Cindy Crawford is on home turf.
The sultry supermodel with the voluptuous figure and the indelible beauty mark has been featured in ads and commercials around the world and on the covers of some 50 major magazines since she left Chicago a year and a half ago to make her fame and fortune in New York.
But right now, she`s back on the local scene for a photo shoot. She`s surrounded by a makeup artist, hairstylist, photographer and writer-some people she`s known since her early days in modeling here, shortly after she was ”discovered” in that fabled cornfield outside De Kalb.
She`s 10 minutes early, her hair is squeaky-clean and falling naturally, she isn`t wearing makeup but she is wearing an ivory Azzedine Alaia sweater and tights exactly the way designer Alaia dreams of seeing his clothes being worn: caressing every perfect curve like a smooth second skin.
She asks if it`s okay for her sister Chris to stick around and watch because Chris hasn`t ever seen her younger sister at work as a professional model.
Punctual. Professional. Nice.
Same old Cindy.
OUT AND AROUND
She has worked in Senegal, Egypt, the Bahamas, Thailand, Hawaii and all over Europe. She has an accountant handling investments and an agent proferring advice about acting. She is buying an apartment in SoHo that will be decorated with modern fireplaces and her favorite antique quilts. And she just broke up with her high-school sweetheart.
Other than that, Cindy Crawford at just-turned-22 basically seems to be the same strikingly beautiful, hard-working model who always was on time and never messed around, didn`t fuss about whether she`d get to wear the designer dress or the budget-floor frock-and hung up the clothes when she was finished with them.
She acts the same way today. No princess syndrome. No I`m-a-model-and-you-a ren`t attitude.
Same old Cindy.
”Well,” she says-but in a long, drawn-out, thoughtful welllll. ”Maybe I`m not quite as wide-eyed as I was when I left,” says the model who made her first appearance recently in Sports Illustrated`s swimsuit issue, is slated for the ”What`s Hot” issue of Rolling Stone later this month and is scheduled for July Playboy`s cover and a 12-page fashion and personality feature by photographer Herb Ritts.
”I don`t feel as though I`ve changed,” Crawford says somewhat hesitantly while switching outfits for the photo shoot. Then, with the thrust of confidence that so often shows through in those Vogue covers photographed by Avedon, she quickly adds, ”But sure I`ve changed. How can anybody not change in a year or two, especially at my age? How can you not help learning? I`ve grown up some, but I would have grown up if I had been home working at a McDonald`s or if I had stayed in Chicago and kept on modeling here.”
She gropes just a second, searching for the right words. ”I don`t know exactly how to put it, but I`m a little more-not hard, no, I don`t think, but wise maybe.
”I`ve learned to stand up for myself.”
SMART, AND POPULAR
”She is street smart,” says Mark Bozek, communications director for WilliWear, who has known her since she arrived in New York through their mutual friend, makeup artist Sonia Kashuk. It was he who hosted a 21st birthday party for Crawford just months after she`d arrived in New York and was delightedly amazed at how many fashion pros turned up to wish her well.
”Cindy is not as naive as she was when she first arrived,” says Bozek.
”What is amazing is how fast everything has happened in her life and how well she has handled herself. She has a terrific reputation; she is so well respected.”
Monique Pillard, president of Elite Model Management, the agency that represents Crawford and one who might be expected to pile on the plaudits, sums up her feelings about Crawford with: ”A gem. She`s a gem.”
But Pillard is talking about Crawford the person, not just the salable product: ”She has a terribly busy schedule, you know? She is one of the busiest, flying here and there. She is the girl that`s happening now. And yet she finds time to bake a cheesecake for us here at the office. What does that say about her? Finding time to think of us. So incredible! She is wonderful to work with, but that personality-a breath of fresh air.”
ON TIME, EVERY TIME
It is difficult to ferret out an enemy among the people Crawford has worked with. She says, ”Models go `ugggghhhhhhh` when they know we`re working together because I`m always on time.” But mention Crawford`s name and there is praise for her personality and her professionalism, as well as her curvy body and a face that Rolling Stone`s fashion editor Joe McKenna describes as having ”perfect features. When she enters a room you cannot take your eyes off her.”
On top of that, McKenna adds, ”everybody loves working with her because she is so professional and knows what she`s meant to do. Patrick Demarchelier took some wonderful pictures of her. For me, she embodies everything there is about a great-looking American girl. But it`s that sexy, flirtatious air that`s special.”
