Interview with Karlie Kloss
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Karlie Kloss
American model signed by Elite at 14. She walked in four Victoria's Secret shows, founded the coding nonprofit Kode With Klossy and hosted Project Runway.
Source: The World's First Podcast With Erin & Sara Foster on YouTube
These answers are taken from The Karlie Kloss Episode | The World's First Podcast on The World's First Podcast With Erin & Sara Foster's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
When did you start modeling?
My career started as a model in 2007. Social media was not a thing. Nobody cared what models thought, or barely what their names were, much less what their thoughts on the world were. So I came into the industry at a time where I got to be like a silent movie star, and I loved that. That was the job.
I started at 15 years old. I was so young, but my life training to that point was classical ballet. So I thought of it like a performance, runways and photo shoots.
I started working so young. I missed every single birthday, Mother's Day, wedding for so many years. I feel so lucky to have this stage of my life with my kids and with my husband, and to protect it.
What do you enjoy most about modeling?
Rosie had made this incredible transition from being a model, and she was the star of Transformers, and that was definitely sort of this big dream. I think I went on one casting, and it was the most humbling experience. It was for a movie, probably some very typecast pretty girl thing, and I was like, this is not it for me.
It made me really appreciate my contracts and the money I could make as a model, with a day where I show up and somebody makes me look beautiful and I stand around in pretty clothes for a couple hours and go home. I was like, I love my job. I'm going to stick to it.
How did your career as a model unfold?
Along the way social media developed, and I've grown up on this sort of public stage as a young person. I think along the way I started to show different parts of who I am, and I also got really overwhelmed by that at different periods. I really value my private real life. The enormous amount of attention all at once sort of overwhelmed me and gave me PTSD from actually letting people in.
But I love the fact that I have been able to use this incredible career as a model to be a platform for things that are very authentic to me, like my work with Kode With Klossy.
As a model, it's like Hunger Games. You sort of have to survive. You have to always be available. So much has changed in the sense of the platform that you can build a business off of, without having to come up the ropes the way that I did. I feel like I got the end of that era of high fashion, Vogue, supermodels, honestly. And I'm grateful for it.
Has your career as a model progressed the way you expected?
Every day I wake up I'm like, how did I end up here? I thought I was going to be a pediatrician in the suburbs of Missouri. I grew up in the Midwest, big family, and I went to a great public school. So much of who I am comes from those early years of my life.
Because I started working as a model so young, so much was sort of performative, through the character I was taking on for a day, or decided for me because I was so young. Agents or managers were sort of crafting their own version of the answer. So it gave me an opportunity to pause in my life and really look in the mirror and dig deep on what do I want for me. I made those choices regardless of the consequences, and I'm so grateful that I chose my authentic truth. I don't work on Saturdays. You're allowed to have a boundary and go, okay, here's what I need to be a model and have the life that I want, and that means my phone's going to be off for 24 hours.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
My dad's a doctor. I've always loved science. I love logic-based problem solving, and then, funny enough, I ended up in this creative industry. By way of Josh I met so many founders very early on, and I was really enamored by this idea that they had a language they could speak to build, with code, an idea and a business. I'm one of four daughters. I was like, anything the boys can do, I can figure it out. So I went back to school. I applied to NYU, and I went to a coding boot camp that summer. I think I was 21. I was so awkward, sitting in these classes with 17, 18, 19 year old kids, and very tall.
Social media had started. I had a lot of young women following me, and I thought they would be interested in this too. So I started a scholarship for the same program that I went to, and we had thousands of applications for 21 scholarships. That was 11 years ago. It went from 21 scholarships that first summer to 12,000 alumni.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
I think what success looks like is how it feels to me. It's not defined by a job title or an income amount. It's: do I enjoy what I do? Is it authentically where my heart is and where my passions are? I care so deeply about supporting other young women to realize their power and potential, especially in the spaces of Kode With Klossy, becoming leaders and becoming equipped with technical skills that can really unlock opportunity for them.
I feel even more of a fire to sustain and grow what we've built, which is not just about access to curriculum for 13 to 18 year old students, but how we continue to be an ecosystem that supports young women to be leaders in any space they go into.
I also invest in entrepreneurs that I get really excited about, the problems they're solving.
Karlie Kloss's Full Biography
Karlie Kloss is a supermodel best known for her work as a Victoria's Secret lingerie model and as a brand ambassador for several high profile companies. She appeared in four Victoria's Secret Fashion shows from 2011 through 2014, and served as a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2013 to 2015. Kloss has been featured or on the cover of just about every international edition of Vogue as well as many other leading fashion magazines. She has been the face of campaigns for Coach, Nike, Donna Karan, Lacoste, Christian Dior among others. Originally, she had aspirations of being a professional ballerina as a youth and claims that training spawned her signature runway walk. Kloss was discovered by Elite Chicago at a local benefit fashion show and was signed at the age of fourteen in 2006 by Elite New York. She was born Karlie Elizabeth Kloss on August 3, 1992 in Chicago, Illinois, to Kurt and Tracy Kloss.