Cindy Crawford’s A–Z of New York

Before Cindy Crawford became one of the most recognizable women in the world, she was a New York newcomer who, like many of us, struggled to hail a cab. “I didn’t know the light had to be on,” she laughs. “It took me about a week!”

PORTER’s September cover star’s life in fashion began in the Big Apple. Signing with Elite Model Management at the age of 17, Crawford moved to New York three years later to join its roster of top models – and the rest is history. She initially lived downtown before moving to Manhattan and into the former NYPD headquarters building where her neighbors included Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Calvin Klein. She eventually settled in the Upper East Side when she married her husband Rande Gerber, and, as she puts it, became “an uptown girl.”

Although she now lives between California and Miami, New York is the city that helped make Crawford one of the defining faces of the ’90s supermodel era. It’s the place that provided her with some of her most memorable moments: walking her first shows for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren in 1988, shooting with photographers like Arthur Elgort and Peter Lindbergh on its iconic streets and even dancing with musical polymath Prince at Nell’s in Greenwich Village.

Here, Crawford shares her personal A–Z of New York…

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