Karlie Kloss buys iD: what if models took over fashion media?

After W magazine reacquired at the end of 2020, Karlie Kloss is saved id. This British magazine was founded by Terry Jones in 1980 and has remained iconic ever since, especially thanks to its covers depicting fashion and counterculture figures with only one visible eye. The top model of the 2010s has already created the cover herself, and that’s exactly what she decided to publish to confirm the news, in a way that was more wink than metaphorical.

Karlie Kloss buys iD magazine and becomes CEO

It is through her company Bedford Media that Karlie Kloss becomes CEO of iD, saving the title from the financial difficulties of Vice Media (the owner group which declared bankruptcy in May 2023), for an undisclosed sum. Fashion business.

The current editor-in-chief, Alastair McKimm, will remain as such and will also take on responsibilities as he even becomes creative director and editor-in-chief of other international editions. A bit like the Condé Nast group does now with Anna Wintour who directs all the editions of Rowing from 2020 for reasons of economy and consistency. Is Karlie Kloss preparing to become a media mogul, after being a star of catwalks, ad campaigns and magazine covers? Will your experience of her as her model make you want to give more power to models, increasingly dispossessed of their own image, their own face and their own body, at the dawn of the looming revolution of artificial intelligence?

When models dictated fashion law

You may have seen the documentary series The Super models on AppleTV+. Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington recount their golden era as runway models, until they were replaced by crowds of ever thinner, younger and more anonymous models. Especially because designers were starting to get fed up with the fact that the media and especially the general public were more interested in these few top models rather than them and their creations.

Since then, there are few models whose mere name can conjure up a mental image. Among the most contemporary we can think of Gigi and Bella Hadid. And surely it’s because they owe their initial fame not to the catwalks, but to reality TV, a sign of the models’ loss of influence and power in the fashion economy. But one exception could change the rule: Karlie Kloss.

Who is Karlie Kloss, anyway?

Born in 1992, this American top model, trained as a dancer, signed her first agency contract at the age of 15, in 2007, and quickly became a success. Between June 2013 and June 2014, Forbes estimated her annual income at $4 million, making her one of the highest-paid models of her generation. In 2015, Karlie Kloss launched her YouTube channel and in 2016 her computer programming training for women, increasing her annual income to 10 million. So much so that she no longer needs to walk the catwalk or pose for advertising campaigns, apart from a few particularly lucrative exceptions, which since 2018 have exceeded 13 million dollars per year.

That year, Karlie Kloss married Joshua Kushner. This American businessman and investor turns out to be the son of real estate developer Charles Kushner and the brother of Jared Kushner (Ivanka Trump’s husband), Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Since then, the couple has raised two boys (Levi Joseph born in 2021 and Elijah Jude in 2023) and cultivates discretion. After years of seeing her image and life story under the control of others, it may be that Karlie Kloss wants to reverse the situation by taking the lead in the media with different positions. After much luxury W magazineand now the sharpest id, will Bedford Media Group buy another title? And above all, will the face of fashion magazines change?

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