Gigi's Space Odyssey

Hell-bent on reaching for the stars, one of the most famous faces on the planet blasts off into the cosmos, with a little help from NASA.

- Josh Duboff

“My boyfriend’s really into aliens,” Gigi Hadid tells me in a conference room at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida—a hairstylist, a manicurist, and a makeup artist tending to her like blue jays fluttering around a cartoon princess. It’s barely 7 a.m., and she’s running on four hours’ sleep, having flown in from Paris the night before. She’s wearing leather pants and a neon-orange long-sleeved tee emblazoned with lyrics from the latest single by said boyfriend, former One Direction member Zayn Malik. Hadid, 22, is perhaps the most famous model in the world. According to Forbes, she earned $9 million in 2016; she has more than 33 million followers on Instagram; and last year she was named International Model of the Year by the British Fashion Council. Having conquered runways, magazine covers, and print campaigns, Hadid is now designing as well, launching two capsule collections with Tommy Hilfiger and a boot collaboration with Stuart Weitzman.

At five foot 10 with cascading dirty-blonde hair, Hadid, the California-born and -bred daughter of a former model and a real estate developer, seems to have been predestined to become what she is today. Yet, despite all that, her presence off-camera is decidedly low-key. Like any other millennial, she spends a lot of time scrolling blithely on her phone, dipping in and out of various apps and group texts. She’ll also squeal about her favorite Netflix series (Abstract: The Art of Design), tell you what she likes to cook (banana bread, pesto pasta), and casually divulge during a conversation about space that her boyfriend believes in aliens—and that she does too.