Prepare to be shocked. Cindy Crawford — that glowing symbol of health and
authentic outdoor beauty, even among the Big Six supermodels of the 1990s —
has a flaw. It’s the big toe on her left foot, and today it is hurting
enough to make her twitch. There is a splinter missing from the left-hand
side of the nail, maybe a ¼in gouge, and her make-up artist is gingerly
working around it. It’s clearly a sensitive spot on Crawford’s long,
elegant feet — and, perhaps most annoying, it’s a self-inflicted wound. “I
lost my nail after hiking 15 miles a day last spring. Apparently, I had not
cut my toenails short enough, and my toes crammed up inside my shoes and
busted the nail, so that it turned purple and dropped off. It’s grown back
mostly. Who knew?” muses Crawford, wincing a little at her own naivety at
the hazards of Californian back-country hiking.
At 42, Crawford is beautiful, bordering on spectacular, as she arrives for the
Style shoot in the hills above her Malibu beach home. She is clad in tight
jeans, fringed leather and an Obama T-shirt and has the air of a woman who,
professionally, is back on top of her game. She has been out of the public
eye since her contract with Revlon lapsed eight years ago, and was recently
described by Vanity Fair as “retired in Malibu”.
The description irritated her. “I never took time off. I worked on my fitness
videos, my skin-care line, my home furnishing line.” As a model, though, her
career went into abeyance. For a little while there, it seemed that the true
supermodels of the 1990s, the arrogance of the “won’t get out of bed for
less than $10,000” high-steppers, had been eclipsed by a generation of
cut-price, zero-sized, blank-faced waifs. These waifs were the backlash to
the overpowering personalities of the Big Six — Crawford, Claudia Schiffer,
Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington — who,
some bitched, were more interesting than the attire they promoted. They
globalised before the term turned into a cliché, simultaneously appearing on
every catwalk, magazine cover and style page around the world.
And yet, just before the millennium, this colourful mob faded away. Now, there
is a backlash to the backlash. No sooner had Schiffer loudly complained that
“supermodels, like we once were, no longer exist: nobody wants to pay
for them”, than Evangelista is back in this season’s Prada campaign,
Campbell is fronting Yves Saint Laurent and Schiffer has landed Dolce &
Gabbana. Age, it seems, is not a barrier, and hurrah for that.
So, is it an Indian summer or a second life for these girls? Crawford has no
doubt there is longevity here: “It went all waify, but it would have been
very boring if it had not changed over 20 years. It came back because the
baby-boomers are getting older. They like seeing our familiar faces again,
because it makes them feel good about themselves. Obviously, people of 40
and 50 do not look the way they did when I was growing up in Illinois. These
people look after themselves, because we are willing to work at it. We are
willing to create a new lifestyle to stay strong.”
Crawford is still pretty close to her 34-26-35 vital statistics of two decades
ago, tight-bodied without being muscly — this is a woman who regards her 5ft
9in body as a facilitator to lugging bits of her furniture around, dealing
with two rambunctious kids (Presley, 9, and Kaia, 7) and, now, staging her
modelling comeback.
Her skin tone, before the make-up goes on, glows pure California beach girl,
although the signature mole seems lighter — making it even more absurd that
it was airbrushed out of existence during her early career. As she strikes
her poses for the shoot, she moves more athletically in six-inchers than any
mother of two has a right to.
So, what is the secret? “There is no secret, not like finding the perfect
jeans. It’s genetics — I was born with a good envelope — and lifestyle. When
I moved to New York, when I was 20, I was not super-skinny, so I got into
exercise and it has become part of my life. You do not find time to
exercise, you make time, otherwise you will find millions of other things to
do.
“I found after I had my first kid I could not come home after my workouts and
have a nap, so I had to adapt them to make them softer — so they would
energise me, rather than wear me out. So, right now, I go hiking at least
once a week — although that is easy in Malibu: I just step out my front door
for a walking meditation. Once a year, I go to The Ashram [a £3,000-a-week
boot camp in the Santa Monica mountains near Malibu] and eat raw food, take
four-hour, 15-mile hikes every day — not even with an iPod. I know people
take their iPods, but maybe they cannot face themselves. I like to hike out
and see where my mood takes me: I may sing, or feel sad, and think about
that. I enjoy the luxury of spending time just with myself.”
At home, Crawford, who created one of the most enduring exercise tapes of the
1990s, works out on the Power Plate. “I discovered it this year. I guess
Madonna knew about it years ago, but she always knows about everything
before anyone else. It’s a vibrating plate on which you work out, so you are
balancing as well as doing squats or push-ups. Half an hour a day, three
times a week. And then I have a treadmill, and have gone to dance classes, a
mixture of yoga and Pilates, but I moved on from that. Sometimes I only
keep doing something for a while and evolve. You have to keep interested in
it.”
