IMAN CINDY COCO -This month’s Elle UK contains a very special interview I conducted with two modeling icons and personal heroes of mine -  Cindy Crawford and Iman.

Earlier this year I had this idea that I would really like to sit down with modeling veterans of various decades to discuss the modeling profession, narrowing down where it has changed and where it has remained the same over the years. After talking to a mutual friend (hairdresser extraordinaire Billy Brasfield) I initially reached out (via twitter!) to Cindy Crawford to see if she was open to talking to me and amazingly she was! Not long after this, at a tea party during Paris Fashion Week, I approached Lorraine Candy (Editor-in-Chief of Elle UK) with the idea of turning this idea into an article for her magazine. She said she would love to see what I could do and so I got to work.

Cindy and Iman were incredibly generous with their time and their insight on this project. They were both extremely candid and open about the highs and the lows of modeling through the decades and through our talks I learnt so much about the heritage of my profession. I won’t share the whole article with you just yet as you can still pick it up in the August Elle UK, but I will tease you with one paragraph (did I mention it’s FOUR pages!?):

I asked Cindy and Iman if they feel the professional model is a dying career path. “It certainly is harder to achieve success as a fashion model today,” Cindy says. “It seems like just being a good model isn’t enough. I tell young models to develop other talents as well.” Iman has a slightly different angle on the issue. “I wouldn’t mind if these A-, B-, C- and D-list ‘celebrities’ only got the covers,” says Iman. “As we all know, covers don’t pay the rent!” The real kicker for Iman is that celebrities are “grabbing the spoils of war of our industry! Those coveted beauty and hair contracts…” She adds, “At least the last sacred ground for a model is the runway. So far…”

So far? I found Iman’s comment funny at first, but then I found myself wondering exactly how long it will be until runways are walked by the Octomoms, Antoine Dodsons and Rebecca Blacks of this world.