Cindy C. and Me

When I was in college, I spent a great deal of time with Cindy, personal trainer Radu, and a chair while performing moves to the workout video “Shape Your Body.” Ten years and 10 pounds later (ahem, make that 15 on both), the videos are long gone, but I still dig Cindy. So, when I heard she was going to be at the Grapevine Mills Rooms to Go, I did a few leg lifts, gassed up the car, and headed that way. I wanted to see how she looked, find out if she’s nice (I’ve heard mixed things), and, more importantly, I wanted to find out if she would donate a couch for our new D Home lounge. For those who care, jump!

Okay, first of all, she’s still beautiful. She has great skin–but she’s not overly Botoxed. She’s tall, and towered over everyone in the store. Clad in red pants, a cream blazer, and amazing Alaia shoes, she was approving photos on an iBook. (And disapproving. “Lose the phallic item in the back of that picture,” was one comment.)

So, when it’s my turn, I suck in my gut, and sit on the opposite side of a denim sofa (”We have this in my kids’ playroom,” she says.). Guess what? In spite of the fact that her gorgeous wedding ring almost blinds me and her Alaia-clad foot rests on my sad little purse the entire ten minutes we speak, I like her. When I ask about her relationship with Rooms to Go, she answers forthrightly (in a Midwestern accent) that when she first got the call four and a half years ago, she wasn’t sure if the idea of “Cindy Crawford” and furniture was something that was going to connect with the public. But when she arrived at the Grapevine Mills store (”The midpoint between Tampa, where the company is based, and Malibu, where I live,” she explains.), she was blown away by the value that they were able to offer. She asserts that style doesn’t have to cost a million dollars. “One time my mom borrowed a Donna Karan dress, and she really liked it. She asked me where she could get it, and I just told her to keep it. I was embarrassed to tell her that it was $600. She would never spend that kind of money on herself then—or even now. I was 21 or 22 at the time, and I started thinking, ‘Why do nice things always have to cost a lot of money?’”

She says she’s tried to bring that message to all of her projects: You don’t have to have a lot of money to have great style, and she cites both her relationship with Revlon and her exercise videos as examples.

As for her personal style at home, she says it’s “eclectic rooted in traditional. But updated traditional.” She and her husband, nightclub mogul Rande Gerber, and her two kids live in a tropical colonial on the beach in Malibu. “We wanted it to be like an Aman Resort. It’s a barefoot, no-coaster household,” she says. The couple obviously has an extensive photograph collection, including work by Richard Avedon and Peter Beard—and “we finally started collecting ‘real art,’” she laughs. They recently purchased a piece by Basquiat. (Trivia alert: Fellow supermodel Stephanie Seymore and her husband Peter Brant are HUGE Basquiat collectors. And Basquiat spent a great deal of time in Dallas. Local connection found. Sigh of relief.)

Rande owns a number of bars, so it’s little wonder that the couple digs entertaining—but they like to keep things casual. Friends gather around the firepit overlooking the water, and they watch the sun set while noshing on snacks and downing cocktails. (Okay, she didn’t say “downing,” but I inferred it from my trip to Gerber’s Sky Bar in LA.) Cindy really likes to cook. “But do people in LA even eat?” I ask her. She smiles. “We sometimes have a chef who helps when we have parties, and we’ll laugh, ‘No one is going to eat this anyway,’” she says. “No one touches the cheese plates.” But the good people in LA will eat pie (who knows?) and chips and salsa.

After telling me that she liked my shrug twice and asking where I got it (Anthropologie!), I take my leave. Then I have to slink back, look for my keys, find them in my purse, and almost pass out from sucking in my tummy for so long. I opt out of asking for the couch. Sorry, Christine.