Gigi Hadid and Halima Aden have been tapped to front the Cr Fashion Book September issue, which is dedicated to Unicef.
Wearing UNICEF T-shirts teamed with utility-style jackets for the dual covers, both models opened up in the accompanying feature about how they relate to the refugee crisis sweeping parts of the world.
“My dad (L.A. real estate developer Mohamed Hadid) was a Syrian refugee,” Gigi, who’s currently in Bangladesh with UNICEF, shared. “He was born in Nazareth, Palestine, and the week that his family was kicked out of their home, they moved to Syria. I think he was also about one week old. It’s crazy to think about what our families did for us.”
Halima, who made a name for herself in fashion after becoming the first high-profile model to wear a hijab, opened up about her life in a Kenyan refugee camp before she and her family moved to America.
“I was six and I can still remember that UNICEF sign and every single missionary who came to the camp. I forget names, but can never forget how they made me feel,” she recalled. “I honestly thought money grew on trees and that we would move into a big house. That’s what you see on TV. We moved to St. Louis and it wasn’t easy. The area that we lived in was very crime-filled. The school didn’t have an ESL (English as a Second Language) programme, so every day I went to school and learned nothing.”
Editor and CR Fashion Book creator Carine Roitfeld told The Hollywood Reporter that she chose to spotlight UNICEF USA as a response to the international news and the fact that “more children are on the move now than at any point since World War II”.
As well as posing, Gigi and Halima have also started a funding page to raise cash for kids uprooted from their homes around the world.
