Lara Stone, the face of Calvin Klein recounts how she went from working at McDonald’s to working the runway.
By Krista Smith•Photographs by Norman Jean Roy•Styled by Jessica Diehl
July 2011
A teenage Lara Stone, who had been working at a McDonald’s in her native Holland, was on vacation with her family in Paris when she was approached about becoming a model. “In 1999, I did a model competition in Holland and I didn’t win, and then at 16 I was expelled from high school, and that’s when I went to live in Paris,” says Stone, now 27. She didn’t walk her first Paris runway, however, until 2006 (for Givenchy), but soon thereafter her star exploded and she became the exclusive face of Calvin Klein. Now her annual income is nearly $5 million, and she spends half her life on a plane.
It has been more than three decades since a model has worked the gap between her teeth so effectively—think Lauren Hutton. Pressured to fix it, Stone held fast. “I always quite liked it, and my mom taught me that it was something unique and special and it made me stand out more,” she says. “And I agree—I think it’s really cute.”
In 2010 she married British comedian David Walliams (Little Britain, Dinner for Schmucks). The couple recently celebrated their first anniversary in Italy, and Stone got to thinking: “I’ve always been really bad at the life-planning thing, but I’d like to make it a plan to one day learn how to cook and be like an Italian housewife.”
Although Stone hasn’t yet been persuaded to act, there is at least one part she’d consider. “I’d quite like to be a Bond girl—an evil one,” she says. “I think I could pull that off. And maybe I’d like to be in Zoolander 2 as well—the first one is, like, the best film ever, and it’s very true.”
