Karlie Kloss may be a New Yorker now, but she remains very conscious of her Missouri roots—connecting it to everything from what she knows about nutrition to why she’s passionate about preserving abortion access.
“I grew up in the middle of Missouri,” the 31-year-old Kloss, a model, activist, entrepreneur, and parent of two with husband Joshua Kushner, tells Fortune. “And I think I only ate packaged, processed food pretty much my entire life, until moving to New York, and then slowly being introduced to, like, a green juice.”
So while she just signed on to a new campaign for Thorne supplements, something she’s “proud” and “excited” to be a part of, she says that “this campaign is about finding your own way to wellness,” and that’s something she can relate to.
As a young adult, Kloss says, “I feel like I really had to relearn how to properly eat food.” She eventually came to understand that while her job may often rely on how she looks, “I feel like a different person when I am taking care of myself from the inside out.”
That includes taking a daily B complex supplement for energy (“instead of needing to get a vitamin drip,” she says) as well as Thorne’s Memoractiv, a blend of ashwagandha and ginkgo for focus and energy. “I’m pretty religious about remembering to take my vitamins,” she says.
Also in her wellness routine: running, Pilates, and virtual workouts with Madison Rose; and eating “whole foods, lean protein, a ton of vegetables, and trying to remember to drink as much water as I can.” (But, she adds, she loves pasta and has a sweet tooth, explaining, “I kind of eat, like, full-spectrum.”)
Kloss says it’s taken her a while to find herself, and to find work—as well as issues to align herself with—that have true meaning.
“I've been working since I'm 15 years old. I grew up in the Midwest and had this Cinderella-like story of kind of an overnight success in fashion. I just chased this crazy career, and continued to ride the wave of where it took me, and I am really grateful for that,” she says, reflecting on her profession as a cover girl and runway model, including as a Victoria’s Secret Angel from 2013 to 2015.
She stepped down from that to attend New York University and chase other pursuits, later telling British Vogue, “I didn’t feel it was an image that was truly reflective of who I am and the kind of message I want to send to young women around the world about what it means to be beautiful.”
Now, she tells Fortune, “There's a lot of things that I really had to grow into—like just who my authentic self was, to be honest. I think being a model at such a young age, I was a blank canvas for other people to kind of project their ideas onto … I loved being that chameleon. But I think a real turning point for me was wanting to just more authentically be who I am in all facets of my life.”
That journey is still ongoing, she says, particularly in the work she’s done with Kode With Klossy, offering tech-learning opportunities for teen girls, and with Gateway Coalition, which she founded as a way to help direct resources to midwest doctors and clinics providing reproductive healthcare including abortion.
“I feel so grateful for the opportunity through my career as a model—and for social media, which developed along the way—to give me a platform … just on my own accord, and to have a voice for people, especially young women,” she says.
That’s especially true when it comes to Kloss’s abortion-access advocacy work. “Abortion is part of reproductive health care and is a basic human right, in my personal opinion. I do not believe it should be politicized. It is a deeply personal decision and choice that any one should have the right to make for themselves. That is my belief.”
This is where Missouri comes into the picture again for Kloss, who notes that it “is a state that, six minutes after Roe was overturned, had a trigger law that went into effect—and so all my friends and family back home in Missouri were immediately affected.”
It’s what “really set me on a path of understanding what that meant for someone seeking care and the hoops they would have to jump through.” And it sparked her realization about “the frontline upholding access to abortion care or pap smears or breast cancer screenings—like, there's an enormous amount of care that's provided at these clinics beyond and besides just abortion. So when you limit access to that local community care, there are actually so many other implications.”
Of course much of her focus now is on parenting her two kids, Levi Joseph, 3, and Elijah Jude, 1, and on honoring her shifting priorities and perspectives.
“Not now that I have kids, and I know how picky I was, I'm sure my parents really tried to get us to eat proper food,” she reflects. “And as a mother, I really want to instill healthy habits,” she adds, suggesting she’s well on her way there with her younger one, who devours “every fruit and vegetable you put in front of him.”
