Christy Nicole Turlington (born January 2, 1969 in Walnut Creek, California) is a British Salvadoran-American supermodel best known for representing Calvin Klein fragrances since 1987. She grew up in Danville, California, with a British father and a mother from El Salvador. She has also worked on various campaigns for Maybelline Cosmetic and Giorgio Armani, has appeared in several films about the fashion industry and was a co-founder of the now defunct Fashion Café.
Turlington can lay claim to a long list of accomplishments in the modeling industry, having had numerous million dollar contracts with companies like Maybelline, Chanel and Calvin Klein. Although she is known as one of the most successful supermodels in history, Christy has rejected the 'supermodel' label. She is widely respected in the fashion industry as one of the friendliest and most professional models in the business. In 1998, she became a part of a group of supermodels in 1988 along with Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour and Tatjana Patitz. Christy along with Naomi and Linda were frequently booked together and became known as the "Trinity".
During the 1990s, she appeared in the cult film Unzipped, a documentary about fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, and the fashion mockumentary film Prêt-à-Porter by famed director Robert Altman. Additionally, she was featured in Catwalk, a documentary covering life on the fashion runways, by director Robert Leacock. The documentry was filmed in 1993 and premiered in 1996. The film followed Christy and her fellow models Naomi Campbell, Yasmin Le Bon, Kate Moss and Carla Bruni as they jetted around London, Milan, Paris and New York for the Spring Fashion Weeks. It included rare footage of what goes on behind the scenes at big shows including fittings, parties, shopping and catfights. The film was shot in black and white and color, and featured many top designers at work like a young John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld and Gianni Versace only one year before his death.
More recently, she has become a partner in three successful business co-ventures: An ayurvedic skincare line, Sundari, and two clothing lines produced by Puma: Nuala, an active women's clothing line, and Mahanuala, a women's yoga-wear line.
On August 11, 2006, Women's Wear Daily reported that Christy signed a multi-year contract with Maybelline, marking her return to the company that made her famous with its "Maybe She's Born With It" ad campaign.
Christy Turlington has graced over 500 magazine covers. Her face is used on the mannequins created by Ralph Pucci for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her unclothed form was used in a PETA campaign, under the motto, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur."
Turlington has been practicing Yoga for almost 15 years and is the author of Living Yoga: Creating A Life Practice. Owing to this interest in Eastern religions, she went back to school in 1994 and graduated cum laude in 1999, from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study of New York University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in Comparative Religion and Eastern Philosophy. An ex-smoker whose father died of lung cancer, Turlington is also an anti-smoking activist and a practicing Catholic .
On June 7, 2003, she married actor-filmmaker Edward Burns in a Catholic ceremony. U2 frontman, Bono gave the bride away. They have two children, a daughter, Grace (b. October 25, 2003), and a son, Finn (b. February 2006).