Crawford accepts the comments with equanimity. She neither brushes them off nor falls prey to them. She is matter-of-fact in her assessment of herself.
”I see other models I work with come in without their makeup on and they`re so beautiful, sometimes I wonder, `Why am I here?` I know that I`m lucky that I look the way I do, and that`s what people like right now.
”I have to admit that it`s fun when you pass a newsstand and see yourself on three covers. It`s fun, but this business is so fickle. If you`re not on every cover, you`re not the hottest model. If you are, people will get sick of seeing you and want someone new.
”It`s a Catch-22 situation and I understand that. My agency and I decided that I should do everything I can right now. When it stops, it stops. Hopefully, I may have a cosmetics account by then.”
IT`S JUST STARTING
Pillard, however, says Crawford has a long career yet ahead of her. ”The sky is the limit. Her Revlon commercials and ads are very successful. She has worked all over the place,” Pillard says, ticking off the covers of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Self, British Vogue, French Elle, Bazaar and on and on. ”She can stay at the very top for five years, much longer for catalogues, other work.”
As makeup artist Madlyn Gnoffo buffs up Crawford`s blush a bit, Crawford thanks her, mentioning how much she has always liked the no-makeup makeup look that is a Gnoffo specialty.
One of her favorite covers, notes Crawford, is the current one on Italian Lei: ”I have no makeup on. It looks like me.”
She admits that there are some things that have not given her such pleasure. ”I`ve done some things that turned out not the way I`ve wanted them to. Something for GQ that was supposed to be nice and it wasn`t (referring to a steamy swimsuit layout).
”There are things I say no to but it`s not that I`m so rigid. It`s just that I don`t do anything that I don`t feel comfortable doing. There are topless commercials that I could do for European television. They`re on over there all the time. But I don`t do that because I don`t have reason to. That doesn`t mean that I would never do a topless picture, because I have. If I feel comfortable in a situation and if I know the result will be beautiful, I`ll do it.
”They wanted me to do Obsession and I said no. I thought that I would never do Playboy. When I was in Chicago they asked me and I thought, `Never, ever, ever,` and now, here I am, waiting for the issue that I`ll be in. But it`s a special thing photographed by Herb Ritts. I really respect Herb`s pictures and the way he portrays women and so I did it.”
`ANOTHER SIDE OF CINDY`
Ritts says, ”I feel I have another side of Cindy, a vulnerable side that hasn`t been seen yet-a natural inward beauty that surfaces outwardly.”
Ritts says that ”both Cindy and I decided to do the assignment for Playboy because it`s trying to move into a much more modern style.” Photos for both May`s French Vogue and Playboy were taken in Hawaii. The Playboy photos are black-and-white, the cover is a head shot, ”very un-Playboy,”
with barely any makeup. The photos, says Ritts, ”capture her natural glamor, her sensuality.”
Ritts says Crawford will be the model for the fall Gianfranco Ferre ad campaign and calls her ”very professional, very strong, determined. She`s no nonsense, no games. She will be around.”
Ritts is but one of the well-known fashion photographers Crawford has worked with and admires since she got her start in Chicago with the Elite agency here and was tutored by Victor Skrebneski. Her ads for I. Magnin, then Skrebneski`s International Film Festival poster showing her in a wet T-shirt, propelled her to national notice.
Now she enjoys working with Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, Arthur Elgort. ”But it`s not like `who`s the best` or `who do you like working with most` that`s important. I like working with people who are professional. It`s all about people. If you`re working with good people you can be doing the worst catalogue or the worst booking and you can have a good day. It can be fun.”
TEAMWORK, NOT STARDOM
She downplays the model-playing-starring-role aspect of fashion photography.
”When there is someone there making you look the way they want you to look with makeup and there`s a hairdresser getting your hair just right and then there are these clothes-well, by the time all that happens to you and the photographer tells you what he wants, you just have a sense of what they want you to do and how they want you to look. And you do it.”
Crawford claims that ”some of modeling is technical. Once you learn certain things, they become second nature. Skrebneski taught me so much about certain ways to stand, certain things about my face. There are ways to stand that do terrible things to your body, and once you learn that, you don`t think about it anymore; you just don`t do it. I know there are certain ways my face looks good and certain ways it doesn`t.
”Just recently Penn was telling me, `You`re so patient.` And I thought to myself, `That`s Skrebneski`s training again.` And every time somebody mentions my being on time I think of Dad and his `Punctuality is a virtue`
thing.”
