Jericho, a dun-colored paint horse, evaluates the shot on the monitor, his white-spotted muzzle fitting neatly between the light-blocking panels. Astride him is the model Kendall Jenner in a diaphanous lilac Alexander McQueen evening dress that floats out over the horse’s flank. She nods approvingly of the image onscreen and strokes Jericho’s neck. Her friend Gigi Hadid, in matching McQueen but celadon-hued, ambles up on a chestnut quarter horse named Chance and pronounces the shot “dope.” Behind them is the splendor of Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park; a minute ago they were galloping through it, crossing a split-rail-fenced pasture for Vogue’s cameras.
“Let’s do it again, G,” says Kendall, steering Jericho back into the pasture. “I fully believe that I was a cowgirl in a past life,” she will tell me when I sit down with them both to talk about their friendship. “This life brings me so much joy.”
“I feel like we’re more on vacation here than we are at work,” says Gigi.
Kendall: “For sure.”
The two supermodels—Gigi, 30; Kendall, about to be—have spent over a decade at the top of the fashion industry. They’ve also spent these years largely at each other’s side, their friendship a grounding force in fashion’s swirl. Christened KenGi as they came up professionally, the duo were the Betty and Veronica of the Instagram model generation, a group whose personal lives were of equal interest as their glamorous careers. Both have proved equally motivated to turn aside easy assumptions about their backgrounds, and each has cheered the other’s stratospheric rise. And though their lives have evolved on different coasts—a tequila business and competitive riding for Kendall; a cashmere brand, motherhood, and just-for-fun riding for Gigi—the two make a point of seeing each other at reliable intervals and experience the natural tidal shifts of adult friendship: time apart, but when reunited, an immediate reconnection.
The night before the shoot, in a cabin the girls rented outside of Jackson, Gigi and Kendall piled onto the couch to watch Country Strong, the 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw romance. “We wanted to get in the country zone,” explains Kendall, who knows the area well—her aunt’s house is nearby. Gigi smiles. “We were building a storyline for today,” she says.
Gigi has arrived at the shoot in full cowgirl regalia: bootcut Hudson jeans, two layers of Guest in Residence cashmere (her clothing brand, which she started in 2022), and vintage cowboy boots bought at a horse show outside Dallas. “You should always buy used cowboy boots so they’re worn-in,” she says. Cowboy boots will play a central role in the shoot. So too will wide-brimmed cowboy hats, which helpfully shield the models’ faces from the mountain sun. Both models are natural in the saddle, leaning confidently toward each other to high-five, and tipping heads back to laugh at traded jokes—but not enough to lose their hats.
The last time the two rode together was at Vogue World: Paris, in June 2024, astride two Spanish thoroughbreds named Django and Napo, clopping through the Place Vendôme in head-to-toe Hermès. “They were really well-trained, well-behaved horses,” says Kendall deferentially. “You can feel it in their blood.” Gigi agrees, remembering how much her horse—bred for performance—perked up in front of an audience.
It could be argued that Kendall and Gigi are show horses too, but both are intent on countering any narrative of easy, born-to-it privilege and will tell you how much relentless effort they’ve put into their careers. They’ll also tell you how they’ve driven each other. “I think the base of our friendship is that we respect the same things that we see in each other when we go to work,” says Gigi. “We’re not there to ask for special treatment. We always work hard.”
“We’re sisters more than we’re friends,” Kendall says, and threads the fingers of both hands together, illustrating a bond impossible to untangle. “For example, we probably didn’t see each other for a year during COVID. I never saw you really pregnant.”
There is something touching about this: acknowledging the natural strain of life, friendship’s ebb and flow, but writ so glamorously on these two women. As Kendall’s mother, Kris Jenner, told me, “My mother-in-law used to say, ‘Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are.’ ”
As teenagers in Calabasas and Malibu, respectively, Kendall knew Gigi through her younger sister Bella. They went to different high schools, but had mutual friends. “I remember I was intimidated by you,” admits Kendall. “I was like, She’s so gorgeous. And I remember you posted this photo with your long blond mane. I think it was a black-and-white photo.”
Gigi’s jaw dramatically drops. “No! Tell me!”
“It went viral on Tumblr.”
“I went viral on Tumblr?”
Kendall has arrived at the shoot looking like a teenager, in jeans, Converse, and an oversized hoodie emblazoned with the name of the ranch where we are shooting. “I had acne and braces,” she says, “and I remember seeing this photo and being like, What the fuck?”
Gigi is laughing. “I was awkward too!”
