Cindy Crawford Understands the Pain Daughter Kaia Gerber Is Going Through

Few people have been photographed as often as Cindy Crawford, one of the defining figures of the supermodel era.

On the catwalk and across the covers of magazines including Vogue, she has long possessed an effortless ability to command attention.

That made the advertising campaign she appeared in last spring all the more poignant. Crawford was photographed alongside her husband, Rande Gerber, and their children, Kaia and Presley.

The family was promoting an American activewear brand, smiling in the sunshine and laughing as they played together on the beach.

What made the images so affecting was seeing Crawford not as the celebrated supermodel, but as a proud mother quietly supporting what may be her greatest achievements: her children.

In an accompanying YouTube film, Crawford embraces her model daughter Kaia, who bears a striking resemblance to her, with the Pacific Ocean glistening behind them.

The film also shows her resting her head against her son Presley’s. His sharply defined features made him instantly recognisable as her firstborn.

Now, that intimate portrait of a close family unafraid to express its love has become a deeply painful reminder of a life cut tragically short.

Presley Gerber, 27, followed his mother into modelling. In recent years, however, he had spoken publicly about his struggles with mental health and substance abuse. He died on Sunday in Los Angeles.

He had entered a rehabilitation centre only hours earlier. His cause of death has yet to be determined, although a drugs overdose is strongly suspected.

The loss will leave his mother, father and younger sister, 25, facing unimaginable grief. His sister’s name was tattooed on his left arm.

For Crawford, who turned 60 this year, the death of her son recalls the devastating loss suffered by her own mother, Jennifer, half a century earlier.

Crawford grew up in Illinois as the middle of three sisters. She was only ten when her younger brother, Jeffrey, died from leukaemia at the age of four after being ill for two years.

A family friend told the Daily Mail this week: ‘Cindy has never fully got over her only brother’s death. She talks about it and it still haunts her.’

In a 2024 podcast appearance, the model discussed the loss and the survivor’s guilt she carried, especially because she and her sisters understood how deeply their father, John, had wanted a son.

Poignantly, she also spoke of how the birth of her own children had shaped her perspective of that loss.

‘When I had my first kid [Presley], I called my mom, and I was like: ”How did you survive?” she said. ‘Because you can’t imagine losing a child until you have a child, and even then, you don’t want to imagine it.

‘I remember her saying: ‘Well, I had three other kids looking at me to lead them through this.’

‘I think that because of us, she got out of bed and just did what she had to do.’

Now Cindy faces the enormity of a loss she never wanted to imagine but must, surely, have feared during the turbulent journey her adored son – the little boy who would cry when hair and make-up artists arrived at home ‘because he knew it meant mommy was leaving for work’ – had endured in recent years.

She also faces comforting her daughter in a grief so familiar.

They are all broken, but Kaia is, we are told, her pressing concern.

‘Suddenly she’s an only child,’ says the family friend. ‘She’s lost her brother who she loved so much. 

‘While Kaia has lots of friends and a boyfriend who is there for her, Cindy is deeply worried how Presley’s death will affect her in the long run. 

‘She believes from her own experience that it will stay with her for life. How could it not?’

Presley, or Prez as he was known, was born in 1999, a year after Cindy’s marriage to Rande, 64, who along with family friend George Clooney is the co-founder of tequila brand Casamigos.

As Cindy wrote in her autobiography Becoming: ‘There was never any doubt in my mind that I wanted to have children.

‘It didn’t happen right away though. Finally, after several months, I got the smiley face on the stick. We were overjoyed.’

She had Presley at home.

‘I woke up at 2am on the morning of July 2 and 17 hours later I was in bed with my husband and my new baby boy. Pure bliss.

‘Presley Walker Gerber entered our world that day and I became a mother. It was the hardest, most challenging thing I’ve done. It was also the most rewarding.’

Two years later Kaia arrived.

‘Becoming a parent and learning to love a child are probably the most selfless things a person can do,’ Cindy added. ‘I hope that I can for ever be a source of unconditional love to my children – just like my mom was for me.’

There were, she admitted, times she missed events, but she strove to be a present mum.

Presley was a young athlete, spending hours in the water – school surf team, water polo, swim squad. ‘The strongest addiction I ever had was surfing and being in the ocean,’ he once said.

But the seeds of a lifelong battle with his mental health were sown early. By the time he was signed, aged 15, by IMG models (his sister, then 13, was signed at the same time), he was already taking the antidepressant Prozac.

Diagnosed at the time with both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder – Presley would later say diagnoses were thrown around ‘like candy’ – the progression into drug dependence began.

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Drugs to suppress, drugs to stimulate, drugs to help him sleep, for anxiety, for depression. On and on it went.

There was a whirl of global travel. He walked the catwalk for Italian label Moschino aged 16, appeared in a Calvin Klein campaign with Kaia, graced the cover of GQ. It was glossy and exciting.

‘I remember within the first week of signing, I’m like in New York, people are taking pictures of me, shirt off. My whole life changed within a month,’ he later reflected. ‘I had to grow up quickly.’

But there was another side to it all.

