Who Is Karlie Kloss?
If you’ve ever found yourself typing “who is Karlie Kloss” into a search bar, you’re certainly not alone — and the answer is far more layered than you might expect. Karlie Kloss is not just a pretty face on a magazine cover. She is a 40-time international Vogue cover girl, a TIME “100 Most Influential People” honoree, a nonprofit founder, a television host, a magazine CEO, and one of the most genuinely inspiring figures to emerge from the fashion world in the last two decades.
What makes Karlie Kloss so compelling is the fact that she never stayed in one lane. She went from walking runways at 15 to enrolling at NYU, from sitting in the front row at fashion week to learning how to build drones at a coding boot camp. She is, in every sense of the word, a reinvention story — and it is one worth reading from the very beginning.
Early Life and Background: A Midwest Girl with Big Dreams
Karlie Elizabeth Kloss was born on August 3, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois, to Tracy Kloss, a freelance art director, and Kurt Kloss, an emergency physician. When Karlie was just two years old, the family relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, where she would spend most of her formative years. She grew up in a full and lively household alongside three sisters — an older sister named Kristine, and twin younger sisters, Kimberly and Kariann.
Long before anyone was asking how tall is Karlie Kloss or looking her up on the covers of fashion magazines, she was a young girl wrestling with her own insecurities about her height. She trained seriously in classical ballet, but by the time she was 13 and already standing at 5’8″, her instructors told her she would never be a professional ballerina — her frame was simply too tall for the discipline. That same height, however, would eventually become her greatest professional asset.
She attended Webster Groves High School in Webster Groves, Missouri, where she was a cheerleader in her freshman year, graduating in 2011. Few of her classmates could have predicted that the tall girl in the hallway would soon be gracing the covers of the world’s most prestigious fashion publications.
How Tall Is Karlie Kloss?
Karlie Kloss stands at an impressive 6 feet 2 inches tall. It is a height she once openly admitted to struggling with — recalling in an interview with Naomi Campbell that she even tried putting weights on her head as a child hoping it would stunt her growth. Today, that height is one of the most recognizable things about her and a defining element of her signature runway presence.
Discovery and Early Modeling Career
The story of how Karlie Kloss entered the modeling world reads almost like a fairy tale. In 2005, Elite Model Management Chicago spotted a then-13-year-old Karlie at a local benefit runway show. They quickly forwarded her photos to their New York office, and by 2006, at just 14 years old, she had her first professional modeling contract in hand.
Her early work included shoots for Abercrombie Kids, photographed by the legendary Bruce Weber, and a cover spread titled “Almost Famous” for Scene Magazine — a fitting title in retrospect. By 2008, Karlie was walking an extraordinary 64 shows across New York, Milan, and Paris in a single season — walking exclusively for Calvin Klein, closing for Marc Jacobs, and opening for Carolina Herrera. By the time she was 17, Vogue Paris had already named her one of the “Top 30 Models of the 2000s.”
That is not a career — that is a phenomenon.
Rise to Supermodel Status
By the time Karlie Kloss had reached her early twenties, her name was synonymous with the modern era of supermodels. By 2019, she had appeared on 40 international Vogue covers and had signed with some of the most prestigious agencies in the business — Elite Model Management, Next Management, IMG Models, and The Society.
Her runway résumé reads like a who’s who of fashion royalty. She commanded catwalks and major campaigns for Chanel, Dior, Marc Jacobs, and Versace, while also becoming the global spokesmodel for Estée Lauder and Adidas. Her distinctive walk — which she once described with humor as a “moody gait” — became one of the most talked-about in the industry.
In 2013, Karlie Kloss became a Victoria’s Secret Angel, one of the most coveted titles in all of modeling. She remained an Angel until 2015, when she made the decision to step away from the brand. She later cited concerns with the brand’s messaging to young women as one of her motivations for leaving — a quiet but powerful statement that hinted at the values-driven woman she was becoming.
Education and Intellectual Pursuits
Here is where the Karlie Kloss story takes a genuinely fascinating turn. At the height of her modeling career, when most people in her position would have been content simply to enjoy the ride, Karlie chose to go back to school.
In September 2015, she enrolled in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, a program known for its interdisciplinary and self-directed approach to learning. She studied coding, entrepreneurship, and social impact — subjects that felt a long way from the fashion industry but were clearly the seeds of something much bigger.
Her pivot toward technology was inspired, in large part, by friendships with tech entrepreneurs. She attended a coding boot camp at New York City’s Flatiron School, where she learned the fundamentals of how technology is actually built. That experience was something of an awakening. “I really love understanding big, abstract ideas,” she said. She described the moment of clarity she had when she realized that the technology running everyone’s lives was something anyone could learn to understand and even create.
