Making of the Hadids
Surprising rise of supermodels
G IGI Hadid is on the set of a photo shoot for Guess, sipping a bubble tea her mom, Yolanda Foster, has placed in her hand, as a stylist twists Hadid’s sun-kissed tresses with a curling iron. The year is 2012, and 17-year-old Hadid has just started appearing on her mother’s Bravo reality show, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”. During the shoot, Foster tells the directors what her daughter should wear and guides her poses. At one point, Foster — a tall, Dutch beauty and former model herself — orders the photographers to stop shooting because her daughter’s eyes look “funny.” Meanwhile, Foster’s younger daughter, Bella Hadid — the elusive, awkward Nicky Hilton to Gigi’s Paris — is being shielded from the spotlight. When bloggers ask Foster why Bella had never been featured on her reality show or why she isn’t modeling, she says it’s because her younger daughter is shy. Bella, she explains, is focused on school and becoming an Olympic equestrian. Fast-forward to 2016. Not only has Gigi, 21, skyrocketed to fame, so has Bella, 19, and it’s all thanks to their mom’s tireless, often shameless, efforts at promotion. Under Foster’s tutelage, they used their family wealth and savvy to build mammoth social-media followings and parlayed it into modeling careers that turned a mere illusion of fame into the real thing.
NOW the shapely sisters are rocking runways from Rome to Rio, and their faces are plastered on every major fashion magazine across the globe.
It’s clear that 52-year-old Foster has been carefully schooling the girls in elocution, posing — and even diet. In one particularly cringe-worthy tweet, Foster defended her daughter’s decision to eat only one small bite of dessert because she was getting ready for a Sports Illustrated shoot.
“This is why @GiGiHadid choose 2 have a small bite of her cake and I supported her by example #dedicated #committed.”
Foster prides herself on being a helicopter parent who hovers, corrects, cajoles — and even guilt-trips.
Bella has long seemed resistant to modeling. When she was 17, she was arrested for DUI in LA — blowing almost double the legal limit at .14
Foster went bananas. In a blog she wrote as part of her contract with Bravo, she seethed and publicly shamed her daughter, laying the guilt on thick.
“This reckless choice was so shocking and disappointing to me,” Foster wrote on Dec. 10, 2014, complaining that she had to jet in from work in Europe to deal with Bella’s legal problems.
“I raised her as a single mom most of her life, so I immediately started to take it personally, blaming myself and doubting my parenting skills.
“I decided to take her phone away, make her pay for her own lawyer bills from her savings, and we sold her car.”
Foster told viewers Bella had a “heart filled with regret,” adding, “The shame of her actions has been a tough burden for her to bear.”
Soon afterward, a chastened Bella agreed to do what her mother wanted: She hit the catwalk.
THEIR megamillionaire father, Mohamed Hadid, also had a role in Bella’s career. He paid for her to have plastic surgery — a nose job and upper-lip implant, according to reports. It worked like a charm.
Meanwhile, round-faced and athletic, Gigi is no typical “stick model.” She’s not a size zero and was initially rejected by many agencies for being “overweight.”
Despite her size, IMG — one of the
world’s top modeling agencies — has signed her.
Cory Bautista, the director and coowner of New York Model Management, says Gigi was likely hired because the company knew her presence in reality TV would sell products.
“I believe the popularity of her mom being on the show — plus her featuring her on an episode or two of her modeling — helped gain her popularity to what it is now,” he said.
As for Bella, Bautista believes she is piggybacking on her sister’s fame.
“If Bella didn’t know how to model, I’m sure they were given some allowances because Gigi had already paved the way for her sister to come in and go on the same path.”
Now, they’re “social-media supermodels,” Bautista said.
He’s right: Their social-media numbers are massive. Gigi Hadid has a combined following on Instagram and Facebook of 24 million, three times the population of New York City.
Bella, who got a late start, already has 5.6 million watching her on Instagram and Facebook. The sisters are also wildly popular on Snapchat.
Shailah Edmonds, who was a supermodel in the 1980s and ’90s, working with every major designer from Valentino to Versace, agrees with Bautista that the Hadids are receiving contracts not because of their looks, but because of the marketing bonus they bring to brands.
“I don’t think [Gigi is] a real supermodel. Even when I looked at her in the paper, I kind of know it’s her but I have to read her name because she’s just not that special,” said the 25-year industry veteran, who now works as a modeling coach and scout.
“A real supermodel, you know their face as soon as you take one look at them. With her, you’re like, ‘I kind of think it’s her.’ She’s not special at all to me.”
Public-relations and branding expert Kerry O’Grady, who works as a visiting assistant clinical professor for NYU, said, “The more people you have following you and engaging in your brand on social media, the more famous and talented you appear — or seem to be.”
“Gigi and Bella have been in some very significant shows and covers of magazines and endorsements and all these things. The more they post about it on social media, the more it’s perceived that they’re so talented.
“It looks like they’ve been in so many shows, but it’s really just a handful. And the more they post about it, the more it’s perceived that they’re doing a lot more than they actually are.”
CLEARLY the girls’ popularity is encouraging a lot of jealousy.
Stephanie Seymour told Vanity Fair that Gigi and her pal Kendall Jenner, of Kardashian reality-television fame, are merely “bitches of the moment.”
Model and actress Rebecca Romijn voiced similar opinions, telling “Entertainment Tonight” she thought social-media status wasn’t the equivalent of the talent to drive clothing sales. Said Romijn, “No one has proven yet that numbers of followers translates to revenue.”
And models complain the Hadid girls have it much easier than they did.
“They don’t have to work as hard as we did,” Edmonds said. “I just think social media has just made it so easy for them. We really had to make our own way . . . They don’t need to network as hard.”
Whether the critics like Gigi and Bella or not, there’s no denying the Hadids are this year’s It girls.
Foster, of course, says their early success is tremendous.
“It’s a surreal emotion to see not one, but two of your children working in an industry that follows your footsteps,” she blogged in February.
“I could only have dreamed to walk a Chanel show for Karl Lagerfeld, let alone watch my daughters do it 30 years later.”