Alana Hadid, Bella and Gigi’s older sister, debuts as a model at 40

Alana Hadid, 40, knows the world of fashion well, but she has always been behind the scenes. She is a fashion designer and in 2017, she co-founded the brand La Detresse with her partner Emily Perlstein, which focuses on denim and knitwear. She has left the catwalk to her younger sisters: Gigi and Bella Hadid. Gigi Hadid received the Model of the Year award in 2015, when she was barely 20 just and had just been working for two years. The 28-year-old is now one of the highest-paid models in the industry, with an estimated income of $20 million. Bella Hadid, 26, followed in her footsteps and quickly saw similar success. She is the face of brands such as Dior, Max Mara, Michael Kors and Calvin Klein, and walks the catwalks for Chanel, Bottega Veneta and Givenchy. Even the youngest of the family, Anwar Hadid, 24, made the leap to modeling in 2015. But he became more famous for his relationship with singer Dua Lipa, which ended in 2019. While her siblings have led campaigns and magazines, Alana Hadid has kept a low profile. Until now, when she has shown that it is never too late to try something for the first time.

In her case, Alana Hadid has made her debut as a model, appearing at Copenhagen Fashion Week. She opened the Saks Potts show on August 7, wearing a macramé bra and a cropped beige jacket, paired with a blue sequin skirt over jeans and flip-flops. It was a happy accident, she told People magazine. “I said yes, as it’s something that I’ve decided to do in my 40s — just say yes to a lot of things, and it was amazing. It was phenomenal,” she said.

It all happened, she says, because she decided not to go to Burning Man this year. Instead of going to the festival — which is held every year in the Nevada desert and this year saw thousands of people trapped by flooding — the designer decided to travel to Denmark to follow her passion for Scandinavian art. Once in the city, she met some of her favorite designers, who were presenting collections at Copenhagen Fashion Week, and they suggested she walk down the runway.

Alana Hadid accepted, and it seems that she took a liking to the catwalk. A month later, she appeared at one of the most important events in the industry: New York Fashion Week — this time as a model for Elena Vélez show on Tuesday. “Everyone’s just really excited for me,” she told People in reference to her fashion-savvy family.

Alana is the daughter of Palestinian real estate developer Mohamed Hadid and Mary Butler, who were married until 1992. She is the older half-sister of Gigi, Bella and Anwar, who were born after Hadid married Dutch model Yolanda van den Herik. “We’re a super supportive family of all the things that everyone’s doing. We’re always doing a million things, and we just support each other. They were like, ‘You’re going to kill it,’” she said, in reference to her model sisters. Alana jokes, though, that she didn’t get any advice from Gigi and Bella, who have walked for some of the biggest designers in the business: “Maybe I should have asked for some,” she said with a laugh.

Her debut marks the beginning of a modeling career that Alana, at age 40, was not expecting. “This just happened to happen right after my 40th birthday, which I thought was a fortuitous gift, and it was like the universe offered it up to me,” she told People. “I see so many people, especially women, nervous about turning 40, but so many opportunities can open up at 40. Life’s just beginning.”

Modeling may not have been in her plans, but now she is eager to continue doing it: “I really want to [continue]. I think I found something else that I’m really passionate about in fashion, and it’s exhilarating. I would love to do it all over the world.”

It seems that the Hadids’ passion for the catwalk runs in the family. In Alana’s case, that feeling may just have taken a little longer to awaken. Alana has another sister, Marielle, 43, who is an interior designer. Will she too end up walking the runway?

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