Cindy Crawford

Cindy Crawford's entry in a lingerie encyclopedia is shorter than her fame would suggest. The American model, born on February 20, 1966, in DeKalb, Illinois, was one of the most photographed women of the late 1980s and 1990s, but her verified work in underwear comes down to two Playboy pictorials, a long list of fashion campaigns and, decades later, a turn in Rihanna's Savage X Fenty show.

DeKalb valedictorian, Elite contestant

Crawford graduated from DeKalb High School in 1984 as valedictorian and won an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University. She stayed one quarter. By then she had entered Elite Model Management's Look of the Year contest, at 17 in 1983, and worked in Chicago with the photographer Victor Skrebneski before moving to New York in 1986.

The 1990 British Vogue cover

In January 1990 she was one of five models on the British Vogue cover that helped fix the idea of the "supermodel" in the public mind. Her runway list from those years includes Chanel, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Calvin Klein, Thierry Mugler and Valentino, and her campaigns included Versace, Calvin Klein, Escada and Revlon.

Herb Ritts and Playboy, 1988 and 1998

The closest Crawford came to the lingerie trade in her peak years was the camera of Herb Ritts. In July 1988 she posed for Playboy in a shoot by Ritts, and in October 1998 she returned to the magazine for a second pictorial, again with Ritts. Playboy later ranked her fifth on its list of the 100 sexiest stars of the 20th century.

Television did the rest. From 1989 to 1995 she hosted and executive-produced MTV's House of Style, and in 1992 she starred in the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial that was remade in 2016. The beauty mark above her lip became a trademark, to the point that she licked it off in an Australian milk advertisement.

A cameo for Savage X Fenty

The lingerie chapter that is unambiguous came late. In 2021 Crawford appeared in Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3, filmed in Los Angeles and released on Prime Video, in a cast that also included Adriana Lima and Gigi Hadid. Bringing a 1990s supermodel into a show built on inclusive casting was a deliberate choice by Savage X Fenty: it linked the new brand to an older idea of glamour without borrowing from Victoria's Secret.

Her main business since 2005 has been skincare. That year she co-created the Meaningful Beauty line with the dermatologist Jean-Louis Sebagh, and in 2023 she was an executive producer of The Super Models, the documentary series about her generation.

Last updated October 7, 2026