The pair started hanging out properly in New York City, where Gigi was balancing college and early forays into modeling and where Kendall would fly in for go-sees. Kendall would invite a few girls, including Hailey Bieber and the Hadid sisters, to the SoHo apartment belonging to her sister Kim and her then husband Kanye West. “I was your biggest fan,” remembers Kendall. “And once we started to work together and do shows, I remember those early seasons—we would do the whole month together.”
“I think of them as part of the same moment in fashion,” says Marc Jacobs, who first cast Kendall in 2014. “There was a hunger for the supermodel thing we knew from the past: Kate, Naomi, Linda, Christy. That had been missing in fashion for a long time. Models had become interchangeable, so it was exciting with Kendall and Gigi: They had this fresh enthusiasm.”
“They’re really good on their own, but better together,” says designer Jeremy Scott. “I think of them like my salt and pepper shakers.” Scott remembers how one would tend to the other—Gigi adjusting Kendall’s collar before his fall 2017 Moschino show, when Kendall wore a trompe l’oeil cardboard skirt suit. “I remember thinking, How sweet,” says Scott. “All this chaos is going on. It’s pandemonium, and both of them are so calm and centering to each other.”
They are not the first models to form a backstage bond. Amber Valletta and Shalom Harlow were once so inseparable that Jacobs cast them as bride and bride in his fall 1994 show. And part of the original Supers’ mystique was how much fun they seemed to have together. “Linda, Christy, Naomi had the archetype of model friendship,” says Scott. “They are the gold standard.” Simon Porte Jacquemus points to current fashion besties Rianne Van Rompaey and Mica Argañaraz, and Mona Tougaard and Loli Bahia. “There are always people who are super linked, who arrive together at casting, happy to work together. I think it makes it easier,” he says.
Kendall and Gigi both walked in Jacquemus’s fall 2023 show staged in the gardens of Versailles at the edge of the palace’s Grand Canal. A viral clip from that day shows Gigi and Kendall in their subverted bridal looks zipping off on a golf cart. “It was almost like a movie,” says Jacquemus by phone from his home on the Mediterranean. “Two of the top supermodels of our generation and they’re just two friends having fun and being cuckoo like 12-year-olds.”
Kris Jenner would travel with Kendall when she began modeling at 14, but always knew Kendall had a support system in Gigi on the road. “Growing into careers is a lot,” says Jenner. “But as soon as they were able to leave the nest, they did, and to know that if they ever needed anything they were there for each other—as a mom that’s so comforting.”
“We’d end up bunking up,” says Kendall of work trips abroad. They also learned from each other. “I remember my first Chanel fitting. I don’t know if you remember this?” Gigi says. It was 2014 and the pair went to the Chanel headquarters on the Rue Cambon to meet Karl Lagerfeld, Gigi looking to Kendall to calm her panicked nerves. “You’d already done a Chanel show, so you were close with Karl. I’m learning with each step. Like, She’s going to know where to go, who to talk to. I’ll never forget that moment.”
There was also the season Gigi was newly pregnant. “You were one of the only people in the world that knew,” Gigi says. They were backstage at a rehearsal for the fall 2020 Burberry show, and Gigi pulled her friend aside. “Because I was so nauseous and lightheaded,” says Gigi. “And Kenny was the only person I could look at from across the room and just be like, ‘Oh yeah, a soda.’ And she got me a little can of Coke.”
On text, Kendall favors an old-school colon-and-parenthesis smiley face; Gigi a slew of hearts. “She’ll throw 12 emojis at you, like, in one line,” says Kendall. “Virgil-style.”
“I feel like we always are in relationships at different times,” says Gigi.
“We did have a double date situation once,” says Kendall. “Remember, a long time ago? We don’t need to go there.”
“I don’t remember.”
“It’ll come to you. It wasn’t a double date. You tried to set me up. You were in a relationship and I was single and you were trying to set me up with someone to be part of your gang? Do you not remember? Are you not picking up what I’m putting down?” Kendall laughs. “I’m not going any further. I’ll tell you later!”
For close to two years now, Gigi has been quietly seeing Bradley Cooper—a relationship that has fed her creative ambitions, acting among them. Gigi reveals that she recently auditioned for the part of Rapunzel in a live-action imagining of Tangled and took singing lessons during fashion month to prepare. “What do we do in this job anymore that scares us?” Gigi asks Kendall. She didn’t get the part in the end (and the film seems to be on pause anyway), but the whole experience was clearly a good one. “I was really proud of my scene,” she says. “The singing…I knew they were going to go with a real singer, but I’ll show you my audition scene later.”
“I’m stoked,” says Kendall. “I need to see.”
