Beautiful and perfect
The Crawford/Gerber family of supermodels is everywhere these days
PARIS — Maybe the gods were jealous.
A storm drenched the courtyard of the Hotel de Sully, a 17thcentury mansion in the Marias district, just as Cindy Crawford; her 16-year-old daughter, Kaia Gerber; and 18-year-old son, Presley Gerber, took the stage at a Paris Fashion Week party in September.
As the new brand ambassadors for Omega, the family was as perfectly sculpted as the allegorical figures of the four seasons, carved into the building’s facade. But there was some confusion when, after it was Kaia Gerber’s turn to speak (“Omega always takes such great care of our family,” she said), the emcee tried to wrap up the presentation prematurely.
“There’s a fourth member of the Gerber family,” said Kaia Gerber, who had emerged as one of the world’s most in-demand celebrity models, ever since she made her runway debut in New York a few weeks earlier. Oh, right. Standing alongside, but almost lost amid their sheer wattage, was the family’s 55-year-old patriarch, Rande Gerber. Tall, a fair-complexion and background-handsome (think Kevin Costner in “The Bodyguard”), he exuded the patience of a man who was used to being overlooked.
Rande Gerber, a former model, took the mic and, with the modesty of a supporting player, thanked Omega for employing his family. “Because now I can retire,” he said, to polite chuckles. “They’re all working.”
In fact he may have been one of the richest men at the party.
Casamigos, a tequila brand that he created with actor George Clooney, was acquired last June by Diageo, the multinational beverage giant, for $700 million to $1 billion. The deal was a new high in Gerber’s successful career as a nightlife entrepreneur, which began in the 1990s with a string of hip bars, with the Morgans Hotel Group, that defined an era.
Now, more than 25 years later, this slacker-perfectionist not
only finds himself a part-billionaire, but he also enjoys newfound cultural currency as the husband and father in a genetically blessed family of supermodels who can be seen everywhere these days, including a Pepsi commercial to be aired during the Super Bowl (starring his wife and son), the current cover of French Vogue (daughter), the global advertising campaign for Calvin Klein Jeans (daughter and son) and Omega watches (entire family).
“He comes off as very laid-back and he is, but he’s also constantly thinking, and he notices ev-erything,” said Crawford, 51. “He always has his finger on the pulse of what the next cool thing is going to be.”
Not that you can tell from his California drawl, but Rande Gerber was born in Queens and grew up on the south shore of Long Island.
Scouted by Ford Models on the streets of Manhattan when he was 16, he alternated between classes at the University of Arizona, where he studied television production, and flying internationally for shoots with quintessential ’80s brands like Sassoon and Benetton.
In those vintage modelling shots, Gerber epitomized the male beauty ideals of the era: a blow-dried beefcake, lounging on the range in double denim, or sweatlessly working out in scoop-cut tank tops.
His life-changing break came after college, after he had retired from modelling and was brokering commercial real estate in Manhattan as an agent for Edward S. Gordon in the early 1990s. One of his clients, hotelier Ian Schrager, asked him to find a bar tenant for the Paramount Hotel in Times Square, which would become one of the prototypes of the designer boutique hotel.
After passing on several options, Schrager proposed an unusual idea. “One day he said to me, ‘Why don’t you just do it yourself ?’” Gerber said.
The Whiskey opened in 1991 and was an instant hit, drawing celebrities and offering a sophisticated alternative to the throbbing mega-clubs of the time, with its Philippe Starck design, highpriced cocktails, mood lighting and ambient music.
“Rande had a graciousness about him, and he was graceful as a person,” Schrager said. “He was a bright, articulate guy, sociable, likable. And, running a bar — it’s not rocket science. I thought he could do it.”
Gerber replicated the formula (which he described as “candlelit; the right incense burning, the right music playing”) for a string of Schrager’s other hotels, including the Morgans Hotel on Madison Avenue and the Mondrian in Los Angeles.
His hospitality company, the Gerber Group, which he operated in partnership with his brothers, Scott and Kenny, would open 37 bars and restaurants in 17 cities, including a network of Whiskey spinoffs with W Hotels, as well as a mini-chain of cafés inside Emporio Armani stores.
The sleek esthetic of low-slung sofas, clever design and mellow electronica music would soon become a ’90s cultural cliché, replicated by many budget imitators with “Wayne’s World” thrift-store couches and fire-hazard candelabra right out of “The Phantom of the Opera.”
Also on fire during this period: Gerber and Crawford. The two met in 1991 at the wedding of Michael Gruber, Crawford’s agent at the time and a childhood friend of Gerber’s. “She was dating Richard,” Gerber said, referring to Richard Gere, Crawford’s former husband.
They stayed in touch over the phone and reconnected in Los Angeles in 1995, a few months after Crawford and Gere got divorced. “They split up and we connected,” Gerber said. The couple married in 1998.
Also in their social orbit was Clooney, who patronized Gerber’s bars and was also a client of Gruber’s. Clooney and Gerber would go on to build neighbouring beach houses in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
That’s also how the tequila got started, at least according to the official Casamigos story: It was a fluke created by two buddies who enjoyed drinking tequila in their “house of friends.” (Michael Meldman, the developer for their beach houses, later joined as the third partner.) ( Slowly, their “hobby” took off, and paid off handsomely when Diageo decided it want in. The deal to buy Casamigos included $700 million in cash, plus as much as another $300 million depending on sales.
Gerber plans to funnel some of those riches into a startup incubator, based in the Malibu celebrity hang pad that serves as his office. He rattled off some of the pitches he has received in his new role as a venture capitalist: “different app ideas, a coffee company, a milk delivery company.”
Schrager said of his former protégé: “He’s a model for ‘hard work pays off.’ He was a kid from Queens, and he went on to marry a beautiful woman and have a beautiful family and great success. And it’s always nice when a nice guy does good.”
In the Gerber household, Sunday night home-baked pizza is a family tradition, as is jumping into the pool whenever one of the brood comes home from a farflung assignment.
But such homey get-togethers are becoming harder to organize now that family members have their own work schedules and their own teams of publicists, stylists, managers and other gatekeepers whose job is to control and monetize their very lucrative time.
“Those kids have every reason in the world to be screwed up,” said Clooney, who has known them since birth. “They’re beautiful kids, and they were born into fame and wealth. But Cindy and Rande were very aware of raising kids in Malibu and how that can go horribly wrong. So they’ve been really hands-on parents.”
The Gerbers can sound a little corny, and that’s because they are.
Nothing confounds a celebrity profile like a happy family. They are four golden figures that, even viewed up close, seem to be constantly dissolving into a Malibu sunset.