See some of Cindy Crawford’s unforgettable 1980s magazine covers

Cindy Crawford graduated as valedictorian of DeKalb High School in Illinois in 1984, and by August 1986 she was on the cover of Vogue. The 11 magazine covers we’ve collected  here run from that issue through September 1989, the stretch when she went from promising newcomer to one of the most recognizable faces in fashion.

Crawford was born February 20, 1966, in DeKalb. In her junior year of high school, a local photographer named Roger Legel, who photographed a different college woman each week for the DeKalb Nite Weekly, asked to take her picture. The result was her first cover, and the positive response convinced her to try modeling. She signed with a small agency that was sold to Elite Model Management shortly afterward, and in 1983, at 17, she entered Elite’s Look of the Year contest and made the national finals.

After graduation she earned an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University, but she lasted only one quarter before leaving to model full time. She worked with Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski, then moved to New York in 1986 and signed with Elite’s New York office. Vogue covers followed in August and October of that year. In 1987 she landed Vogue covers in January and November, a Glamour cover in May and two from German Vogue. She also turned up briefly in the opening credits of the Michael J. Fox film The Secret of My Success that year.

Cosmopolitan put her on its cover in January, September and October of 1988 and again in September 1989. That same year she began hosting MTV‘s House of Style, which she also executive produced until 1995. In January 1990 she shared the cover of British Vogue with Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Naomi Campbell, and the five appeared together later that year in George Michael’s video for “Freedom! ’90.”

VIDEO  |  George Michael’s Freedom! 90 music video

The 1990s kept her on runways for houses such as Chanel, Versace and Calvin Klein, and on magazine covers at a pace that put her at more than 500 appearances by a partial count in 1998. The red Versace dress she wore to the 1991 Academy Awards influenced fashion and was widely copied. She stepped away from full-time modeling in 2000, and she has since appeared only occasionally in fashion magazines.

Crawford’s later projects include a skincare line called Meaningful Beauty, developed with Jean-Louis Sebagh and launched in 2005, and a furniture collection from the same year. She published the book Becoming, written with Katherine O’Leary, in September 2015, and appeared with her daughter Kaia Gerber on the cover of Vogue Paris in April 2016. In 2023 Apple TV+ premiered the four-part docuseries The Super Models, which featured Crawford, Campbell, Turlington and Evangelista, with Crawford also credited as an executive producer.

The 11 covers on this page cover August 1986 through September 1989 and include four American Vogue issues, four from Cosmopolitan, one from Glamour and two from German Vogue.