Growing up, actress and model Kaia Gerber was quite accustomed to seeing her mother nude. In fact, nude images of her mom—the illustrious supermodel Cindy Crawford—were a gift, Gerber told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview to accompany her February 2026 cover appearance.
“They were, to me, artistic,” she told the magazine. “It wasn’t vulgar; it wasn’t objectification.” Instead, Gerber said she considered it “a gift to grow up in a house that was without shame for the female body.”
We couldn’t agree more—and some of those gifts are courtesy of Playboy.
Crawford appeared on the cover of the July, 1988 issue of Playboy in a pictorial called “Skinsuits.” Shot by legendary fashion photographer Herb Ritts, a 22-year-old Crawford appears in various states of undress, romping on the beach. This shoot came early in her career (after what Playboy called her “corporeal debut” in Sports Illustrated that same year), a move designed to increase her appeal and draw in an audience beyond her fashion circle, according to the New York Times.
It worked, but Crawford said she shot her Playboy pictorial against the advice of her agents. “I don’t know, there was just something about it that intrigued me,” she said in Apple TV+’s The Super Models docuseries. “So against the advice of my agents, I said ‘yes.'”
Now, nearly 38 years later, Crawford’s shoots aren’t just timeless, they encouraged a healthy understanding of nudity and the female form in her daughter. That’s something worth celebrating with a look back at Crawford’s incredible 1988 shoot.
