Cindy Crawford: Five decades of flawless style

Before pop princess Taylor Swift even knew what #squadgoals were, Cindy had a squad of her own – the Big Six, a group of models who ruled the fashion world in the Nineties. One of them, Linda Evangelista, remarked that she didn't get out of bed for less than $10,000.
Photo: © Getty Images

The girls featured in George Michael's Freedom! 90 video, and Prince wrote a song about the most famous of them all, called Cindy C, lamenting the time he asked for – and failed – to get an introduction to the supermodel in a nightclub.

In total, Cindy's iconic mole and gazillion-dollar smile have appeared on over 400 magazine covers. But her early life didn’t hint at a gilded future.
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Cindy (pictured far left) was born into a hardworking Midwestern family in DeKalb, Illinois, the second of four children. Her mother worked in a doctor’s office, while her father was a machinist and electrician.
Tragically, in what she has described as "a devastating loss to all of us", her little brother died, aged three, when she was eight and her grief-stricken parents divorced.
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Cindy still managed to be a grade A student and class valedictorian despite the problems at home.
Discovered by a local photographer in her teens, she realised that modelling was a better way to make some extra money than her regular summer job, tending cornfields.
She dropped out of a chemical engineering course at university to move to New York and the rest is fashion history.
(Cindy pictured with highschool friend Chris Collin)
Photo: © Instagram

Part of the secret of her success comes back to that solid Midwestern upbringing and the sense of responsibility she learned, earning pocket money from babysitting and cleaning houses.
"When I started modelling I treated it like a job not a lifestyle" she said in an interview in 2012, talking about why she never had a reputation as a party girl. "I was serious about that. Claudia Schiffer was like that too".
(Cindy pictured with her mother, Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf)
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The darling of designers like Calvin Klein and Versace, she showed tremendous versatility, becoming one of the first in the business to turn herself into not simply a name, but a brand – a template Heidi Klum, Gisele Bundchen and many others have followed.
Cindy made it big in TV, hosting a show called House of Style, and brought out a best-selling exercise video. She also has a successful home furnishings range and a skincare line with her dermatologist, called Meaningful Beauty.
Photo: © Rex

Of course, it's not just Cindy's career that has brought her fame: her two marriages to charismatic men have been noteworthy too. The first, from 1991 to 1995, was to Richard Gere, fresh from the success of Pretty Woman and then the biggest movie star of the day.
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Then in 1998, she wed Rande Gerber, a former model who has poured his energy into a business empire that includes nightclubs and the tequila brand Casamigos, which he launched with his best friend George Clooney.
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These days, one of the many striking things about Cindy is just how comfortable in her own skin she seems, and much of that is down to the enduring love she shares with Rande.
Photo: © Instagram

When their children were born, her husband showed his mettle as a father too. "Rande is an incredible daddy as I knew he would be," Cindy said as they exclusively presented their son Presley in the pages of HELLO!"We've both been home with the baby, so Presley is bonded equally with both of us."
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Together they have become one of the most alluring couples of the celebrity age, their life seemingly an endless whirl of Instagram photo ops, played out in luxury homes from Cabo San Lucas, where George and his wife Amal are neighbours, to lakeside Ontario in Canada.
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Their two youngsters are following in their parents' genetically blessed footsteps. Presley, 16, who has inherited Cindy's trademark mole, and his sister Kaia, 14, have already landed several modelling gigs between them. Kaia has been signed by Alexander Wang and Donatella Versace, who says: "Like her mother she has a special gift. The camera really, really loves her."
Photo: © Instagram

Now, at 50, Cindy has been inspiring women not just with her image, but also with her positive, dynamic approach to life, for three decades. And typically, she approaches aging with the same attitude. Rather than dreading the passing of time, she is grateful for all it has brought her, saying she is full of "gratitude for all that I do have: a happy marriage, a relationship with my kids that fills me with pride and work that continues to inspire me".
(Photo caption: "@RandeGerber whisking me away for my birthday weekend! ✈️")
Photo: © Instagram