Special K

There’s only one Karlie Kloss. The 24-year-old supermodel and social media entrepreneur talks body image, bullying and why building code is the key to a feminist future.

It’s quite funny watching Karlie Kloss gingerly traverse the lobby of Le Bristol hotel in Paris, wearing a second-hand sundress and clutching the inevitable fashion latte. Oh bless, I think. It’s a supermodel doing her best impression of a normal person. And it’s so not working. The 24-yearold from St Louis has been the world’s premier catwalker for eight years now, so perhaps it’s not a shocker to discover that, in the flesh, she’s 6ft 2in and stupidly good-looking. One glimpse and waiters stiffen, businessmen gawp and soon a nervy fan is lurking with hopes of a selfie.

Ah, the Kloss selfie. In darker moments, I panic this will turn out to be the defining artefact of our era, ever since Kloss became BFFs with Taylor Swift and a heavily entrenched member of her ‘squad’ of famous young women who exhibit a kind of digital incontinence when it comes to documenting their shared gorgeousness on the internet. No doubt it has been fabulous business-wise for Kloss, who now shares a manager with Justin Bieber and Kanye West, and earns about USD5m a year shooting campaigns such as the new one for Stella McCartney’s range of Adidas sports kit.

Adidas usually only works with athletes but Kloss is such a noted fitness junkie, it made an exception. “I treat myself as an athlete in my daily life,” she says. “I challenge myself, try new things in my strength training and cardio. I try to be the best I can, whether it’s my fitness routine or how I think about food and nutrition. I definitely try to be as…” She pauses in thought. Thin as possible, I tease. “I want to feel strong. That’s when I feel best.”

Yes, yes – all very empowering. But let’s talk detail. What does it actually take to look like you in a pair of Stella McCartney’s TechFit Tights? “I just came from Italy,” she says, of her recent day trip to a pal’s superyacht off Capri. “I went for a swim and turned that into my workout of the day! Or hiking, or…” No, Karlie, c’mon. What does it really take? How many hours a week are you breaking into a proper, ugly sweat? “I’d say five to seven hours. Which is totally doable,” she adds quickly. “I always say the hardest part is putting your gym clothes on. But no matter how long and exhausting your travel or your work was, if you can get yourself there and give it whatever you’ve got, it will be worth it. You will feel better afterwards.”

No doubt – and only seven hours a week to find in the schedule, guys! Well, at least she’s honest. Surely professional necessity sharpens her fitness focus? “Sure.” And do you feel an element of responsibility, too? That, rather than just starving yourself, it’s good to be visibly active and healthy when your body is a lightning rod for what women are told to consider beautiful?

“That’s an element in a small way,” she says, thoughtfully. “For me, it’s important to use that influence in a really positive way, but I think my body has really been more of a journey for myself first and foremost. I mean, I started when I was 15 years old,” she says, with a touch of Joan Collins’ jaded camp. “As a kid, I ate candy bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner and looked like a string bean.” These days she has a YouTube channel called Klossy, where fans can watch her work out. Obviously, the other key ingredient is that she is naturally mega slim. “I looked like an alien,” she says of her childhood years. “It works in my favour now, but for many years prefashion I had bad haircuts and was flat as a board. I looked like Benjamin Button, as my parents never forget to tell me.”

She’s mad on family. Unusually, the Klosses – father Kurt, an emergency room doctor, mother Tracy, a graphic designer, and her three sisters – are familiar faces in the fashion industry as, after Karlie was scouted at 14 at a fashion show in Missouri, the family chaperoned her to every single show and shoot without exception. Aunts, uncles, even one of her high-school teachers, were roped in. “One year, for couture,” she beams, “all three of my sisters came with me.”

For a supermodel, Kloss is unusually polite and hard-working. Her mother had cancer when she was a child, which can obviously forge a coper. “But I really think I picked that up from my dad,” she says. “My dad is an ER doctor in the most stressful circumstances. I saw his work ethic and his ability to have a very meaningful personal life, but also a dedicated professional life.” So she just got on with it.

