British Vogue - 10.2019

(Amelia) #1

I


t’s a blazingly hot day in Paris, and inside
the glorious surrounds of Place Vendôme’s
Valentino atelier, Kaia Gerber is slipping
out of her jeans and into a vermilion wool
couture trouser suit. The beret she arrived
wearing (“I’m feeling very French today,” she
giggles) has been replaced by a headpiece that
resembles a Roman helmet dangling with
Komondor pompoms, and a hive of white-
robed seamstresses are positioning an exquisitely
latticed cape upon her shoulders. Suddenly,
there’s a whirr of activity; hundreds of pins are
returned to pouches strung around the workers’
necks as Gerber is swept into the ornately
gilded room next door. Right on cue, “(You
Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” by
Aretha Franklin begins to play, and the sweetly
smiling teenager, who arrived clutching a book
and an iPhone, stands tall and sweeps down
a makeshift runway towards a beaming
Pierpaolo Piccioli. She appears transformed.
At the show three days later, Gerber (who
will have turned 18 by the time you read this)
and 70 women – from 19-year-old Adut Akech
to 75-year-old Lauren Hutton – will wear a
succession of looks celebrating their individual
identities, and receive a standing ovation. Fifty
or so couturiers, who spent thousands of hours
hand-stitching the outfits (Gerber’s alone took
750), walk the finale with them and Pierpaolo.
It is a moment that reduces rows of stony-
faced editors to tears. “It feels like if someone
were to paint a masterpiece, and you were to
carry it around with you,” reflects Kaia. “Or
imagine crawling inside a statue at the Louvre.
I wish everyone could experience it.”
To experience such a moment at any age is
remarkable, to do so at Gerber’s even more
so. Over the past few seasons, the model – a
Vogue cover star, runway fixture and Cindy
Crawford’s daughter – has evolved from a
dirt-biking tomboy into one of fashion’s
international celebrities, with an ability to
conjure ’80s glamour and fresh-faced
innocence that captivates designers from New
York to Paris. “She embodies the idea of the
young generation,” says Piccioli. “She is strong,
but she is also fragile; she is romantic, with

an assertiveness that I like. She is very self-
aware, and she doesn’t try to be someone else.”
Fashion is a curious space to inhabit as a
young woman, and to build your nascent
identity on the world stage is both a thrilling
and terrifying proposition. To walk a Chanel
couture runway, to dress up in a Comme des
Garçons showpiece, to tour the globe with a
relentless schedule of fittings, shows and shoots
is a gruelling sort of glamour. The years most
people spend sneaking into pubs and hurrying
through homework, Gerber has spent bedecked
in feathers or racing back to hotel rooms to
complete online education courses. She’s
already more than the face of a generation,
she dresses one: along with appearing as an
Omega ambassador, she has collaborated with
the brand on a camo-print watch strap; in
2017, she worked with Marc Jacobs to design
her own patchwork, bedazzled iteration of a
Snapshot bag (teenage catnip); and last year
she debuted a capsule collection designed with
the late Karl Lagerfeld (a leather jacket, a little
black dress, a blazer that rips into a crop-top...).
“What’s interesting to me about working with
the designers in a way that models normally
don’t, is being able to see the creative process
that goes on behind the dress, watch or shoes
that you are wearing,” she says. “It gives you
an appreciation for their hard work.”
It’s that same dedication that has coloured
Kaia’s career so far, resulting in an impressive
CV – one that ensured that, before she was
even eligible to vote, she bought her first New
York apartment (and an array of Bed Bath &
Beyond homeware to fill it). Her rarefied world
exists beyond most people’s dreams, but perhaps
what’s most remarkable is how naturally she
navigates and approaches it all without a hint
of entitlement. “It would be crazy not to
appreciate what we are doing,” she explains.
“If I ever find myself in a moment where I am
not fully taking advantage of it, I take a step
back and remember, ‘I’m in Paris.’”
Following the fitting – after Piccioli has
declared her look immaculate, her walk perfect,
everything about her exactly as he’d hoped –
we make our way to lunch in a leafy restaurant

Above: in Vogue,
October 2017.
Below: with
Naomi Campbell,
backstage at Sacai’s
a/w ’19 men’s show

Below, from top: Kaia
winning Model of the Year at
the 2018 British Fashion
Awards; and with her parents,
Rande Gerber and Cindy
Crawford, and brother,
Presley, before the ceremony
BED, BARTHES

& BEYON D


The darling of the runway, Kaia Gerber

describes herself as an “old soul”. Olivia Singer
meets the second-generation supermodel with

a taste for flat-furnishing and philosophy

LACHLAN BAILEY; STEVEN MEISEL; GETTY IMAGES; GORUNWAY; SHUTTERSTOCK


CHANEL COUTURE A/W ’19


VERSACE S/S ’18


CALVIN KLEIN


S/S ’18


10-19-WellKaia-text.indd 190 15/08/2019 09:47

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