And Crawford eats. “I love cooking. There will be 18 in my home at
Thanksgiving, my mother cooking the turkey and my sisters and I divvying up
the rest. I follow the advice of Gaby Reece [the beach-volleyball champion],
‘Be 80% good 80% of the time.’ ”
You can have a bit of chocolate, but you don’t have to eat the whole bar. She
never diets, just permanently limits her junk intake. If she blows on carbs,
she says, it makes her feel slightly queasy. “So, for me, it’s a smoothie
for breakfast, although that can take 20 minutes to throw in everything but
the kitchen sink, a salad at lunch — it used to be with chicken or fish, but
I have gone off those in the past six months, don’t know why — and something
light for dinner. Last night, it was a stir-fry. My husband and the kids may
have chicken or steak in their stir-fry, but I’ll replace mine with tofu.
It’s what my body wants now.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising that her cholesterol is extremely low: 160.
“That’s genetics — my dad eats bacon and eggs every morning and he has low
cholesterol, too.”
So, does she have any, um, trouble spots on her body? “Every woman does. If
there is something you don’t like about yourself, work at it. If you are
unable or unwilling to put in the work, accept it — otherwise you will be
miserable.”
And what about other work — of the invasive kind? She appears poised to
dismiss the question as abruptly as other recent urban myths: George Clooney
has never baby-sat her kids, although he is a friend of her nightclub-owning
husband, Rande Gerber; she has never wanted to be an astronaut; she was
never part of the animal-rights group Peta, which, thus, rather unfairly
accused her of hypocrisy for promoting fur. And then she hesitates. “It’s
not about changing your face, but keeping it as it was — there is a limit to
what you can fight with all the vitamins in the world. My job is contingent
upon how I look, and I fight the good fight with facials and vitamins.”
Maturing has not all been kids and treadmills. Crawford also admits to
learning to enjoy herself more. Last month, she went to Kate Hudson’s West
LA Hallowe’en party dressed, brilliantly, as Amy Winehouse, complete with
talcum powder trickling out of her nose — “It was all about the hair,
though: everything else follows” — with Rande dressed as “pasty English
dandy” Blake. It wasn’t always like this, though. “When I arrived in
the business I was mistrustful, I did not let myself go, get into drugs,
whatever. I was, well, yes, boring, not wild. But, these days, I am more
willing to get up on the table and dance, whether it’s in one of the 30 bars
or clubs my husband owns or not. But it’s not just a safer environment, it’s
knowing Rande is there at my back at all times. That makes all the
difference, and it’s only happened in the past few years.” So growing older
can be fun? “Oh yes,” she replies.
THE BIG SIX: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Kate Moss
Famously discovered at the age of 14, Moss remains the world’s most beguiling
model 20 years later. The resurgence of her career post cocaine scandal is
still in full swing. She is confirmed for five new campaigns for the new
year. Similarly, her clothing range with Topshop has already sold out in the
UK and has just launched in the Far East, and will help launch the flagship
US Topshop. Purported to be worth more than £40m, she has a daughter, Lila
Grace, 6, by the magazine editor Jefferson Hack, and is currently dating
Jamie Hince, guitarist of the Kills.
Claudia Schiffer
Germany’s most famous beauty began modelling 21 years ago. Her presence in the
Guess jeans ads in the early 1990s catapulted her to fame, then, six years
ago, she married the film producer and director Matthew Vaughn, with whom she
has two children, Caspar and Clementine. They live in Notting Hill and are
worth an estimated £60m. Late last year, Claudia, 38, became Karl
Lagerfeld’s Chanel muse once again. She is now the face of Dolce & Gabbana.
Linda Evangelista
Evangelista, 43, was discovered 30 years ago. Her bob hairstyle and infamous
comment that “We won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” brought
her notoriety and fame throughout her 1990s peak. However, she took a
three-year break from the industry to have her son, Augustin James, now 2.
She has never identified his father. She is now back, fronting Prada’s
autumn/winter 2008 campaign.
Naomi Campbell
The sight of Campbell and black newbie Jourdan Dunn walking down the runway
together at the end of the Issa spring/summer 2009 show seemed to signal a
changing of the guard. Recent years had seen her become a tabloid target for
drug and behaviour scandals and she languished in the doldrums of
high-street campaigns. At the age of 38, however, Campbell has just become
the face of Yves Saint Laurent. Her Fashion for Relief campaign is bringing
her increasing influence across the industry and she now has seven
fragrances under her belt. She is currently dating the Russian entrepreneur
Vladimir Doronin.
Christy Turlington
Those Calvin Klein fragrance ads 21 years ago secured Turlington her iconic
status in the industry. Her face is perhaps most synonymous with the era of
the Big Six. She retired from the runway at the age of 25 and has since
developed her own skin-care line, Sundari, and two clothing lines in
association with Puma, Nuala and Mahanuala. This season, however, Escada
persuaded her to return to high fashion at the age of 39. She is married to
the actor/director Edward Burns, and they have two children, Grace and Finn.