In 2019 he was charged with driving under the influence and sentenced to three years’ probation. The following year he had the word ‘Misunderstood’ tattooed across his face.

‘It says misunderstood because that’s how I felt my entire life,’ he said in an interview. He later had it removed.

In the last three years, Presley had begun to share his experiences on Instagram, creating a series of video diaries entitled Mental Health Mondays in which he documented the drugs, the depression, rehabilitation and the more alternative and holistic therapies. 

The videos are articulate, earnest and painfully frank. His Instagram profile reads ‘Be Kind’. Kaia reflected on her brother’s struggles and his confessional approach in an interview with Vogue, published just a month before his death.

‘When something like that happens in a family, it kind of levels everyone,’ she said. ‘I think that’s also why I started to self-identify as the easy one and never wanted to ask for help. Because it felt like too much to have two children who were needing.’

She reflected, too, on her brother’s willingness to share his experiences. ‘There’s only so much you can hide from the world,’ she said. ‘And trying to put a lid on something just makes the person feel like you’re ashamed of them.’

Presley’s posts, however, stopped late last year.

‘I had to step back and take care of my own mental health for a bit. But I’m coming back soon — stronger, clearer, more intentional than ever,’ he wrote in November.

And then, in March, he shared the news that he had been in Mexico, undergoing experimental treatment with Ibogaine, a psychedelic drug used to treat substance dependence, which is illegal in the US but legal in Mexico.

This week, the Daily Mail spoke exclusively to holistic healing coach Jessica Salter, from Long Island, who was at the Beyond clinic in Cancun at the same time as Presley, having also signed up for Ibogaine treatment.

Jessica says: ‘I went to the clinic because I wanted to work through some pain that I was carrying and Ibogaine piqued my interest.’

She doesn’t want to reveal too much of what she shared with Presley but says: ‘He was a very sweet person. He was very open about why he was there. Everybody liked him.’

They were part of a group of 15 to 20 guests who shared workshops, talked and ate together in the communal dining area. ¬Presley didn’t hide his identity.

Jessica said: ‘One of the most profound moments I had was to be with someone like Presley, with all his resources, and to be with someone else from a tiny little town, who had never travelled anywhere before and never really done anything.

‘They were both in the same place and both had things they needed help with.

‘It was just such a true illustration of the fact that there is no rhyme or reason to it [addiction]. Everybody deserves the same level of compassion and empathy. Everybody just wants to be free from pain.’

Jessica’s seven-hour experience with the psychedelic drug was ‘very intense’ but, she says, it helped her with the emotional issues she had been having.

She left the day Presley was due to have his ‘flood dose’ – the maximum amount of pure Ibogaine Hydrochloride (HCl) administered to a patient seeking to eliminate or interrupt addiction and stop withdrawal symptoms.

The knowledge of Presley’s death weighs heavy. ‘It’s just very, very sad,’ says Jessica. ‘Especially when you read about how much he struggled and how long he tried [to beat his addictions]. 

‘But he took some of the shame and stigma away from it by being so upfront and putting it out into the open. That was brave of him.’

As is often the way when a life lived under the spotlight is cut short, speculation has been rife this last week.

Presley was reportedly being prescribed ketamine by a doctor, despite his ongoing struggles.

Ketamine is the same drug that was listed as a contributing cause of Matthew Perry’s death in 2023.

What drugs may or may not have been in Presley’s system will become clearer as police and medical examiners complete their investigations.

How tragic that just a few months ago, in June, Presley glowed as he stood, arms around both parents, at a fundraiser in which he was participating in a candid panel discussion about mental health. 

‘The most free I felt was when I was finally honest with myself,’ he told the audience.

That his parents were there, supportive as ever, was no surprise.

Celebrity photographer Katie Levine, who photographed Presley several times, tells the Daily Mail: ‘I’ve been sober for ten years and I was always cheering him on.

‘I felt like his parents and his sister were always there for him, giving him a lot of support. He was very proud of his roots.’

She remembers a young man full of promise.

‘He was outspoken and fun and not at all serious. I think he was the boy version of Cindy, super-handsome and the camera loved him.’

Will Beck, a financial planner from Utah, met Presley through business in 2021.

He remembers the pride Presley had in his sister, his admiration for his father (whose business success he was so keen to replicate), and the love of his family.

‘His mom was one of the greatest supermodels, but he grew up with fame and wasn’t impressed by it,’ he says, talking exclusively to the Daily Mail. 

‘He just thought of her as his mom. I think they were a genuine, loving family.

‘There’d been multiple times I could see he was struggling, and I’d reach out to him and tell him a lot of people had his back.

‘It sucks that he had so many demons, but he said addiction was part of his life. He’d fall back into it, and his parents would try to help him. I know he wanted to beat it and just couldn’t.’

Back in LA, for the Gerbers there is heartache.

‘From the outside people thought Cindy had been living the perfect life,’ says the family friend. ‘It looked like she had it all. Money, fame, beauty and a solid marriage. But sadly there was a great deal of heartache behind it.

‘Like the loss of Cindy’s brother, the one consolation the family has is that Presley is no longer suffering. However, what he’s left behind is a heartbroken family who will never be able to fully heal. There will always be that one missing piece.’