Exclusive: Cindy Crawford opens up about the ‘new chapter’ in her personal life as she turns 60 – see details.

When Cindy Crawford hit the catwalk in the Eighties, she didn’t think her modelling career would extend beyond her 25th birthday. How wrong she was! The original supermodel turns 60 this week and continues to break down boundaries as one of the most influential women in the business.

With her gorgeous, voluminous hair and signature facial mole, she has adorned the covers of more than a thousand magazines, has become a fashion muse and an MTV pop icon and was one of the first influencers to recognise her worth and cash in on it, making hundreds of millions of dollars through her own businesses and paving the way for the next generation of models, including her mini-me daughter, Kaia.

As she approaches her landmark birthday, Cindy not only looks better than ever (something she puts down to regular lymphatic drainage, infrared saunas, gua sha facials and Onda Pro contouring treatments), but says she feels it, too.

With age has come an inner peace as finally she has shaken off the deep-rooted insecurities that went with spending a lifetime in front of a camera, a new-found self-acceptance, for which she thanks Rande Gerber, her husband of 27 years and father of their children, Kaia, 24, and Presley, 26.

“As a model, it’s very confusing when you are being held up as a beauty ideal and in your personal life you sometimes don’t feel you match up to that. My husband hates make-up, so for me getting older he has really helped me to realise that I don’t need that to be ‘Cindy Crawford’. I feel there is the professional Cindy, and I work for her, but there is also the woman Cindy.

“As a young model, you would slink in with a pimple or eye bags and for two hours would sit in the chair with all these incredible people who not only put on your hair and make-up but built your self-esteem. It’s the best part.

“I loved it as a young mum – it felt like a vacation to go to work – but it did pay a little price on me as a woman that without it I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t Cindy Crawford. I needed that to be Cindy Crawford.”

She is keen to teach Kaia, already a sought-after model and actress, to have the confidence not to feel the same emotions. “As a mother, for me, for my daughter, [the question is] how do you help them to see that they don’t have to sacrifice to be beautiful and love their own bodies?”

Breaking into the industry

She didn’t always plan to become a model. As a teenager, Cynthia Ann Crawford of DeKalb, Illinois, dreamt of becoming a nuclear physicist or the first woman president. Indeed, the daughter of Daniel (also known as John), an electrician, and Jennifer was a straight-A student, but her path was set when a local photographer encouraged her to try modelling in nearby Chicago. At 17, Cindy, the second of four children (her brother Jeffery died of leukaemia when he was three, something that has always influenced her philanthropic work), won the Elite Look of the Year modelling contest. Though she earned a university scholarship to study chemical engineering, she dropped out after one semester to move to New York. In 1986 she signed with Elite  modelling agency in New York and quickly landed her first cover of Vogue magazine. 

“For me, my first Vogue cover was one step,” Cindy reflects. “After [posing naked in] Playboy [in 1988], I got male fans, which then got me MTV and Pepsi, because certain clients wanted not just the fashion [faces] that only women liked.”

Even now, male fans will turn up to her events with Playboy posters for her to sign. “At the time I wasn’t worried about what my future kids thought – I was worried about my dad and breaking the news to him,” she laughs.

In 1990 she posed on the cover of British Vogue alongside Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Naomi Campbell. All the models appeared in the music video later that year for George Michael’s hit Freedom! ’90.

Sports Illustrated

Cindy’s entrepreneurial instincts were sparked during a swimwear shoot with Sports Illustrated magazine in 1988. “My first Sports Illustrated cover was not a good experience. Back then, you had to do your own hair and make-up and it was in Thailand, so it was 120 degrees. I had rub burns on my legs from pulling swimsuits on and off all day. Then [the stylist] put a turban on me and I said: ‘No, I don’t think turbans are very sexy.’ She did not like that and I ended up like a postage-stamp-size picture [in the magazine]. But it ended up being an incredible thing because then I started doing my own calendar.”

Released for 1990, Cindy’s calendar was an immediate hit. 

Allowing fans to buy into the Cindy Crawford brand wasn’t merely groundbreaking, it became a successful business model to which she returned constantly. In 1992 she released the fitness video Cindy Crawford: Shape Your Body Workout, which sold more than five million copies. After Revlon, the make-up giant, dropped her from an 11-year campaign in 2000, when she was 34, she collaborated with the French cosmetics specialist Jean-Louis Sebagh to launch Meaningful Beauty, cosmetics designed specifically for mature skin, in 2004. Last year her whole family teamed up with the Californian sportswear brand Vuori as investors and ambassadors. 

Family

It was a treat for the devoted mum to spend time with her children, who have now moved out of the family beach home in Malibu. 

“Family is everything,” Cindy says of the life she has created with businessman Rande, her second husband (she was married to Richard Gere between 1991 and 1995 and began dating Rande after the break-up).

When they were younger, Kaia recalls how Cindy would juggle her demanding, global career with Sunday pizza nights. “My mum is my inspiration,” the young model says whenever she is asked about her mother. 

“Travelling is the best and the worst part of the modelling industry,” Cindy says. “You get to see the whole world, but it means you are not home with your family a lot.”

She did it so well, however, that Presley, who is also a model, once told his teachers that his mother didn’t work. “I thought: ‘Wow! That means I must be doing a great job.’ He didn’t notice my absence.”

As Cindy and Rande – who owns the tequila company Casamigos with his best friend, George Clooney – began navigating life without children, they bought a holiday home in Palm Springs after falling in love with the area on a trip to Coachella with their children.

“We’re empty-nesters now, so we’re trying to figure out what our next chapter is,” Cindy has said. “Our house [in Malibu] is such a family house that my husband and I both rattle around in it. I always say the ghosts of the kids are everywhere. I miss them more when I’m in that house because I walk by their childhood bedrooms and all the memories come back.”

With more time on her hands, she has taken up new hobbies, such as Mahjong, an ancient Chinese tile-based game, and golf with Rande. “I wouldn’t call myself a golfer,” she laughs. “Sometimes I just go out and ride along with my husband.” 

Next steps

As she looks ahead to the next decade of her life, she says she is ready for new adventures. “I’m not trying to show up like the hot 25-year-old at the party,” she said recently. “Instead, I try to embrace whatever stage I’m in. 

“Would I just ride off into the sunset and say ‘I’m going to let them remember me at 25’? There is that temptation. But then I’d be complicit in telling women that after a certain age we don’t deserve to be seen. I don’t want to do that. It’s my responsibility to show up.”

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