Entrepreneurial Ventures: Building Beyond the Runway
Kode With Klossy — Karlie Kloss Girls Who Code Initiative
Perhaps the most meaningful chapter in Karlie Kloss’s story is the founding of Kode With Klossy. In 2015, inspired by her own experience at the Flatiron School coding boot camp, she launched this nonprofit with a very clear mission: to provide free coding camps for girls and non-binary teens across the United States.
Every year, Kode With Klossy hosts free two-week summer coding camps where participants between the ages of 13 and 18 learn programming fundamentals — including HTML, JavaScript, and Swift — and, by the end of camp, build their own app or website. The program has reached thousands of young women since its launch, providing not just technical skills but genuine confidence and a sense of belonging in an industry that has historically excluded them.
For this work, Karlie was featured on the covers of Fast Company and Forbes, and recognized on TIME’s prestigious 100 Most Influential People list. It is one of the most substantive charitable initiatives to come out of the fashion world in recent memory, and it reflects a genuine and personal commitment on Karlie’s part — not a celebrity PR strategy.
i-D Magazine Acquisition
In 2023, Karlie Kloss made perhaps her most ambitious business move yet: she acquired i-D Magazine, the iconic British fashion and culture publication, and stepped into the role of chief executive officer. It was a bold statement that positioned her firmly in the media mogul space and signaled that her entrepreneurial ambitions were far from finished.
Brand Collaborations and Business Ventures
Long before her nonprofit work or her magazine acquisition, Karlie showed a genuine flair for business through her collaborations. In collaboration with Momofuku Milk Bar, she created “Karlie’s Kookies” — vegan, gluten-free cookies sold during Fashion’s Night Out in New York City, with proceeds benefiting FEED Projects and hungry children around the world. It was small in scale but emblematic of the values she would continue to build her brand around.
In April 2018, Estée Lauder announced her as their newest global spokesmodel and brand ambassador — a prestigious partnership that reflected her enduring relevance and influence in the beauty and fashion world.
Gateway Coalition
In 2022, Karlie launched the Gateway Coalition, an organization created to provide critical support to abortion clinics in the Midwestern United States. It was another example of her willingness to use her platform for causes with real social stakes — and a reflection of how she has consistently chosen impact over image.
Television and Media Career
Why Did Karlie Kloss Leave Project Runway?
In October 2018, Karlie Kloss stepped into the role of host and executive producer of Project Runway, taking over from the legendary Heidi Klum on the show’s seventeenth season. She expressed genuine excitement about the opportunity, saying she loved the idea of giving a platform to aspiring American designers pursuing their creative and entrepreneurial dreams.
As for why did Karlie Kloss leave Project Runway — the show’s run on Bravo concluded, and Karlie moved on to focus on her expanding business ventures, including her media acquisitions and advocacy work. Her tenure on the show was celebrated, and she brought a warm, approachable energy to the hosting role that resonated with viewers.
Beyond Project Runway, she also launched her own YouTube channel, Klossy, and hosted Freeform’s Movie Night with Karlie Kloss, where she screened her favorite films alongside celebrity guests including Selena Gomez and Ashley Graham.
The Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift Friendship: What Really Happened?
No article about Karlie Kloss would be complete without addressing the question that has been on so many people’s minds for years: what happened between Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift?
The friendship between Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift was once one of the most celebrated in celebrity circles. The two first connected in 2012 when Swift publicly gushed about her admiration for the model during a Vogue interview — famously saying she wanted to bake cookies with her. Kloss responded on Twitter, and a friendship was born. They met in person at the 2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and, from that point on, were practically inseparable.
At the peak of their friendship, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift appeared on the March 2015 cover of Vogue together, took road trips, attended each other’s events, and were frequently photographed as a tight-knit pair. Swift even reportedly kept a room for Kloss in her Tribeca compound, stocked with her favorite snacks.
So, when did Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift stop being friends? The cracks first became visible around 2016, when the pair were spotted together less and less frequently. Then came the signals that felt hard to ignore. In 2017, Swift released the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” which featured the names of her famous squad on a t-shirt — but Kloss’s name was conspicuously absent.
What happened between Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss became a matter of significant public speculation after Kloss was seen developing closer ties with Scooter Braun — who, in 2019, acquired Swift’s master recordings, a move Swift publicly described as deeply painful — as well as the Kardashians, who had their own well-documented history with Swift. Many fans connected the dots and concluded that these associations were central to the rift.
