Gigi opens up about her Instagram fame, girl squads & dealing with the haters
One of the most sought out after supermodels of the moment Gigi Hadid has opened up to Love magazine, about her Instagram celebrity status - currently at 18.1 million followers and growing steadily, her female fashion-house mentors and the importance of her girl squad (cue Taylor Swift, Kendall Jenner and Cara Delevingne).
On her Instagram fame: 'I see the numbers going up but really I can't picture 10 million people. I genuinely don't know how many people that looks like. What's weird is when I walk into, let's say a stadium or a concert and there are maybe 13,000 people and I'm looking up like oh my God, that's a lot of people, that's 13,000 people. I can't actually comprehend what that means, which is probably a good thing because if I could comprehend 10 million then it might be really scary.'
On Diane Von Furstenberg: 'I have a couple of people who I call my Mothers in Fashion. She's become one of them. I love her. You start to listen to the negativity and Diane was someone that was like, "I love your walk." I was like, if Diane likes it, then whatever.'
On Donatella Versace: 'I think there are some women in fashion, in any industry, once they get to a certain level, they just think that being intimidating is what's going to make them look more powerful. For me, when Donatella walks into a room, she's already Donatella so she doesn't have to do anything. For her to be nice just makes her that much more incredible to me. She doesn't need to be. That's just the women I'm attracted to.'
On Naomi Campbell supporting her signature walk: 'I was with Naomi a couple of weeks before the VS show. She said, "Don't apologize, don't do it. You are perfect the way you are. Everyone said my walk was weird too."'
On those who criticize her walking style: 'If people don't like how I walk then they don't have to watch.'
On how Kendall Jenner helps her deal with haters: 'We cope with the trolls by having each other. It's the same thing as dating someone within the industry rather than out of the industry. You only understand it when you're literally experiencing it. When people are really harsh? I live with my best friend from high school but usually I'm going to call Kendall because Kendall's the one who will always be like, "You don't need that, just let it go." And I know that if that's working for her then it can work for me.'
On how Taylor Swift's 'Bad Blood' video came about: 'It was literally a text message. "Hey, wanna be in my music video?" I'm like, "Yeah, if you could get all of our friends in one room for the day, I'm in." It was just really rare for all of us to be in the same place, even in the same city, for one day. So we're like, "If we get to hang out and gas and dress up in cool costumes, let's do it.'" [...] For 90 per cent of us this was the first we've ever seen of the scale of the sets and the scale of the special effects and the costumes. Even for Taylor, it was the biggest thing she'd ever seen. Once we'd filmed it we were like, "OK, that was the best day ever.'"
On girl squads and female empowerment: 'I think that that's the big one. It's not just us, it's a lot of women in the entertainment industry that are really supporting each other and showing that it's less cool to be mean than it is to be nice. I think that that's a very unique thing to our generation.'
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