Linda Evangelista is British Vogue’s September cover star, marking one of her first major modeling gigs since a cosmetic procedure left her “brutally disfigured.”
The Canadian supermodel, 57, rocked a series of gorgeous looks for the magazine as she opened up about the struggles she has faced over the past several years.
In 2021, Evangelista revealed on Instagram that she had been left “unrecognizable” after undergoing a procedure called Zeltiq’s CoolSculpting five years earlier.
The procedure is meant to reduce fat, but Evangelista said it had the opposite effect.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
Entertainment News
“It increased, not decreased, my fat cells and left me permanently deformed even after undergoing two painful, unsuccessful, corrective surgeries,” she wrote at the time.
She described to British Vogue why she was initially tempted to try out the procedure.
“Those CoolSculpting commercials were on all the time, on CNN, on MSNBC, over and over, and they would ask, ‘Do you like what you see in the mirror?’ They were speaking to me,” she said.
“It was about stubborn fat in areas that wouldn’t budge. It said no downtime, no surgery and… I drank the magic potion, and I would because I’m a little vain," she added. "So I went for it — and it backfired.”
She also described her two failed attempts to correct the procedure with liposuction.
“I have incisions all over my body. I have had stitches, I have worn compression garments under my chin, I’ve had my entire body tightly girdled for eight weeks — nothing helped,” she said.
She added that at one point, she stopped eating in an attempt to change her appearance.
“I was so embarrassed, I’d just spent all this money and the only way I could think of to fix it was zero calories, and so I just drank water. Or sometimes I would have a stick of celery or one apple,” she said. “I was losing my mind.”
After years in “hiding,” Evangelista is reclaiming her agency by being open about what happened.
“I couldn’t live in that pain any longer,” she said. “I knew I had to make a change, and the only change was to tell my truth.”
She was candid about how she prepared for her Vogue photo shoot, sharing that makeup artist Pat McGrath pulled her jaw and neck back with tape and elastics.
“Look, for photos I always think we’re here to create fantasies,” the model said. “We’re creating dreams. I think it’s allowed. Also, all my insecurities are taken care of in these pictures, so I got to do what I love to do.”
Evangelista is stepping back into the spotlight in more ways than one. She also recently shared that she will return to the runway next month in a special fashion show for Fendi in New York City.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
