Linda Evangelista will always be beautiful but the 57-year-old supermodel taped back her face and neck on the new September cover of British Vogue. Linda suffered from a traumatic, “botched” surgery after undergoing a CoolSculpting treatment to remove fat cells. On the cover, Linda was covered up in headscarves and hats, but still looked beautiful.
On the cover, Linda rocked a red patent leather head scarf that was tied under her neck and added a matching bucket hat on top. Her face looked flawless and glowing, however, she revealed to the magazine that makeup artist, Pat McGrath, taped her face, jaw, and neck back.
Linda revealed, “That’s not my jaw and neck in real life – and I can’t walk around with tape and elastics everywhere. You know what, I’m trying to love myself as I am, but for the photos. Look, for photos I always think we’re here to create fantasies. We’re creating dreams. I think it’s allowed. Also, all my insecurities are taken care of in these pictures, so I got to do what I love to do.”
Despite Linda’s stunning cover shoot for Vogue, she admitted that she’s not feeling completely okay. “Am I cured mentally? Absolutely not,” she said. “But I’m so grateful for the support I got from my friends and from my industry…You’re not going to see me in a swimsuit, that’s for sure. It’s going to be difficult to find jobs with things protruding from me; without retouching, or squeezing into things, or taping things or compressing or tricking…”
Linda revealed in a statement via Instagram back in September 2021, that she received a Zeltiq CoolSculpting procedure and was left “brutally disfigured.” She continued, “It did the opposite of what it promised. It increased, not decreased, my fat cells and left me permanently deformed even after undergoing two painful, unsuccessful corrective surgeries. I have been left, as the media described, ‘unrecognizable.'”
Linda shared with Vogue that she felt pressure from the cosmetic surgery commercials to undergo treatment, as she said, “Those CoolSculpting commercials were on all the time, on CNN, on MSNBC, over and over, and they would ask, ‘Do you like what you see in the mirror?’ They were speaking to me. It was about stubborn fat in areas that wouldn’t budge. It said no downtime, no surgery and…I drank the magic potion, and I would because I’m a little vain. So I went for it – and it backfired.”
While she ended up doing the procedure, she admitted that she regrets it, revealing, “If I had known side effects may include losing your livelihood and you’ll end up so depressed that you hate yourself…I wouldn’t have taken that risk.”