CHRISTY TURLINGTON BURNS

The SUPERMODEL will ALWAYS be in FASHION. But her FOCUS is FIXED on a better FUTURE for MOMS EVERYWHERE.

- LEAH CHERNIKOFF

I spy Christy Turlington Burns before she sees me. She's curled up on a couch in a common area of the openplan TriBeCa, New York, offices of Every Mother Counts, the nonprofit she founded 14 years ago to make pregnancy and birth safe for women across the globe. At a glance, Turlington Burns, 55, looks like anyone else wrapping up a workday: eyes fixed on her laptop, immersed in her work. She's dressed, well, for a Tuesday at a nonprofit job, which is to say nothing is too fancy or precious: high-waisted camel-color pants, a floral blouse, flats. Her hair is pulled back in an easy bun, and she has on not a stitch of makeup.

It's a picture of Turlington Burns that belies the fact that she is also not just a model but one of the supermodels, mononymously enshrined in fashion history alongside a select few peers like Linda, Naomi, and Cindy. In the '90s, that rarefied group ushered in a new era of fashion and radically altered the industry in their wake. George Michael's "Freedom! '90" video, in which that particular foursome all appeared, was the turning point: It took fashion out of its exclusive Parisian salons and smashed it, irreversibly, together with pop culture. The supers, as they became known, were covered in the press with the same breathless rapture as movie stars.