Gigi Hadid reveals why she won’t do magazine covers anymore: ‘I’d rather another girl have an opportunity’

Gigi Hadid has revealed why she plans to stop accepting offers to model on the covers of magazines.

Hadid, 26, reflected on her impressive modelling career so far, and explained why there are certain jobs she plans to turn down in the future, while speaking to InStyle on 2 February.

“It’s getting to this point in my career where I don’t only have to take the jobs where I’m just selling clothes,” the model said. “Now I get to be like: ‘What have I not done?’”

“There are magazines I say no to because I’d rather another girl have an opportunity to get that cover,” she added. “I don’t need to do the same cover again if someone else’s career could skyrocket because of it.”

Hadid also spoke to the publication about her daughter, Khai, one, who she shares with her former partner, Zayn Malik. And while Khai’s mom is a major supermodel, Hadid said that she wouldn’t pressure her daughter into working in the fashion industry.

“She’s just so smart, and she’s so aware,” Hadid said about her child. “She watches everything, she’s always learning, she’s always looking.”

“You know, she’s going to do what she wants to do,” she added. “She could be an astronaut. I don’t know.”

This isn’t the first time Hadid has opened up about her modelling career and its ups and downs. In a 2020 interview with i-D Magazine, Hadid reflected on a walk she did for Jean Paul Gaultier’s couture show, revealing that, prior to this show, he was the first designer that let her “walk on a runway in Paris.”

“At the time I was still starting out in my career, I was coming out of high school, I still had my volleyball body,” she explained.

The model also noted that, at the time, she had faced criticism over her appearance, as she was told that she didn’t have a “runway body”.

“It was a body that I loved,” she added. “I knew how hard I worked to have those muscles, to be curved in those places – I kind of miss it now. At the time, people were hard on me and tried to say that I didn’t have a runway body.”

While reflecting on the 2015 show, Hadid recalled how Gaultier had chosen an outfit for her that showed a lot of her body, while noting that other designers putting her into their shows were dressing her in outfits in which she was “really covered” up.

“And so for him to make me feel like [Gaultier] wanted me to shine in that way, it really meant a lot to me as a young model,” she said. “And I know that he has done that for a lot of people.”