However trite, describing Christy Turlington Burns as a model citizen seems horribly inadequate.
Aside from helping the profile of models skyrocket in the ’80s, businesswoman, author, filmmaker, maternal health advocate, marathoner, yogi and ethicist all apply. Widely recognized for long-term deals with Maybelline and Calvin Klein’s Eternity fragrance, Turlington Burns’ many accomplishments include taking the most arduous trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. She first eyed the challenge during a flight from a shoot with Arthur Elgort and later completed it as a means of mourning the death of her father.
Just back from a humanitarian mission to Tanzania for her 12-year-old maternal health organization Every Mother Counts, Turlington Burns completed what was her tenth marathon in East Africa alone. She is now in the midst of a book tour for “Arrival Stories: Women Share Their Experiences of Becoming Mothers” with her coauthor Amy Schumer. She and her actor and director husband Ed Burns have two teenagers and have been together for about 23 years. Turlington Burns also served as the model for the faces — women, men and children — for the Pucci mannequins that were used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
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In a “Fashion Icons” talk with Fern Mallis at the 92Y on Thursday night, the details of Turlington Burns’ life unspooled naturally as opposed to boastfully. At 53, there already was much to review.
Truth be told, Turlington Burns said she never loved doing fashion shows and doesn’t think that she was great at it. She stepped away from the runway in 1995 (although she has made the occasional appearance since) and enrolled and later graduated cum laude at New York University. After a childbirth complication with her daughter, she got more interested in world maternal health and earned a master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of Public Health. Through one of its partners, a group of female physician veterans that provide aid in conflict situations, EMC provided an emergency grant to help women impacted by the Ukrainian crisis.
Despite her numerous achievements, Turlington Burns has tried to distance herself from the stamp of supermodel. “I don’t love the word. It felt sensational during that time. At a certain point, it became synonymous with the things in the culture that were not great — excess, over-the-top, big hair, a lot of makeup,” she said. “…I didn’t want to be pigeonholed or labeled. I always thought that I would be doing something else. I wanted to have the freedom to do other things. It’s been hard because the word sticks – still. Anybody, who knows me well, knows I don’t identify as a supermodel.”
Yet the public’s thirst for supermodel intelligence continues. An upcoming Apple TV+ and Imagine Films documentary was dreamed up by Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, who reeled in Turlington Burns and Linda Evangelista. Roger Ross Williams is directing the film, which is due out next year. As for whether supermodels still exist today, Turlington Burns said, “I guess it depends how you define it. People, if they are interested in fashion, get attached to the models that were of their era in the way that you might with a band or a musician. There are plenty of people today that my daughter [Grace] and I imagine would define as a supermodel — Gigi [Hadid], Kaia [Gerber] and Karlie [Kloss].”
Asked if those were some of the girls she admires today, Turlington Burns said, “Yeah, I guess if one of the definitions is that people know them by name or by a single name without needing to know the last name. Also, it’s not just the brand you’re wearing. It’s also the person who is wearing it might also be one of the differentiating characteristics.”
Before exclusives were de rigeur, Burns signed one with Calvin Klein in 1988 at the age of 19 that became one of the longest running exclusive contracts in modeling history. “Calvin was kind of it at the time. It was a big deal to do the show and the campaign [for Eternity],” Burn said, recalling how her agent said he wanted to call her. “He asked, ‘What are you interested in doing?’ I said, ‘I don’t really know yet. I’m enjoying what I’m doing.’ He said, ‘I think if I wasn’t married already, I’d ask you to marry me.’ He was very, very sweet. He said, ‘I’d love for you to come to work for me.’”
That exclusive deal across all categories inhibited her from working with favorite photographers like Elgort and Steven Meisel. “Bruce Weber was shooting for Calvin in those days and we didn’t always have the most chemistry. At a certain point, I cut my hair and you had to ask permission. I got in a little trouble for rebelling without asking. We renegotiated my contract and I stuck with Eternity for many years. I still work for Eternity now,” Turlington Burns said. “But the next season, I started that show. Our affection for each other never changed. It was just the end of that era.”
