151because that girl had gone,” she says.
Understandably, Piper still has
difficult moments, which, even as
she describes them matter-of-factly,
are hard to fathom. “You know why
I now hate bright blonde?” she offers
at one point. “Because it attracts so
much attention. Out on the street
men see me from the back with a
good body and blonde hair, and they
whistle and call, and if I turn they
insult me.”
Nevertheless, Piper says her recov-
ery forced her to reevaluate her pri-
orities. In the years since the attack,
she has transformed from someone
who, she says, was “presenting on rou-
lette channels at three o’clock in the
morning and thinking, ‘Wow, I’m
clearing £ 500 a month to pay the
rent,’” to a woman who is on a mission
to make her every action count.
Piper credits her husband, Richard
Sutton, a carpenter whom she met
in 2012 and married in 2015 , and
with whom she has two daughters,
six-year-old Belle and two-year-old
Penelope, with helping her to learn
to trust other people again. “I was
invited to a Coldplay concert by Chris
Martin, who I knew via a mutual friend,
Simon Cowell. I took Richie along
without mentioning who had invited
me. After the show Chris invited me
to talk to him in his dressing room. So
there we were chatting and Gwyneth
[Paltrow] wandered in, and Chris just
asked if this was my boyfriend. So we
both just said, ‘Er, dunno, maybe...’
Later that night, Richie said, ‘So I guess
we are a couple!’ They put us together,”
Piper recalls. “Soon after that I needed
to have more complicated operations,
and I suggested we wait a few months
until we meet again. He said ‘No,’ and
was by my side throughout. He saw
me as myself and loved me.”
While Piper’s journey has been
anything but easy, her commitment
to using her experience to bene-
fit other people is as strong as ever.
“In the early days, people always
asked me, ‘What now?’ I didn’t
fit in. I remember thinking, ‘Well,
if I must accept that I have perma-
nently changed, then it’s the indus-
try I must now change.’ At times
I struggle to relate to women my age,
as I’ve experienced so much pain,
joy, and euphoria in these short 36
years. But it’s given me an unshak-
able confidence, the knowledge
that whatever happens in life I have
the ability to recover from it.” ■GIGI
HADID
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 114PATTI
SMITH
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 132ANTONI POROWSKI: Please
explain how/when you discovered
french fries with mashed potatoes as
a thing to eat.
GIGI: I don’t remember exactly what
night this was, but it was probably
after a few passion fruit martinis at Le
Chalet at L’Avenue at Saks, which
makes my favorite mashed potatoes
on the planet. We must have run out
of ketchup, so I dipped the fries in
the mashed potatoes—and eureka!BLAKE LIVELY: What inspired
you to make your own chairs by hand?
GIGI: When I’m spending time on
the farm, I find it fun to try something
new and see if I can pull it off. It’s
liberating to just create without the
end goal of it being necessary to fin-
ish. The chair idea came from that.
I wanted to see if I could build a
wood frame first and then pour resin
into it and make a clear chair. I built
the wood part and then through the
next step learned that you can only
dry resin in small layers, and the more
layers I added, the more it was clear
that I didn’t make my frame tightly
sealed enough. Failed miserably. I
ended up giving up on the big one
and made a small-scale version, which
worked a lot better! I like the “Try
and fail and try again” method. It
keeps it fun and interesting for me,
and even through failures you can
learn so much.KACEY MUSGRAVES: What’s
one thing you haven’t done yet that
you’re dying to do? What are you
most scared of?
GIGI: I skydived once, in Dubai. The
actual jumping out of the plane is scar-
ier than the falling. The view is the best
part. I always told myself that if I did
it again, I’d do it in a different place
every time, because that perspective is
one of a kind and unforgettable. It still
terrifies me, which is why I want to
do it again. It’s exhilarating, and I’m
more of a sports-based risk-taker than
anything else in life. I’d love to visit
New Zealand or Iceland one day, so
maybe I’ll do it in one of those places—
if they allow skydiving. ■kind enough to make me two beauti-
ful black jackets that I perform in. He’s
a very good friend. But I tend to wear
the same things over and over. I don’t
really dress up. If I have to go to a
movie premiere or something, I usu-
ally just wear one of those nice jackets
so I look presentable.
Now I’ll mostly buy coats and boots.
I have a weakness for coats. Sometimes
I’ll see a coat in a magazine that I really
like and can’t find anywhere. That’s when
I become obsessed. With footwear I like
quality. The one thing I’ll spend money
on is a good pair of boots, because I’ll
wear them forever. I have a beautiful
pair of Chanel combat boots that I’ve
had for seven years. I still wear them all
the time. I have these semi–motorcycle
boots that Jimmy Choo made me that
I wear onstage. I just wear them until
they wear out, and then I’ll get another
pair because I know what I like.
I’m probably not so experimental
these days, but I like to see what every-
body else is doing. I like to see what
Billie Eilish is wearing and what Rihanna
is wearing and what different designers
are doing. I still delight in that. ■