The Bite Magazine - Summer 2019 - Issue 25

bite model profile can only be described as an extremely successful fam- ily. Her father is the very accomplished real estate de- veloper Mohamed Hadid, a Jordanian-American with Palestinian roots that can claim descendants from Da- her Al Omer, Prince of Nazareth and the Sheik of Gal- ilee. His real estate empire included buying and selling Ritz-Carlton hotels in the 1980s, and now building and designing luxury hotels and mansions mainly in the Bel Air and Los Angeles areas of California. At 43, he also became the first Olympic speed skater to rep- resent his native country of Jordan. But Miss Bella’s impressive parentage doesn’t stop there. Her lovely mother is Dutch model, Yolanda Hadid (née van den Herik) who had a successful run throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. She worked as a model under Ford Agency for 15 years before settling down to have her three children, Jelena ‘Gigi’, Isabelle ‘Bella’, and Anwar. All three of their children are ge- netically blessed and have instinctively followed in their mother’s footsteps by taking the fashion world by storm, as they’re all extremely successful models. Her parents married in 1994, and while they had the three children together, their marriage sadly ended in divorce in 2000. Following this, Bella’s mother mar- ried world-renowned music composer and producer David Foster in 2011 but later split from him in 2017. During this time, however, she signed on with the pop- ular reality Bravo television series, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills , and turned out to be a popular star of the show. Unfortunately, she became extremely ill and was diag- nosed with Lyme disease in 2012 while filming, which nearly killed this once vibrant and healthy woman. After years of various treatments around the world, Yolanda is now doing somewhat better, but the disease has forever changed her life. What’s truly ill-fated is that both Bella and Anwar also have Lyme disease, which they now all believe to have contracted while riding their horses in Santa Barbara, California. Despite being born in the nation’s capital, Bella and her siblings actually grew up riding on their ranch in Santa Barbara. As a child, she became quite the ac- complished equestrian and had dreamed of compet- ing in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, but her battle with Lyme disease derailed this hope and she instead turned her interests towards finishing high school and attending college. In 2014 she moved to New York City to attend Parsons School of Design with a focus on photography. At this time, she also signed with IMG and began develop- ing her modelling career full-time. And this is when things really began to happen for Miss Bella Hadid as she, in what seemed like overnight, became an IT girl in the fashion world. Everyone wanted a bit of Bella. Due to this demand, she has currently stepped away from her studies with hopes of one day returning to finish her degree and even pursue acting. Now Bella had done some modelling before, with a Flynn Skye commercial when she was 16, and starred in Swan Sittings by Lesa Amoore, alongside actor Ben Barnes, and Smoking Hot by Holly Copeland. She also modelled for Hanna Hayes F/W 2013 collection and appeared in other various other commercial projects and campaign work for Chrome Hearts in the sum- mers of 2013 and 2014. When she officially moved to New York City, she signed with IMG and made her New York Fashion Week debut in the fall of 2014, walking for Desigual. Following this in 2015, Bella was booked for Tom Ford’s spring fashion show in Los Angeles and took to the catwalk for the amfAR’s 22nd Cinema Against AIDs Gala fashion show in May. In 2015’s Fall Fashion Week, her schedule really began to become crazy when she walked for Marc Jacobs, Di- ane von Fürstenberg, Tommy Hilfiger, and Jeremy Scott where she closed his show. During London Fash-