Kaia Gerber has big Choos to fill
KAIA GERBER made her professional modelling debut at the tender age of 10. ‘It was for Versace Kids, and I loved it, but I had no idea what I was doing,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t even realise it was a job. I was like, “This is work?”’ By 16, she was walking the runway for the likes of Prada, Chanel, Versace, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang, and landed the cover of Vogue Paris. At just 17, she won the coveted Model of the Year award at the 2018 Fashion Awards. ‘I was quite worried, because I thought, “Oh my God, what do I do now?”’ she confesses. At 18, she is now indisputably the model of the moment, both on the catwalk – closing couture shows – and off it, with over
5.3 million followers on Instagram. As of last week, she also has her own four-piece capsule collection with Jimmy Choo. ‘I was shocked that they cared about my opinion, but they let me be a really big part of the collaboration process and they were really open to my ideas,’ she says of her collection with the brand’s long-time creative director, Sandra Choi.
The daughter of 54-year-old supermodel Cindy Crawford and model-turnedentrepreneur Rande Gerber, as genetic lotteries go, Kaia won the Thunderball rollover. And with a career ascent that has been rapid and prolific these past few years, I’ve been fully aware of both her beauty, beaming down at me from billboards, and her almost unnerving likeness to her mother. But today, sitting opposite me on a sofa in Jimmy Choo’s Soho store in New York – the interior of which is plastered in images of Kaia wearing her own embossed snake Cruz combat boot – in a grey, backless Alexander Mcqueen trouser suit, she looks so otherworldly that I’m finding it tricky to fully concentrate on my questions. As one of my friends texts me afterwards, ‘Does she look like she’s been airbrushed IRL?’ And, YES, I reply, yes she does. Without wanting to labour the point, I’ve never seen another human being with features and skin quite so extraordinarily flawless.
But, as I quickly discover, she’s far more than a pretty face. Though Kaia left formal education at 16 to focus on modelling, ‘I refused to let my education stop here.’ Now, she’s an enthusiastic reader. ‘I just finished Normal People by Sally Rooney – it’s incredible!’ she cries. ‘And I just read Norwegian Wood; I’d never read any Haruki Murakami before and I am very into that now. And I loved The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa.’ Though Kaia’s home is officially still LA, where she grew up, she is based part-time in New York and travelling almost constantly for work.
‘So my mum and I will read the same books at the same time,’ she says. ‘We read A Little Life [by Hanya Yanagihara] together. We both had that week of grieving afterwards, but at least we were having it at the same time and could talk about it.’
Her mother has also been a strong source of inspiration when it comes to the Jimmy Choo and KAIA collection, of which 15% of all sales are donated to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which specialises in treating childhood cancers. ‘My mother lost her younger brother, Jeff, to leukaemia when she was four years old, and she’s always been very closely involved with supporting St Jude’s. To do something of my own with them is very special.’
‘Modelling gives you a platform and opens doors,’ she continues. ‘I’m just discovering that it’s up to you what you do with that platform.’
From £450 at selected Jimmy Choo stores globally and at jimmychoo.com