“He was always religious and he always prayed with us. Mohamed Hadid was born in Nazareth and lived in Syria and Lebanon, moving to the US when he was 14. What is even less noted is that the Hadids are Muslim and were raised observant by their immigrant father. It’s as if, between the rise of Kendall Kardashian and the Hadids, the fashion world is currently and a little belatedly trying to recreate Clueless and Beverly Hills 90210 on the runways. What is less noted is that the Hadids are distinctly similar to the Kardashians, not just because they are sisters, but because they had an absurdly privileged childhood in Los Angeles. Photograph: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty Images They have helped them to make that ever-so-essential crossover from the lucrative but relatively niche world of fashion to the enormously lucrative and not niche at all world of celebrity. The other thing to know about the Hadids is that they have a tendency to date pop stars – Gigi lives with Zayn Malik and Bella dated The Weeknd, and despite the former owing his career to Simon Cowell and the latter’s horrendous abuse of the concept of spelling, these are both relationships that have worked in the models’ favour. Gigi came along first, in both life and modelling, followed shortly thereafter by Bella, and while Gigi has the obvious mainstream appeal, Bella is considered the slightly cooler one, which, in modelling terms, means she is totally gorgeous but in a slightly more interesting way than her sister (don’t you hate it when your perfect looks aren’t quite interesting enough?). The short summary is that Gigi and her younger sister, Bella, are enormous supermodels, the “enormous” referring to the size of their careers as opposed to the size of them, obviously.
Thankfully, I am here to guide you, sherpa-like, through the dark forest of fashion facts and gossip. But in order to be up to speed on the zeitgeist, you absolutely need to know about them. “Need” to care about? Possessing an in-depth knowledge of two models is not the law yet, Josie, as far as I know.