“I’ve been with Omega for 20 years. That’s longer than I’ve been married, and we don’t even fight,” says Cindy Crawford, model, entrepreneur and Omega’s brand ambassador. She was in Mumbai to launch the Omega Constellation Pluma Collection at the Taj. Crawford has been with the brand longer “than some of the people who work there, and with Omega, I get to evolve and do more than just model. I was in Peru recently as part of Omega and Orbis’ Flying Eye Hospital and I took my daughter with me. We thought going to Peru and seeing Machu Picchu would be highlight of the trip – and it was amazing – but, the true highlight was the hospital. We got to meet the doctors, volunteers and nurses, and I was glad my daughter got to see this and learn from it,” she says.
In fact, Hospital In The Sky, a 45-minute production starring Crawford and her daughter Kaia Gerber, documents their visit to the Flying Eye Hospital in Trujillo, Peru. Ask her what modelling advice she would give Kaia (whose first modelling campaign for Versace was at age 10), and Crawford shares: “I ask Kaia to keep a thought in her head. She doesn’t have to share what it is. Just think about it. Don’t give the camera a blank stare. You need to show a real person in the picture, not just a body.”
Crawford turns 50 next year, and to mark her journey she’s collaborated with Rizzoli to publish an autobiographical account of her learnings in the fashion industry. “It’s a 250-page book with iconic images married with essays. It will feature work by the greats like photographers Helmut Newton and Peter Lindbergh. Some of the pictures have never been published before – they’re from the days when I first started modelling in Chicago. I’ve shared things like the importance of taking chances, learning to say no, how I feel about ageing. Even though my world was within the fashion industry, the lessons I learned are universal,” says Crawford.
She finds the biggest change in the industry has been the onset of social media. “It changed everything. Earlier models were two dimensional. The didn’t have a voice. But now, social media has given them a voice. Young models like Cara Delevingne have a voice and a personality.You may or may not like it but at least they have a first person way to express themselves. It isn’t just through the clothes they wear or a photo shoot.”
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