KAIA GERBER TAKES A BREATH

She made her runway DEBUT A 16 NOW, AT 21. THE SUPERMODEL IS ENTERING A NEW CHAPTER, COMPLETE WITH A BUDDING ACTING CAREER AND A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE.

- Véronique Hyland

KAIA GERBER swears she’s a small-town girl at heart. Sure, the town happens to be Malibu, the fertile ground that also brought us the Hadids. “When I say it’s a small town, people laugh,” Gerber says, “but it really did feel like that. Same kids from preschool till you graduate. So it really expanded my world by an infinite amount.”

“It,” if you somehow don’t know by now, is modeling, which served as a kind of turbo exchange program for Gerber, rocketing her onto runways in all the major fashion capitals. It’s a far cry from her reality today, which is a pure portrait of domestic bliss. Ensconced in an oversize beige sweater, a dog by her side, she’s cocooned in her L.A. living room. Her supermodel mother, Cindy Crawford, is downstairs watching TV. Imagine the Cleavers, if they all happened to be stunningly beautiful.

I tell her I interviewed Crawford years ago at a restaurant and still think about the collective aftershock when she walked in. “Yeah, the sea parts,” Gerber says knowingly. “Especially when I started modeling, everyone would be like, ‘Oh my God, your mom is so iconic,’ and I’d be like, ‘She’s my mom.’”