Cindy Crawford Is Here to Stay

When Cindy Crawford walked into a lounge in the Santa Monica Proper Hotel on a morning in early June, her vibe was immediate: comfortable, professional, direct. No artifice. No entourage. Just her longtime publicist Annett Wolf, who made a brief introduction and disappeared, leaving Ms. Crawford at the head of a table set with a display of the products from her Meaningful Beauty line of skin and hair care, a $400 million brand she introduced 20 years ago.

“Where do you want to start?” Ms. Crawford asked. “What feels the most organic?”

It’s tempting to describe Ms. Crawford, 58, as casual, but that’s not quite it. Dressed in a Celine corduroy jean jacket, a camisole, Nili Lotan bootleg jeans and a Foundrae charm necklace symbolizing resilience, her beauty is radiant without being the least bit overwhelming. A resident of Malibu, where she lives with her husband of 27 years, the nightlife and tequila maestro Rande Gerber, she exuded California unfussiness. She is a familiar face, literally, having been photographed and filmed thousands of times over the course of her 35-plus-year career as one of the world’s most successful models.

What felt most organic was to start with the business of Cindy. More than the mole above her lip, more than her brown eyes and va-va-voom hair and her healthy physique, Ms. Crawford’s interest in transcending modeling to become a brand — decades before personal branding was a career path — is what has distinguished her from her peers.

“I always say, ‘I modeled,’” Ms. Crawford said. “It’s not, ‘I am a model.’ It’s a verb to me. It’s not an identity.”

An entrepreneurial role model among aspiring supermodels, Ms. Crawford invented the modern playbook by which the current generation of professionally beautiful people, including Gigi and Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber, Ms. Crawford’s own daughter, Kaia Gerber, and most of the Kardashian-Jenner family, abide. Brand partnerships, brand ownership, products, campaigns, deals across various forms of media.

“There wasn’t someone that I was, like, ‘I want her career,’” Ms. Crawford said. “A lot of it was just, like, ‘Why not?’ or ‘Let’s try this.’”