- Hi Vogue, I'm Cindy Crawford,
and today we're gonna go
through my life in looks.
[chill music]
Okay, here we go!
This was actually my publicity headshot
for when I did House of Style.
You know, it's funny,
when I started doing House of Style, no stylist.
I think the very first time we shot,
I brought my own as Azzedine Alaia dress,
and my own leather jacket,
which this was my leather jacket,
obviously paired with a white T-shirt here.
And I mean, so classic.
A white T-shirt and a leather jacket,
and big hair, see, we're starting off strong.
Some of the greatest things
about House of Style
was just the wacky situations.
Like showing Naomi Campbell
putting on pimple cream,
and that hey, supermodels get pimples too.
You know, that kind of thing
made it much more approachable.
Vogue.
This is not my first Vogue cover.
I've been very fortunate, I've had a few.
This is the new Vogue.
Anna Wintour came to Vogue,
and she was all about, what is the new Vogue?
And I think this cover really kind of shows that.
It's outside, it's not like one
of those super closeup headshots
that Avedon was famous for.
The hair is up, and I do have to say,
I don't do a lot of covers with my hair up.
I feel like Cindy Crawford's
always like, the hair's blowing,
or it's big hair, or whatever.
I remember my first shoot for Vogue
was with Wayne Maser and Carlyne Cerf.
It was a swimsuit story in St. Bart's.
From that shoot,
I was invited to shoot with Avedon.
And I went there, and ended up getting the cover.
And I remember it was like this pink suit.
It was very happy.
I was in Europe when it came out,
and I was passing through the airport,
and I stopped to buy, well I bought three.
And I just so wanted the woman
at the counter to look at the magazine
and realize it was me.
And she didn't, of course. And she was like, do you know
you have three of the same magazines, honey?
And that was it.
[chill music]
Well, this is just, what do they call that?
Model off duty.
That wasn't a thing, again, this was just me
probably not being very chic.
I have a plastic shopping bag,
my big bottle of Evian.
And we lived in our 501s.
I'm sure that jacket is Azzedine.
And that was one of the cool things
about working with Azzedine Alaia
was that you got to go down and get clothes.
I mean, you pretty much got paid in clothes.
And I always felt like my clothes
end up in a little pile on the floor
wherever I'm shooting.
So I didn't wear precious things.
I mean, it might be Azzedine,
but it was a leather coat that I wore every day.
It is funny that I do see pictures
like this pop up on Instagram all the time,
or on Pinterest, you know,
like as style inspo.
Because again, no one put this together
other than what I grabbed.
So it's funny, because it wasn't styled
in any way.
Ah, I love this.
This was my red Versace dress.
It was for the Academy Awards,
I was with my ex-husband.
The red carpet thing was not such a big deal.
I did not have a stylist.
I had just been in Milan doing shows.
And there was this dress in black
that someone was wearing.
You know, I just called Donatella,
or whoever, and was like,
could you guys make me this dress
in red for the Oscars?
And they did.
The black shoes,
it's funny, because it seemed right at the time.
They seem a little heavy to me now. [chuckling]
But the thing that was really sexy
about this dress was the slit in the back.
It came nearly up to, it came up very high.
[chuckling] You had to be very careful in this dress.
A few years ago,
Anna Wintour asked for this dress
for an auction that Vogue was doing.
I still had it.
And I put it up for auction,
and I should have bought it back.
I regret that I didn't.
Someone has this dress now.
Not that I would wear it again,
but I think I miss it a little bit. [laughing]
Oh. [laughing]
This is probably my favorite fashion moment.
I didn't do as many fashion shows
as a lot of the other women
that I would consider in my group of models.
A lot of times I would just do Versace.
This was in a Gianni Versace show.
The four of us, plus Tatiana
had done a George Michael video
that ended up being really played
all the time on MTV.
This show happened,
so Gianni had the song playing
and the four of us come out together.
I wrote about this in my book,
and I wrote that one plus one
plus one plus one equaled more than four
in this moment.
It was like something happened.
It felt really special.
It was like one of those moments
where music, and pop culture, and fashion
all came together in a super magical way.
You can just see the joy
on all of our faces in this picture.
Like we're singing as we walk down the runway,
and we're just having fun,
and we're just drinking in every moment of it.
Oh, I love this shoot.
This shoot is also Vogue, surprise, surprise.
Helmut Newton in Monte Carlo.
I loved working with Helmut.
I mean, definitely Helmut had a style,
and you kinda knew what you were signing up for
when you worked with Helmut Newton.
He had a sense of humor about his photographs.
You know, even some of the more sexualized ones.
Like for instance, I would always say, Helmut,
I'm never putting a saddle on,
don't even ask me.
He would tell you a story
as you were doing this picture.
And I remember the story for this picture,
which was he was like, you know,
you were married to a very rich man,
and he died, you know?
So it was kind of like this widow,
but you had a young lover.
You know, he just kept adding to the story,
and hoping to catch the tiniest change
of expression to get that picture.
And then, whenever you do a picture like this,
with a piece of chiffon, or tulle,
or whatever it was,
it's always like you have 100 bad ones
to get the one perfect one
where everything's perfect.
The leg's perfect, the arm's perfect,
the tulle's perfect.
Once again, Versace.
This was the VMAs, the MTV Awards.
But this was when Versace did
their famous bondage collection.
I mean, what more can you say?
It's amazing.
What is interesting is I just glanced down
and I saw the heels were probably three inches.