A source later told Page Six that a specific incident involving Kloss inviting people over to Swift’s New York apartment without asking first had created a major fallout. Reps for both women denied the story, and Kloss repeatedly insisted in interviews that she and Swift remained on good terms. She even showed up at Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour in August 2018, posting a selfie with the singer backstage.
Swift, for her part, largely stayed silent — until her music seemed to speak for her. Her 2020 song “It’s Time to Go,” released as a bonus track on Evermore, contained lyrics that many fans interpreted as being directed at a former close female friend. What’s also notable is that Swift was absent from both of Kloss’s wedding ceremonies to Joshua Kushner in 2018 and 2019, citing prior commitments.
What happened with Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss may never be fully and publicly resolved — both women have moved on with their lives with remarkable success, and neither has chosen to turn the story into a spectacle. As recently as 2024, Kloss was asked about Swift’s music in an interview with Yahoo Life and spoke warmly about it, calling her music “classic.” She was also spotted at the Eras Tour in August 2023, dancing and enjoying the show. Whatever the full story, it appears both women have found a kind of peace with how things stand.
Philanthropy and Advocacy
Beyond Kode With Klossy and Gateway Coalition, Karlie Kloss has consistently used her platform to advocate for women’s rights and gender equity in a range of contexts. She is a vocal supporter of reproductive rights and actively champions programs that increase access for women in STEM fields.
Her work has been recognized repeatedly at the highest levels — from the TIME 100 list to the covers of Forbes and Fast Company. In 2017, she also won the Diane von Furstenberg Inspiration Award, a recognition that reflects the broader impact she has had as a role model and changemaker.
Personal Life: Karlie Kloss’s Husband and Kids
Who Is Karlie Kloss Married To?
Karlie Kloss is married to Joshua Kushner, a venture capitalist and founder of Thrive Capital. The two had been in a relationship for several years before confirming their engagement in July 2018 and marrying later that same year in an intimate ceremony. A second, larger celebration followed in June 2019.
Is Karlie Kloss Jewish?
Yes — ahead of her marriage to Joshua Kushner, Karlie Kloss converted to Judaism, a decision she described as deeply personal and meaningful. It was a genuine commitment rather than a formality, one that she has spoken about with care and sincerity.
Karlie Kloss’s Kids
Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner are the parents of two sons. Their first son, Levi Joseph Kushner, was born on March 11, 2021. Their second son, Elijah Jude Kushner, arrived on July 11, 2023. In January 2025, the couple announced they were expecting a third child, with an October 2025 due date.
Is Karlie Kloss Pregnant?
As of early 2025, yes — Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner announced a third pregnancy, with the couple sharing the exciting news publicly in January 2025.
Where Does Karlie Kloss Live?
Karlie Kloss currently resides in New York with her husband Joshua Kushner and their children. New York has been her home base for much of her adult life, and it remains the hub of both her business activities and personal world.
How Old Is Karlie Kloss?
Karlie Kloss was born on August 3, 1992, which makes her 33 years old as of 2026. She has accomplished more in those years than most people could dream of across multiple lifetimes.
Net Worth and Financial Profile
Karlie Kloss’s net worth is estimated at approximately $40 million as of 2025. That figure was not built on modeling fees alone — it reflects a genuinely diversified portfolio spanning brand partnerships, media acquisitions, speaking engagements, nonprofit leadership, and strategic business investments. In 2018 alone, she earned an estimated $14 million from her various professional endeavors, making her the second-highest-paid model in the world that year. Her income streams today include her ongoing partnerships with Estée Lauder and Adidas, her media assets including i-D Magazine, and the many business ventures she continues to develop behind the scenes.
Legacy and Impact: A Blueprint for Modern Reinvention
The full arc of Karlie Kloss’s story — from a 13-year-old spotted at a charity runway show in Missouri, to a global supermodel walking 64 shows a season, to a tech education advocate running coding camps for thousands of girls, to a media mogul serving as CEO of a major fashion publication — is, without question, one of the most compelling in modern public life.
What sets her apart is not just what she has achieved, but how she has gone about achieving it. She did not simply leverage her fame for endorsement deals and call it a business. She went back to school. She learned to code. She built a nonprofit from the ground up. She acquired a magazine. She launched a coalition to protect reproductive rights. She did all of this while maintaining a marriage, raising a family, and staying genuinely gracious in the public eye.
Her career demonstrates, in the most vivid terms, that personal reinvention is not only possible but profoundly powerful — especially when it is grounded in purpose rather than publicity.
Karlie Kloss is not just a model who did other things. She is a woman who refused to be defined by a single chapter of her story — and who kept writing new ones, each more ambitious than the last.
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