Do we like Gigi Hadid?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and real generosity, held back by one shared post she later apologised for and a thin record on LGBTQ+ and climate.
Gigi Hadid is one of the biggest fashion names of her generation. She has walked for the major houses for more than a decade and now runs her own knitwear label, Guest in Residence. Her father is Palestinian-American, which matters, because it's the lens through which most of her public politics gets read.
The newest drama isn't of her making. Epstein files released this year include a 2015 email in which a redacted person asked how the Hadid sisters made so much money, and Epstein replied it was because they follow directions. Nobody alleges anything against her. She said that being named was disturbing and that she had never had any affiliation with him.
The real stain is from 2023. After the Gaza war began, she posted claims about Israel's treatment of Palestinian children, using the case of a teenager convicted of a stabbing, and shared a video making a separate claim about organ harvesting. After criticism she apologised, saying she had not fact-checked what she shared and had used the wrong example. She also said attacking any human, Jewish people included, is never OK. Where you land depends on whether you read it as careless sharing she owned, or as a pattern. A single post and a quick correction look more like the first.
On the wider harm check, that's honestly about the whole list. We found no anti-LGBTQ+ words, no campaigning against anyone's rights, and no conspiracy slide. We also found nothing on her views about climate, and not much on LGBTQ+ issues either, so there's no big ally moment to point to. Her recent work is the usual fashion circuit, and nothing in it flagged a problem.
On the good side, in March 2022 she pledged all her fashion-week earnings to people in need in Ukraine, with some also going to Palestine. Her line then was that eyes and hearts must be open to all human injustice. That is a fair summary of where she tends to land, and putting her own pay behind it counts for something.