After a nearly six-year hiatus from modeling, Gemma Ward is back like she never left. The Australian-born beauty, who commanded up to $25,000 per show and had amassed 24 Vogue covers worldwide at the time of her abrupt step back, is now doing her part to quell the fashion world’s abandonment issues. In 2013, she starred in a campaign for Australian brand Country Road alongside her daughter, Naia. In 2014, she walked the Prada Spring 2015 show, sending social media a-tizzy. Last year, she covered Vogue Australia and starred in the Carine Roitfeld-styled Givenchy spring campaign together with 26 other famous faces. Now, the woman who was once hailed “the next Kate Moss,” thanks to her unique doll-face, won’t let anything — even pregnancy — slow down her (once faltering, now) triumphant return.
Yesterday, Ward, who is 15 weeks pregnant with her second child, walked the runway for Australian department store David Jones. “I am really excited that they’ve embraced me and this concept,” Ward told The Australian Daily Telegraph earlier this week, continuing, “I just think it is a really lovely way to celebrate a period in what some women go through and it is nice to celebrate all the different ways your body changes.”
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Gemma joined the ranks of amazons like Gisele Bündchen, Alessandra Ambrosio, Bianca Blati and Ashleigh Good, all of whom have strutted their stuff while growing a human inside them. “I’m really doing this so that my baby can have a first catwalk show early,” Ward, who made her runway debut at 15, quipped.
[ 10 Times Gemma Ward and Daughter Naia Made Our Hearts Melt ]
While Ward’s face tugs at our mid-aughts-nostalgic heartstrings, perhaps the most exciting aspect of the model’s return is the fact that the industry is re-embracing an authentic, independent woman who eschewed the conventional modeling career path and put personal fulfillment first. A 28-year-old mother of two, Ward still has a lifetime of achievement ahead of her, and we can’t wait to see those doe eyes staring back at us from many more runways to come. Get that MILF Money.
[ via The Cut ]