And that was considered high at the time.
I mean, we did not have to wear
those insanely like five inch heels
until much later.
I thought that was a high heel at the time.
And when you think back,
that's like your work pump now.
Working with Gianni and Donatella
was just always like, it was family.
I mean, they were family,
and they made you feel part of the family.
And it was always so much fun.
And Gianni really celebrated the model.
In a new way, I think.
Like he also was partly responsible
for the rise of the supermodel.
It's funny, 'cause Kaia for her 18th birthday,
she asked them to make her
a new version of this dress.
Hers was shorter.
But it's just funny that even for her,
and I think this was 30 years later or more,
that the style still resonated.
Like that was her coming out party.
So it was kind of a way for her to be like, okay,
I'm not a little girl anymore.
I'm wearing a Versace bondage dress. [laughing]
When people dress as me for Halloween,
they dress in this outfit.
This is my first Pepsi commercial I did.
I'm wearing obviously a white bodysuit.
These were my own jeans
that I wore to set that day.
We tried on a bunch of different things,
and finally, they were like,
can we just cut your jeans off and make cutoffs?
I said, yes, because I take one for the team.
You know, this just became iconic.
Because of everything.
I mean, yes, the outfit, the hair.
But I also got out of a really cool Lamborghini.
They had great music.
The greatest thing about this commercial
was even though it was super sexy
in an all-American way, it was cute too,
because there were two little boys
that were watching me.
And at the end, they're like,
is that a great looking Pepsi can or what?
As if they weren't even noticing me,
they were just looking at the Pepsi can.
And I honestly don't think the commercial
would have been near as impactful
if it didn't have that little innocence
and sense of humor.
And next up.
Steven Meisel is such incredible
teacher of modeling.
He helps you understand how to move.
And he used to have this big mirror
behind him when he was shooting.
And really loud music.
But you could see yourself,
and you could go, oh wait,
that doesn't look good, or that does look good,
or ooh, there's a wrinkle if I do that.
That's what I think of
when I think of Steven Meisel.
This outside, kind of more natural
almost Vogue cover
is I think a little bit different
than most of the work
that I had done with Steven.
But I love it, I love the styling.
Again, it's taking Chanel and making it
look just like the cool girl next door
would be wearing it.
Oh my goodness.
Okay.
So, even though I'm not an actress,
I did a movie called Fair Game
with Billy Baldwin.
I played a lawyer. [laughing]
Which was a bit of a stretch.
Actually, I got annoyed.
One critique of me said,
as if she could be a lawyer.
And I thought that was so offensive,
'cause I thought, I could have been a lawyer.
I just, you know, I was valedictorian, I did go
to chemical engineering school at Northwestern.
But ended up getting into modeling.
But, it was kind of let's say
a little bit far fetched.
That is not me acting.
That is actually me in actual terror
as things are exploding behind me.
I was outside of my comfort zone
every single day.
I learned a lot on that film, and it was fun,
and I have made lifelong friends.
But it just wasn't my thing. [laughing]
Okay, so this was 2018.
Heavenly Bodies, Met Ball.
It's funny because part of me was like,
well, maybe I should go,
I don't know, like try something different.
I think, look, I love this dress,
I felt great in this dress.
It moved, it was comfortable.
Again, Versace just fits me.
I do sometimes feel like,
oh, maybe I should be
a little more of a risk-taker with fashion.
Like in this one, I could be at the Oscars,
I could be anywhere.
And sometimes I think, oh, maybe I should have,
I don't know, put wings on or whatever.
It was Heavenly Bodies.
I don't know.
But I loved the dress.
What's interesting about the Met Ball
is sometimes someone will get invited,
but they won't get invited with a plus one.
I remember at that Met Ball
we ran into a few people.
I think one for instance was Ansel Elgort.
And he wasn't there with anybody.
And we're like, okay, Ansel.
We were like gathering the singles
or the strays around us,
because it's very intimidating
being there by yourself.
And I guess maybe 'cause I've been
that person before,
that if I see someone,
I'll go up and try to get them,
you know, cause it's horrible to feel, you know,
especially like that's a very powerful room.
Oh.
So this is when Kaia got a fashion award,
after her one year of modeling.
She was so excited
to be wearing a McQueen dress.
In this, I was like, yes,
I'm still Cindy Crawford,
but tonight, I wanna be Kaia's mom.
The last thing I wanted to do
is look like I'm competing
with my 17 year old daughter.
So I loved this dress.
This is Marchesa.
It was elegant and chic,
but not trying to be a showstopper, for sure.
I mean, Kaia has, even when she was little,
well, she would always wanna play dress up,
and we'd go in my closet,
and she'd pick some Dolce dress, or something,
and I would pin it on her.
And then I would do crazy hair and makeup.
And then we would do like a photo shoot.
And she would do it with her friends too.
So it was really fun.
So she definitely, it wasn't totally surprising
to me that she wanted to get into modeling.
I'm proud of Kaia just for who she is.
I mean, modeling is just one small aspect
of who she is.
The best advice I give both my kids,
not only about modeling, show up on time,
be prepared, and stay off your phone.
It's so easy now just to sit there
and scroll Instagram
while you're getting your hair done,
or your makeup done.
But I think those relationships
that I made in the makeup chair,
or backstage, or whatever,
those added so much to my life.
Thank you so much Vogue
for letting me reminisce about my life in looks,
and thanks all of you for watching.
[pen scribbling]
[chill music]