Christy Turlington Burns: Global Supermodel to Global Superadvocate

Christy Turlington Burns, the California-born beauty of Salvadoran descent, is more than a supermodel.  She’s also an advocate for human rights, a yoga practitioner, a businesswoman, and a mother.

Turlington’s career has taken her all over the world and on the covers and pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Time, V, Cookie, Mirabella, Elle… (just to name a few).  She’s one of four supermodels in Catwalk, a 1996 documentary (filmed in 1993) that followed her during Fashion Week in the major fashion capitals of the world.  Turlington has appeared in campaigns for Bottega Veneta, Canon Japan, Calvin Klein, Escada, Versace, and Maybelline.  There’s more.  Turlington is an author.  She penned Living Yoga: Living a Life of Practice, published in 2002 by Hyperion. 

As a businesswoman, Christy Turlington started her first two businesses out of college in 1999, Nuala and Sundari.  Both were formed out of her passion for yoga.  Nuala was a clothing line and Sundari is an Ayurvedic skin care brand which was sold to Marico Industries in 2003.  Turlington was satisfied when Sundari was sold because at least the brand was closer to its Indian heritage.  According to the Marico website, “Marico is one of India’s leading Consumer Products & companies in the global beauty and wellness space.”

Later on, after her modeling career took off and catapulted her to supermodel status, Turlington partnered with Claudia Schiffer, Elle Macpherson, and Naomi Campbell to open the Fashion Café in 1995.  The cafe went out of business a few years later.

Moreover, Turlington is a mother and her latest project is one that will be dear to mothers everywhere.  Her foundation, Every Mother Counts, works to reduce deaths that result from complications in pregnancy all over the world.  The organization educates women and acts to prevent maternal deaths.  A woman dies every 90 seconds from complications from pregnancy where most of those deaths were preventable.  The 2011 documentary, No Woman No Cry, was directed and produced by Turlington. 

“…just after delivering my first child, I suffered a serious complication. While I had a birth team that worked quickly to manage the situation, I was shocked to learn that more than 500,000 women die each year during childbirth.” -Christy Turlington Burns

   

 

Click Here to watch the trailer.

“In her gripping directorial debut, Christy Turlington Burns shares the powerful stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States…”

No Woman, No Cry aired on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network as a Mother’s Day special in May.   Visit Christy Turlington’s website to find out where you can view the complete documentary.

   

 For more info on what you’ve just read, please visit:

• christyturlington.com
• www.everymothercounts.org
• www.marico.com/html/index.html
• www.nydailynews.com/money/toplists/celebs_who_should_have_stuck/celebs_who_should_have_stuck.html
• nymag.com/fashion/models/cturlington/christyturlington 

 Christy Turlington is involved as an advocate for:

• Maternal health with care.org
• The need to eliminate HIV/AIDS with joinred.com/red
• Smoking cessation and lung cancer prevention with standup2cancer.org

Christy Turlington and Pop Culture Facts:

–Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington were given the nickname, Trinity, because Steven Meisel booked the three together often.

–Christy Turlington co-starring with Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista in George Michael’s “Freedom” video.  [(c) 1990 Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited]  Click Here to watch the video.