Karlie Kloss, Kreature

In a WWD profile on Kloss, Charles DeCaro, the creative director of Laspata/ DeCaro, observed:

“She’s the new Cindy Crawford. She’s become a brand. She’s an American girl and is very much part of that dynamic. She’s from the Midwest and family plays a big part of who she is and who she’s become. She travels with her family and her sisters. Her work ethic is unlike anything you’ve seen in your life. She’s always punctual and pleasant. There are these creatures in the world, and every now and again a new one comes along. She’s the new one.”

Karlie Kloss is obviously very special; she has many side-hustles and is chill enough to play football in Washington Square Park now and again. Also, tall; one time I spoke with her at a fashion show afterparty in Paris and she was very nice and also I felt like she was looking down upon me from the nosebleeds at Barclays. Kinda weird of DeCaro, though, to characterize her as a “creature,” even as a compliment, especially from a dude—almost, after a list of her positive attributes, to diminish them. Hmm? Surely he didn’t mean to, but it’s careless, condescending language about a person who has legitimately transformed the modeling/fashion industry.

Anyway, Cindy Crawford is the wrong analogy here. Kloss, who has just launched her YouTube Channel, notes in the above video that her role models are her mother and Christy Turlington, and Turlington is the supe to whom Kloss is most similar. The ‘90s icon, as you know, put modeling on hold to attend NYU, and currently spends a good amount of her time working on Every Mother Counts, her nonprofit which is “dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother,” and which “supports maternal health programs around the world.” Kloss will be attending NYU in the fall—though she doesn’t seem to plan to shelve modeling for it—and has made her own charitable efforts with Karlie’s Kookies, a vegan cookie whose profits go towards feeding school lunch to hungry kids in the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as starting a scholarship for girls who want to learn to code. Just saying!