Welcome to the first edition of The Modern Model! This is where you’ll find everything fashion— from up and coming designers/brands to new releases, fabrics to color theory, even to the models themselves. On weeks where there is news in the fashion industry, there will be a short blurb briefing the news, and on weeks that there are not, there will be the basics— information on the fashion industry. And with that I’m happy to announce that the first topic of discussion is Miss Jelena Hadid, who goes by Gigi.

  Now, you can’t talk fashion— especially with the title The Modern Model— without Gigi Hadid being part of the conversation. If you know anything about fashion or modeling you know the amount of weight the Hadid name pulls. Both Gigi and her younger sister, Bella, and more recently, their younger brother Anwar, run a huge part of the industry, all of them having been involved since their young toddler years. But let’s focus on Gigi.

  She was born Jelena “Gigi” Hadid on April 23, 1995– making her twenty-seven currently— to real estate developer and former Olympian, Mohamed Hadid, and (then) model, Yolanda Hadid. Their family gained popularity through their father’s business in luxury building production in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, and even more so on the reality tv show their mother starred in, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Through this, their name was put on the map, only ensuring fame.

  Gigi was two years old when she signed with Baby Guess and began modeling for them, though eventually stopping to focus on schoolwork, but then again returning at age 16 when she signed with IMG models. She walked her first runway with Desigual for their fall 2014 collection during New York Fashion Week at only eighteen years old. Since then, she’s walked in over 70 shows— with the honor of opening and closing a multitude of them—, has landed 35 international Vogue covers, and has attended the Met Gala a total of six times; an incredible feat for the twenty-seven year old. She’s also been invited to guest judge on the popular tv series, Project Runway, which focuses on challenges for amateur designers hoping to get their name out there.

  One particular walk for Jacquemus in the FW 2020/21 show grew famous as soon as it hit the media. Well over a year later, she explains that her “iconic” hair flip was nothing more than to move her hair to show off the backless design of the dress, openly displaying her confusion for the concentrated popularity that arose from it. And on the year anniversary of the aforementioned walk, she revealed that she had already discovered her pregnancy at that time. Yup, Gigi Hadid is a mom, currently co-parenting with her on-again off-again partner, musician Zayn Malik. Their beautiful baby girl was born in September of 2020, the news of her pregnancy being leaked by a family member before the, then, couple had a chance to announce it. During quarantine she showed little of her pregnancy, choosing to focus more on the more pressing international issues at hand, but once went live to promote the second edition of her magazine issue, Gigi Journal, with V Magazine where her bump was as clear as day. Gigi has chosen to keep her daughter completely out of the public eye, sharing very few details other than her name, until she is able to make the decision herself something no one was expecting, but something she’s been able to accomplish thus far.

  Now with the more recent basics of Gigi Hadid out of the way, I’d like to announce that the next issue of the column will be focused around Guest In Residence, a new clothing brand she founded which released their first line in September of 2022. I don’t want to give much away, so I think I’ll conclude on the topic here, waiting to go over the brand until the next issue. Until then, thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoyed!