She’s got drive
Model Hailey Baldwin may court millions of online followers, but away from the screen, she knows exactly what she wants, from spirituality to politics and which boyfriend gets to meet the parents
I’M TRYING MY VERY BEST TO KEEP HAILEY BALDWIN’S ATTENTION, but two things are distracting her right now and both are proving tough competition. One is her iPhone, which (thanks to her 10 million Instagram followers) has become part of her anatomy, a natural extension of her balletic limbs. The other is far more exciting: her new love interest – ‘He’s not my boyfriend yet. Technically, I’m single’ – is sitting on a table behind us. I know it’s not him she’s WhatsApping; he’s got enough on his plate. He’s meeting her parents for the first time and it’s making Hailey jittery. Yes, YouTube megastar Cameron Dallas, whose every move is charted by his 30 million social media fans, is sitting in a corner of a Brooklyn restaurant, schmoozing with Hailey’s parents: actor Stephen Baldwin and graphic designer Kennya. ‘It makes me so nervous, oh my God. I don’t want my mom to be like, “So…”’ says Hailey, flicking her head like she’s in a Boomerang video between their table and ours.
Despite living on her own in New York for the past three years, working as a model and securing big campaigns with Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and Topshop, 20-year-old Hailey is close to her parents, especially when it comes to relationships. ‘My parents know everything,’ she says. ‘I’ve cried to them and been like, “I don’t understand why he blah blah blah…” And then my mom always says, “You need to show a lot of grace and be patient and forgiving.” And then there’s my dad, who’s like, “You know he’s never going to change.”’ I suddenly feel for Cameron – maybe we should go and save him from an awkward date with the in-laws? But then a ripple of laughter erupts from their table and Hailey whips around again.
JUST LIKE HER FRIENDS and fellow models Kendall and Kylie Jenner have ‘momager’ Kris, I suspect Hailey’s mother, whom she speaks to every day (sometimes more than once), keeps a close watch over her daughter’s fast-paced life. On the day of the ELLE cover shoot, Hailey’s parents have driven an hour and a half into the city from their farm, where they have three dogs – one of which is an overweight corgi they call Kim Kardashian – to see their youngest daughter. (Their eldest is 24-year-old Alaia, also a model.) Hailey is in New York for one day before she jets back to Los Angeles, where she’s filming a TV series called Drop The Mic, a celebrity rapbattle show produced by The Late, Late Show host James Corden. This is the only chance for Cameron to meet her parents and I feel strangely honoured to be literally caught in the middle of a Baldwin family drama.
I get the sense that Hailey’s life isn’t short of drama. In part, this is because she shares so much of it on social media, including bleaching her eyebrows for a show styled by LOVE magazine Editor-in-Chief Katie Grand, visiting Disneyland with Ariana Grande and getting carried down the street on Jaden Smith’s shoulders. When she was recently spotted flashing an engagement ring on Instagram, the internet exploded with rumours that she was engaged. It turns out it was Chrissy Teigen’s ring, given to her by her husband John Legend, and Hailey was just trying it on for size over dinner: ‘We were talking about rings and she asked me what I’d want if I got engaged. I have an idea, but I wouldn’t force the boy to let me design it. We were just goofing off and she said I could try hers on, so I did. We posted a photo and I think I wrote, “I said yes!” but it was to Chrissy. People took it too far, as they always do.’
Growing up as part of an A-List Hollywood family – her father starred in The Usual Sus- pects, while her actor uncles are 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin, Gossip Girl’s William ‘Billy’ Baldwin, and film producer Daniel Baldwin – has given Hailey a thick skin, or, as her mum puts it, ‘a strong head’ when it comes to dealing with the ‘alternate facts’, from whether she’s still friends with her ex Justin Bieber (apparently there’s ‘no bad blood’) to her marital status: ‘I don’t care any more. People make up the craziest things regardless. The ones that always make me laugh are “She’s pregnant”, and I’m like, “With whose baby?”’
Hailey spent her summers training at the American Ballet Theatre in New York City and was set to become a dancer with the Miami City Ballet until an injury forced her to pull out. At 16, she was scouted by a modelling agency. Last year, she signed to IMG Models, which also represents Gigi and Bella Hadid, and Ashley Graham.
