Christy Turlington

Christy Turlington was born on January 2, 1969. Although her mother is Salvadoran she came to world in San Francisco, California. When Christy was a little girl, she spent her summers in San Salvador with her sisters, horseback riding in the countryside and visiting her many cousins. Although she did not grow up in a Spanish speaking household, Christy says that she is able to understand much of the language because of her grandmother. Her career began when a photographer spotted her horseback riding near her Miami home at the age of 13 and sent her photos to a model agency. She waited until she finished school to turn pro. At the age of 16, Christy became a Ford model. Her unique looks are a true combination of her mother's olive skin and her father's bone structure. Turlington's mother was a Salvadoran flight attendant and her father was an American pilot. With a face that is often compared to Audrey Hepburn's, She has done it all in her fourteen-year modeling career. Among her contracts are such giants as Maybelline (worth $3 million and she has to work 12 days each year for them) Calvin Klein and many more. She did modeling jobs for Versace, Peta and Shiseido (Christy´s no longer participating in prét-á-porter shows). By now she is one of the top money makers in the modeling world. With an income of $23,7 each year she is the 8. best earning supermodel in the world. She has a apartment in New York City and Paris. She lives in the same New York City apartment as Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Winona Ryder. Perhaps the greatest honor bestowed on Turlington was not by a huge fashion conglomerate or even a famous fashion writer but by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1993 their Costume Institute commissioned design house Pucci to create 120 mannequins with the same face - to be on display throughout the year in lush, historical, fashion exhibits. Of all the faces in the world, he chose Turlington's to cast in fiberglass. Modeling, however, is not her entire life. In 1993, she invested in the "Up and Down Club," a combination restaurant-jazz club-dance spot on Folsom Street in San Francisco. "My younger sister, Erin, came up with the idea to get involved with the club," says Christy. "Erin actually runs the restaurant, along with our two other partners," she says. But whenever Christy Turlington is in San Francisco, she stops by the restaurant to "help out." The food served is contemporary California bistro cuisine, with Southern and Central American touches, of course. She had documentary made after her called 'Christy Turlington Backstage' which followed her life during the spring 1994 collections. Turlington's life is not all business, either. She is the chairwoman for the International Committee for Intercambios Culturales of El Salvador, a new nonprofit organization. "Intercambios is a cultural exchange center that will open this summer in San Salvador," she explains. The center will offer a myriad of education programs, and it will include a public library, a community technology center, and a gallery. "This facility will give Salvadorans access to modern technologies that would otherwise not have been made available to them," she says. The main purpose of the organization itself is to rebuild post-civil war El Salvador. "This center will give young people inspiration and hope," she says. Turlington seems to have her priorities straight and the world at her feet--making millions of dollars, traveling around the world, helping to rebuild El Salvador, and staying close to her family. What more could she want? "I do not anticipate that I will still be modeling ten years from now," she says. "Eventually, I would like to have a family." Among other things, she also talks about becoming a novelist and a director. Turlington has done in 25 years what most people dream of doing in a lifetime. To her, success, just like her beauty, comes naturally.