes’ picture of Crawford emerged in the press, purporting to be real and untouched, with cellulite visible on her stomach. It had, in fact, been digitally altered, but I sense that Crawford is still smarting from it.
“Now, if I’m on a beach in a bikini where there might be paparazzi, I’d definitely put a coverup on,” she says. “There are good and bad angles and I don’t want to subject myself to that. It’s hurtful.” Really? I’d imagined her to be thicker-skinned. “Oh, I’m not. There are a lot of perks to this job, but that…” she says, shaking her head. “Fashion and makeup should just be for fun. And somehow it has moved away from that. These days, images that are meant to inspire and make women feel happy to be women sometimes have the opposite effect.”
Although Crawford has always been candid about the effort required to maintain her extraordinary physique, her priorities changed after the birth of her son, Presley, 16, and daughter Kaia, 14. “When I did my exercise video I was like a professional athlete, working out twice a day. When I had kids, I set being present in their lives as my priority.” These days, she works out with her trainer three days a week. Once a year, she books herself into The Ashram spa resort in Calabasas, where she subsists on raw food for a week: “It’s more about resetting your body and shedding bad habits than weight loss, because although workouts are great for tone and health, in the end your weight is about food.”
Crawford is resolute about setting a good example to Kaia – who has already been signed by IMG Models – when it comes to maintaining a non-faddy diet. “Today, models are expected to be so tiny and I worry about that for her, because that was never my natural body type and I don’t think it’ll be hers either. Still, I’ll say to her, ‘Enjoy carbs while you can!’ Kaia’s blossoming into such a beautiful young woman and I really want to let her shine. I don’t want her to feel in competition with me, although I’ll tease her,” she laughs, “and say, ‘You have my old hair – give it back!’ Or, ‘Give me back my legs!’ But she’ll be fine,” she says of her daughter, who fronted a Young Versace ad campaign aged 10 and graced the pages of July’s Vogue Italia. “She’s much more together and worldly than I was at her age.”
When other young models ask for Crawford’s advice, she tells them “they had better learn to sing and act, too, because it’s not really enough to just be a model anymore. Anna Wintour was the one who started the trend of putting celebrities on covers and in the big campaigns,” she says. “Then everyone followed suit, so now they want stars like Kendall Jenner and Taylor Swift. They want people with a following, and social media has helped because models like Cara [Delevingne], Coco [Rocha] and Gigi [Hadid] can have their own voices and talk to fans directly. There are more pathways available to them than we had.”
As we say goodbye, I catch one diner scouring Crawford’s face for her all-important trademark: The Mole. “It happens a lot,” she laughs. “If I ever had it removed, I wouldn’t feel like me anymore. My fans worry about it a lot, you know – to the point where I’m wondering whether The Mole should have its own Twitter account and Instagram page, just like Harry Styles’ ponytail.”
If anyone could make that work, I think to myself as she wanders off into the midday sun, it would be Cindy Crawford.
Becoming by Cindy Crawford (Rizzoli) is out Sept 29
