Supermodel Linda Evangelista covers the May 2025 issue of Harper’s Bazaar US May 2025 as she faces her 60th birthday on May 10th. Evangelista is styled by Carlos Nazario wearing Cartier, Givenchy, Jacquemus, Maison Alaia, Tiffany and more, lensed by Anthony Seklaoui [IG]./ Hair by Mustafa Yanaz; makeup by Dick Page

Read the interview.

Coming to Grips with Reality

Evangelista’s relationship with her trauma over a CoolSculpting procedure gone rogue continues to dominate her life. One must process this reality knowing that the 90s superstar Linda Evangelista has experienced a host of health challenges.

‘Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia’ affects less than 1% of patients who opt for CoolSculpting sessions. The procedure freezes and destroys fat cells and is widely advertised in America. In Evangelista’s traumatizing case, she describes herself as being “brutally disfigured” and “permanently disfigured” from hardened fat in her abdomen, thighs, chin, under her armpits and between her thighs.

Linda underwent multiple, repeated in same location surgeries removing the lumps. She also settled in 2022 a $50 million lawsuit with CoolSculpting.

Evangelista underwent a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, but she is "fine" with the resulting scars, information she shares with Linda Wells [IG] for the Bazaar Beauty issue. Evangelista has also experienced operations following collapsed lungs on more than one occasion.

Linda explains : “My double mastectomy, I’m fine with it. I did put in very small implants. What they took out, I put in, cc-wise. There are more health challenges that would challenge the best of us, as the mother of an 18-year-old son Augustin, birthed with with Kering’s François-Henri Pinault, explains to Wells.

"I’ve had all those lung surgeries, oh my God, and my keloids and all the chest-tube scars and my C-section scar. There were a lot of surgeries. I’m cool. I’m fine with those. I won. I’m here. I won.”

This is an usually candid interview with the supermodel, who says she still can’t look at herself in the mirror but — even more important — she is grateful to be alive. Evangelista is in therapy to confront that issue of the mirror, and she also wants to be a grandmother. Just not right now.

“I don’t care how I age. I just want to age. It doesn’t have to be gracefully. I really, really, really don’t want to die. I have still so much to do. I’m finally getting comfortable with myself and with everything, and now I want to enjoy it,” she said.
“I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive, and I’m going to do what I have to do . . . I’m going to fight because I don’t want it any other way. I’m not done.”