In 1989, she became part of a cultural phenomenon thanks to a Rolling Stone cover shoot by Herb Ritts with Stephanie Seymour, Crawford, Campbell and Tatjana Patitz. In California to see someone she was dating at the time, Turlington Burns stopped by Ritts’ house just to hang out. Under contract with Klein, she was persuaded by Ritts “to jump in for one shot. The picture that was printed in Rolling Stone was the four of them. The picture that has become more well-known is of all five of us,” Burns said, alluding to Peter Lindbergh’s iconic photo that also included Evangelista.
Asked for one word to size up her fellow models, she described Crawford as “professional,” Patitz as “nature lover,” Evangelista as “serious” and Campbell as “mercurial.” Appearing in the David Fincher-directed music video for George Michael’s song “90” (better known as “Freedom”) led to four of the models closing out the Versace 1991 show lip-syncing the song. “All of these things weren’t a week later. They were a season later. It wasn’t as though in the moment we realized that it was an iconic moment,” Turlington Burns said.
Born in Walnut Creek, Calif., she and her two sisters were seemingly born to travel — their father was a pilot and their mother had worked as a flight attendant. While the family was living in Miami, she and her sister Kelly competed as equestrians. During an afternoon training session, a photographer asked their mother if it would be all right to take some pictures of the girls. That led to working with a local agency and after school modeling for newspaper ads.
At the age of 14, the family returned to California and by 15, she was living in Paris. A year later, Turlington Burns was living a dorm-like experience in an Upper East Side town house owned by modeling agent Eileen Ford. Rooming with under-age 18 models from all over the world led to a lot of fun in New York City’s high rolling ’80s. “We’d sneak out and come back. I knew all the stairs that creaked, where all the wine was stored and I would sometimes put my pajamas in the kitchen cupboard, so when I got home I could change into my pajamas and just pretend that I had woken up for a glass of milk.”
Burns was 16 when she landed her first Italian Vogue cover shot by the revered photographer Hiro during a weeklong shoot in Rome. For her second cover — for British Vogue — Patrick Demarchelier shot her wearing a white crisscrossed top from Donna Karan’s first collection and a turban. Her first American Vogue cover was with Elgort, who attended Thursday’s talk at 92Y. It was the start of a 35-year alliance.
At 21 or 22, she became the face of Maybelline for what would be a 10-year stretch. The deal faded after Turlington Burns started her beauty company, “which they didn’t love. L’Oréal had acquired them,” she said, adding that they approached her again when she was pregnant with her son and they worked together for another 10 years.
Turlington Burns questioned the suggestion that her first contract was the largest one at the time, speculating that Isabella Rossellini’s contract with Lancôme was bigger. “Also Cindy [Crawford] was at Revlon then. Are you sure?” Turlington Burns said. Asked if $800,000 for 12 days of work sounded right, she said, “I don’t know. I feel like I had to do a lot more work than that. That might have been closer to my Calvin contract early on.”
Burns spoke of how runway shows have changed since the time when a model would wear 10 looks in one show or how it mattered if your rack was placed first backstage. Recalling a 2019 return to the runway, Burns said, “I thought, ‘This is so easy, I would do it more often.’ The show lasted eight minutes in total. I had one outfit, a comfortable outfit. It was not a torture. It was great. I thought this is so much better in many respects, probably not easier for everybody else involved.”
The family genes continue — 18-year-old Grace Burns is doing some modeling and her 16-year-old brother, Finn, is dabbling in acting. Their eldest cousin, James Turlington Carter, has gotten into modeling, too. He is the son of her sister Kelly Turlington, who is married to Ed Burns’ brother Brian.
Asked for advice for the next generation of models, Burns gave that some thought, before saying, “I guess I would tell them to go to school. Do something else. Continue to grow and to evolve. Arthur would tell me, ‘Take a dance class.’ I’m a little clumsy. He would say, ‘Do the things that are going to enrich your life.’ Those are only going to make you more interesting and give you more to offer, even when you are in this one-dimensional plain. There is more going on and more behind your eyes.”