Her upbringing, and the constant travelling for modelling jobs, from shoots in China to Copenhagen’s Christiania, has also given Hailey a maturity that belies her age. ‘People always think I’m older, so turning 20 finally allowed me to be free of being a teenager. I think it has to do with the way I carry myself,’ she says. In her friendship group, which includes the Jenner and Hadid sisters, she’s known for keeping herbal remedies in her handbag in case someone’s not feeling well: ‘I’m the “mom”. I like taking care of people, I like nurturing people.’ And there’s more than one ‘mom’ in the group: ‘We sometimes call Kendall [Jenner] “Mamma Kens” because she’s very rational. She has a good head on her shoulders and she’s a straight thinker.’ HAILEY MIGHT HAVE TO SHARE THE MOM ROLE, but she tells me she is definitely ‘the brainy one’: ‘I’m kind of like an encyclopedia. I’m a little nerdy, to be honest,’ she says. Although she’s undoubtedly a firm fixture in the cool crowd, she’s not afraid to stand up for what she believes in, particularly when it comes to religion. As a Christian, Hailey goes to church every Sunday when she’s in New York, and when she’s travelling she tunes in to 30-minute sermons on her phone. Before she walks in a show, she repeats the Bible verse: ‘I can do all this through [Christ], who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13). She tells me: ‘I quote the Bible all the time. I take it into my everyday life, I’m quite serious about it.’ I wonder whether she ever faces criticism when her job as a model involves so much flaunting and skin baring, but she remains headstrong: ‘It’s not funny to me when people joke about it; I actually find it quite offensive. It’s something that’s really important to me and I’ve seen it change a lot of people’s
lives. It certainly did in my family [her father Stephen became a born-again fundamentalist after September 11]. It’s something I plan to stick to for the rest of my life – raise my kids that way, marry someone who believes in the same things. It’s important to me.’ It’s also what keeps her grounded while doing a job that means she often doesn’t know where she’s going to be from month to month: ‘Spirituality is a good way of being able to always be connected with something that’s bigger than you. It’s an anchor.’
I’M STARTING TO SEE FLASHES of strongheaded Hailey. I want to know more, so I ask her about politics. While her uncle Alec has been impersonating US President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live to rapturous applause, her father Stephen is a Trump supporter and recently announced plans to start a Republican-leaning YouTube channel to counter liberal accounts started by young people: ‘I’ve differed with my dad on pretty much everything in politics, especially lately, but I’m 100% my own person.’ Does it ever cause tension in the family? ‘It is what it is. They’re my family at the end of the day. I love them to death, but it’s never going to permanently change anything for me. I’ve always had my own thoughts about politics.’ I ask whether she thinks of herself as liberal-minded? ‘I don’t know if I would necessarily label myself as one thing. I know what’s right. I know when I see our nation being destroyed because of poor decisions [made] on other people’s part. We’re in a horrible time in our country and it’s sad, but I think the one positive that’s come out of this is people coming together across the world, standing united – that’s awesome. You have to try your best to see the positive in all the dark stuff that’s going on. That’s what I try to do.’
And then, just when I think I have her full attention, she turns around again to check on Cameron: ‘Oh my God!’ I try to win her back by assuring her that they’re all still there – they’ve even ordered food – but if it’s not Cameron she’s checking on, it’s her phone, which is constantly by her side. At one point, she apologises: ‘I’m just texting my doctor.’ I tempt her back into conversing with me by asking about people who label her an ‘Insta model’, implying that her career and money have been made on social media. When a magazine featured her on the cover alongside the words ‘Insta Star’, she was so upset she cried: ‘It’s not fair, because I work my ass off to make what I have and to prove that this is what I want to do. I want to be a model. I don’t want to be an Insta model, nor am I an Insta model. I don’t think I would be where I am if people didn’t see something in me.’ And it’s true: Hailey takes an amazing picture, her ballet-trained body moves effortlessly in front of the camera and her pout cuts through the lens, sending her cheekbones skyward.
But she also can’t deny that social media and modelling are becoming more intertwined: ‘I put all my modelling [photos] on my Instagram because I’m showing it to people. It’s not about me getting paid to model for things on Instagram – of course, sometimes we do get paid for things we do for Instagram and Twitter – but there is still a line of calling someone an Insta model or an Insta star. Don’t ever call me that because it really hurts my feelings and it’s disrespectful.’
I PROMISE I WON’T CALL HER AN INSTA STAR. I wonder whether it’s not just the label that makes her anxious, but the act of constantly being on her phone? Last Christmas, she had a complete digital detox and shut down her Instagram account for four weeks: ‘I just needed a break. There were a lot of things happening for me personally at that time and I was kind of depressed. I totally understand when people say they need time to themselves. It made me realise that.’ She now has little tricks in place to stop her obsessing over her phone: ‘I’ll leave it in the car when I go to eat or I’ll leave it somewhere so I’m not checking it every two seconds,’ she says. But not having her phone by her makes her feel ‘squirly’. I must look confused, because she clarifies, ‘Like you want to keep looking and checking.’
It’s not a word I’ve heard before, but I like the sound of ‘squirly’. It sums up my hour spent talking to Hailey. As she rushes out of the door en route to the airport, with Cameron Dallas in tow (he survived the meeting of the parents), I get the impression she’s constantly in a bit of a squirl, albeit one she’s in surprising control of.