Cindy Crawford Has Changed Her Tune About Daughter Kaia’s Modeling Career
Kaia and Presley Gerber at Teen Vogue’s Young Hollywood Issue Launch Party. Photo: Getty Images
Remember back in early 2012, when supermodel Cindy Crawford told The Daily Front Row (via Huffington Post) of her daughter Kaia Gerber, then 10: “At this point, she’s too young to pursue a career [in modeling]. There aren’t even a handful of jobs for a 10-year-old girl. But if she’s 17 and wants to try it…of course, what can I say?”
It’s unclear whether Crawford does, at this point, either. Today, Gerber, now 14, seems poised on the very brink of imminent It-girl status. She may not even be old enough to walk in a runway show, but she’s already had editorials in CR Fashion Book, Teen Vogue, and Vogue Italia, and scored a contract with IMG. “Guess I better watch my back…” Crawford, 49, captioned a regram of her daughter’s Vogue shoot.
A similar sentiment was echoed recently by Johnny Depp recently, whose own wide-eyed daughter, Lily-Rose, 16, just made her Vogue Paris debut. “To be honest, I’m quite worried,” the actor told German magazine Gala. “What’s happening with Lily-Rose right now isn’t what I expected. Definitely not at this age. But these are her passions and she’s having fun.“
And when people like Carine Roitfeld, Emmanuelle Alt, and Franca Sozzani are on the line, can you blame him or Crawford for letting their kids have a little highly-publicized fun?
This season, Gerber made her official fashion month debut—not as a model, but as a guest sitting front row at the Public School show in New York. This past weekend, she and her brother Presley, 16, walked the red carpet at Teen Vogue’s Young Hollywood Issue Launch Party in Los Angeles.
Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford, and Presley Gerber in June, 2015. Photo: Getty Images
“[My mom] doesn’t want me to start a career too young,” Gerber told Teen Vogue in late 2014. “She started modeling when she was 16, but that world is very different now.” She’s not wrong: Crawford was working in a world without social media or even the Internet.
So she’s building up her fashion cred the new-school way, through social media (she currently has 208k followers on Instagram) and appearances—just like her more recent industry predecessors, Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss, who’ve acquired fans as much because of their off-duty personalities as their photo shoots.
Crawford seems to have changed her tune, as well, telling The Edit in September that her daughter is “much more together and worldly than I was at her age.” She acknowledges the modern-day importance of building up your public persona (rather than letting photographers and designers do the job for you), saying that today’s magazines and campaigns “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.”
But she worries about the demands and pressures that, as a model, are sure to be placed on Gerber. After all, she is only a high school freshman, and most likely isn’t done developing physically.
“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,” Crawford tells The Edit. “Still, I’ll say to her, ‘Enjoy carbs while you can!’”
On Saturday, Entertainment Tonight published a party report of Teen Vogue’s shindig the night before.
“An eyewitness tells ET that Kaia has clearly been taught how to pose, as she was flipping her hair and expertly smiling on the carpet,” it reads. “Inside the party, she danced to the live music and mingled, all while staying close to her brother. The two talked in two groups right next to each other as Presley snacked on soft pretzels, which Kaia did not partake in.”
Listen to your mother, Young Kaia. Enjoy the carbs while you can.
UPDATE Oct. 8, 2015:
In further Kaia Gerber news, the teen recently posed for a photo in Interview with photographer Fabien Baron. The pic shows her wearing a black tee, patent leather pants, and a giant (and we mean GIANT) tangle of hair, created by Redken’s main man Guido Palau.
Joked Crawford in an Instagram, “@kaiagerber is this what happens when i’m not home to remind you to brush your hair??”
Kaia Gerber in her hair-raising Interview editorial. Photo: Fabien Baron for Interview
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