When was the last time they cried in front of each other? “Probably so long ago,” says Kendall. “Definitely not recently.”
Gigi agrees. “It’s mostly when we’ve gone through boy stuff and we’re kind of at the end of that road. I feel like we’re both really strong people and not whiners and complainers, but we’re vulnerable when it’s the time to be.”
“There is a lot of superficiality in the world that we work and live in,” Kendall says. “And our personal lives have been of public interest as we’ve gotten older.”
That public interest can take its toll, and the two women have come to rely on each other. “I think of so many of the quiet moments that no one sees,” says Gigi. “And so much that isn’t shared online. People don’t know a lot of the ways that we’re similar and the ways we find peace in each other.” For Gigi, Guest in Residence has created another artistic outlet: “I’m sure you feel this when you’re in that creative director space,” she says to Kendall, whose 818 Tequila company works with family-owned farms in Jalisco, Mexico. “You have those moments in the office when you can sit with swatch colors and it’s not about your face on camera.”
Indeed, the seventh season of Hulu reality show The Kardashians is now being filmed—but this is a project Kendall has expressed some ambivalence about. (“It’s not my biggest cup of tea,” she’s said.) What feeds Kendall creatively? “She’s one of the only people that I would let design a house for me,” Gigi offers.
“I swear to God, I’m going to stop everything and just design homes,” says Kendall. “I’m not kidding.” She’s currently building a house out West. “I love my space in LA, but I also really love the simple life. I like getting up every morning and throwing on a bathing suit or sweatpants and no makeup and just being free with my day.”
Both are wary of mapping out the road ahead. “I can get very tunnel vision if I make just one goal,” says Gigi. “And I’ve taught myself more to just be open to whatever comes.” Kendall agrees: “I think about the future a lot, but I try not to overplan because you know I’m a planner.”
“I used to think I was a planner,” Gigi says. “I was like, I’m going to be married at 29 and have a kid at 30. But life kind of happens, and you’re just like, Oh, we don’t have control. Trust the ride.”
Exercise is not a KenGi activity—“we walk a lot of shows together, that’s exercise,” says Kendall—but watching Love Island is. (“She was almost going to give spoilers last night,” says Gigi, woefully behind.)
Years ago, Kendall joined Gigi on a visit to Holland to meet Gigi’s Dutch family. They went to the Netherlands’ largest theme park, Efteling, a place designed around fables, fairy tales, and ancient folklore. The pair purchased horseman warrior masks “and did an entire park day, fully incognito,” Gigi says. “Kendall’s really good at hiding in plain sight. She’s spontaneous that way. I know a lot of people who are privileged and successful and don’t live life to the fullest the way that Kendall does.” Gigi recalls a night in Paris almost 10 years ago when they went late at night and lay under the Eiffel Tower, enjoying the stars through the cross-hatched iron.
“We had had some wine,” offers Kendall for additional context.
“I love to feel normal,” she goes on. “I love to go to the horse show dressed just like everybody else and have my helmet on and my sunglasses and my uniform, and I can compete under a completely different name.”
“They announce her as someone else!” says Gigi, with delight and awe. Gigi’s own riding frequency is dictated by her daughter, Khai. “I ride more just as Khai’s chaperone; sometimes she just wants to go to the barn and brush a horse or play with the goats.” (“People can get lost in this world,” says Marc Jacobs. “I admire that they have protected their own lives and identities and really guarded that.”)
But Gigi is at home on the range. When leaning on a fence, the local cowboys urgently point out the electrified wire to keep the cattle in. Gigi, nonchalant, stays in position. “I know it’s hot,” she says, with assurance. Then walking through the willow shrubs and moosebrush Gigi says that horse poop is the best poop because it dries quickly and is just grass.
She and Kendall are now in Miu Miu miniskirts. The sun is lower in the sky and filters, Terrence Malick–style, through the cottonwood trees. It is the last shot of the day, a drove of Hereford cattle low in the background. “Hi cows,” says Kendall. “Shall we see who can get on a cow first?” teases Gigi. Then they are focused again, ever professional, holding hands per suggestion. In a moment or two the shoot is wrapped. Kendall and Gigi relax out of position and smile at each other; their hands stay clasped.
In this story: hair, Karim Belghiran; makeup, Mary Phillips and Carolina Gonzalez; manicurist, Zola Ganzorigt; tailor, Lena Koch. Produced by Moxie Productions.
The images in this portfolio were taken at Diamond Cross Ranch in Wyoming.
A very special thank you to Luke Long the Diamond Cross Ranch Family.
The October issue is here featuring Kendall and Gigi. Subscribe to Vogue.