Following her catwalk debut in 2007, she walked an unheard-of 64 shows in a single season, has gone on to shoot 34 Vogue covers and, in a world where one big ad campaign can make a career, has notched up dozens, from McQueen and Dior to Victoria’s Secret and Gap. For anyone who doesn’t speak ‘fashion’, she’s basically the modelling equivalent of Gareth Bale or Kevin Systrom. The latter is the founder of Instagram (where Kloss has 5.5 million followers) and a personal friend of Kloss and her longterm boyfriend, Joshua Kushner, a tech investor who put money into the app. (FYI, the model/tech guy hook-up scene is so hot right now. Miranda Kerr recently got engaged to one of the co-founders of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel. My advice to any crafty modelisers reading this is to put down the guitar and start coding.)

No wonder she’s now an internet savant with a clutch of social mediafriendly sidelines: vegan baking (you can buy her own-brand Karlie’s Kookies online), enrolling in classes at NYU or setting up her charity that offers scholarships to teach girls how to code (or Kode, as she calls it). Annoyingly, she never discusses her fella – whose brother, fascinatingly, is married to Ivanka Trump and is therefore Donald’s son-in-law. But it’s clear he’s a strong influence. “I love to meet entrepreneurs,” she says. “They’re creators in a similar sort of way to fashion designers, but the fabric and thread of their creations are built in code. It’s using technology to create – but the power is democratised because the currency is ideas. It’s amazing. You don’t just have to go to the best Ivy League school and get the right internship. You can have an idea, learn the skill sets to build it out yourself and create just about anything.”

Lately, though, a lot of this computer code has been directed towards slagging off her dear friend Taylor Swift. The two met a couple of years ago, doubtless drawn to one another by their shared passion for making cupcakes while wearing Americanflag bikinis. Soon their #girlsquad included Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Cara Delevingne and a revolving door of other models, singers and actresses who terrorised the world’s smartphones with their perfection. But are they really pals or merely props? The internet has apparently decided on props – with Swift accused of being a disingenuous marketeer and faux feminist by everyone from Kim Kardashian to Camille Paglia.

So is Kloss implicated? Actually, she was bullied herself at school and takes this stuff seriously: “I feel like I’ve personally grown very thick-skinned in my own life, whether it was back in my middle-school and high-school bullied days, or being in a career in the public eye.” She doesn’t get too much online hate, but sees it flying at her friends, and reckons most people have some experience of that. “In this day and age,” she says, “it’s really easy for people to be bullies from a distance, whether you’re in a small town, with girls in high school who write something mean or malicious on a Facebook wall or an Instagram post…”

Like Kim Kardashian, I interrupt. The reality TV star recently accused Kloss’ bezzie, Swift, of lying about an online feud with Kardashian’s husband, Kanye West. Is Kim a good person, I can’t resist asking. “Ha… you know… I honestly… I… I…” Kloss says, smiling as she stutters. Eventually she comes up with, “I think she’s been a lovely person to me in the past,” then drops into a more matterof-fact tone. “Look, I really don’t know her that well.” Perhaps the squad aren’t quite as close as they seem after all. “My closest friends, really, are my sisters and my mum,” she confesses suddenly, a look of relief escaping across her gorgeous features.

I am in the Another Space gym in Covent Garden, London, about to do a HIIT boxing class, and it is full of Karlie-alikes. Tall, lithe, tanned and with discernible abs and derrieres you could balance things on. I may be apprehensive, but Kloss has more energy than a puppy on speed. “Are you ready?” bellows the instructor. “Yes, girls, yes!” screams Kloss, with a megawatt smile. While I slowly melt into a sweaty puddle of self-loathing, I watch Kloss in front of me in the class. She never breaks concentration, never loses her enthusiasm and never stops moving. Even the muscly gymbots are crumbling like biscuits in hot tea at this point. But Kloss keeps going. “Wasn’t that great?” she asks me, as we pose for a sweaty selfie afterwards, with her still energetic and faux boxing for the camera.

We say goodbye and I realize she is staying in the sweat prison to do the same session all over again with a different group. This is what it feels like to work out with a supermodel. This is their 9-to-5, where they earn the bodies that pay their wage. I leave in awe. And in bits. And grateful my job means I can sit down. All. Day.