Gigi Hadid Would Never Pose Naked for Naked's Sake
“My mentality has always been, If I’m not the best at something, then I might as well be the best at something else,” Gigi Hadid tells W magazine. The model, who appears on its September issue, adds, “I realized that I wasn’t going to be an Olympic volleyball player, but I knew I could model at that level.”
The 20-year-old, who was signed to IMG Models at 16, has seemingly reached the ranks of super for which she was striving. Unlike some of her peers, she’s become what writer Lynn Hirschberg calls a “Post It Girl,” the new new-generation of models who are a “potent combination of family lineage, social-media influence, and sex appeal,” counting Karlie Kloss, Kendall Jenner, and Cara Delevingne amongst her counterparts.
Gigi Hadid on the cover of W magazine’s September issue. Photo: Steven Meisel for W magazine
While Hadid’s status is in large part thanks to her privileged upbringing — her mother Yolanda Hadid Foster was a model and stars on The Real Housewives of Beveryly Hills; her father is Mohamed Hadid, a well-known architect and real estate developer; and her stepfather is songwriter and record-producer David Foster — she actually owes a lot of her success to Tom Ford. After graduating from high school, she posed naked for the designer’s Velvet Orchid fragrance campaign. “I’ve never been scared of being naked in pictures, but I wouldn’t do naked for naked’s sake. With Tom, it was an easy decision: When you think of scent, you don’t think of clothes,” Hadid said. “In the beginning, I thought Tom would not want to know my name. But he made a space for me in the high-fashion world. When Tom liked me, other jobs followed.”
Photo: Steven Meisel for W magazine
To be a “Post It Girl” (not to be confused with a Post-It girl), one must also have business-savvy, the ability to recognize that there’s just as much power in posing for Guess as for MaxMara. “My Pirelli calendar is hanging on the wall of my friend’s frat house, and he doesn’t know anything about fashion,” Hadid explained. “That balance is what leads to big campaigns outside of fashion. But I never want to choose one or the other. Both commercial and high fashion are what make my job so interesting.”
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