Crawford`s life has accelerated particularly within the past three months. At the beginning of the year, she estimated that two weeks of every month were spent traveling, and two working in New York.
”Now it`s more like five days at home and the rest away.” She refers to traveling with the same Catch-22 phrase.
”I love it because I love to go to new and different places, but hate it because I`m sick of flying by myself and being by myself and sleeping in strange rooms. My body gets totally off schedule and I don`t have a base, but I love going places and as long as there are places I want to go, I`ll travel.”
LAUNDRY AND BILL-PAYING
When Crawford gets home, she says, ”I do the laundry, pay the bills. Normal things. I go out to dinner with friends, see a movie. I work out a lot at the gym. When I get home, I`m exhausted. I like to stay at home at night. I love to read. I`ve finished Wolfe`s `Bonfire,` I`m reading `Raisin in the Sun,` and `The Fountainhead` is next.”
Home right now is an apartment in Manhattan`s West Village that she describes as ”comfortable. Everybody loves to flop on my sofa. People always think I live in a place that`s slick, high-tech. But it`s brick walls and all kinds of old things. Antiques. Quilts-I love quilts. Lots of Kane County Flea Market things.”
She`s in the process of signing the papers for an apartment in SoHo.
”Very clean-looking, wood floors, modern fireplaces and all new appliances, new toilets. I don`t want anything like that to be old!” But she talks lovingly of some old doors that she bought from an estate in Pennsylvania, a sink that was once in the Plaza Hotel and other finds that will give a homey quality to the apartment she expects to live in next fall.
The purchase, she admits, signifies ”a commitment. It means I`m settling in New York.” But she will be settling in alone. The longtime relationship with her old boyfriend, now a senior at the University of Arizona-whom she has known since 3d grade and dated since high school-came to an end about two months ago. ”I thought we would get married some day, but I realized that I wasn`t sure. I`d never been single since I was 18. I wanted to find out what I was like on my own.”
Crawford`s 24-year-old sister, Chris, a computers and accounting teacher at Robert Morris College here, says sister Cindy is still as much fun, as down-to-earth as she always was.
BACK HOME IN DE KALB
Their mother, Jennifer Crawford, relishes their get-togethers sometimes in New York or always during the holidays in De Kalb (there`s another daughter, Danielle, 18, at home) and describes with glee the ”slumber party” that she enjoyed with Chris and Cindy in Sycamore recently after a family wedding. ”Even though it was only five minutes from home, we took a hotel room, enjoyed the Jacuzzi, ordered up pizza. We had a ball.”
Mrs. Crawford agrees with friend Bozek`s claim that ”Cindy hasn`t let anything go to her head” and with employer Pillard`s statement that ”Cindy is still unaffected by her success.”
”But Cindy is different,” says her mother. ”She is more down-to-earth now. She always saw everything in black-and-white, she was always demanding that other people live up to her standards. She is more tolerant now, more open to other people`s ways. She enjoys people now more for what they are. She`s still the same, though, in some ways. What she wants most from other people is their respect.”
She has that and more.
Pillard says Crawford is doing very well financially, ”Let`s just say she`s in the $5,000-and-up-a-day bracket. She is the epitome of the top model: She gives the camera what it expects of her.”
Photographers and others who`ve worked with her claim she has staying power because of her versatility. Vogue fashion creative director Polly Mellen once rhapsodized about her ”chameleon quality.”
AN EYE ON ACTING
But to broaden her appeal she`s also signed with the William Morris Agency, and is considering acting classes. Some time back, she says, she had one offer ”that was interesting. Avedon suggested me to Mike Nichols for
`Biloxi Blues.` I didn`t get it, but I would have considered it. I`ve had some stupid offers to play some dumb, beautiful girls, but I don`t want that. If I`m supposed to do any acting, it will happen, just like modeling did.”
She says she`ll stick with modeling for ”as long as it`s fun. I know that every day is not fun. It`s a job. But I know girls who hate their jobs, who are miserable every second they`re working. That`s when I would quit. Hopefully, I would get sick of it before it gets sick of me.
”When I was driving in from De Kalb today, I thought to myself, `How did I do it all that time?` Oh, God, every day for a year, an hour-and-a-half each way. I wanted to prove I could do it. It was the same at school. I didn`t just want A`s, but the highest A in the class. That`s why I quit Northwestern. When I was going to school and modeling at the same time, I couldn`t give my whole self to either. I was juggling the two and wasn`t committed to either. I`m not that compulsive now, but I still like to give a hundred percent.” –
