Karlie Kloss Thinks Being a Nerd Makes Her a Muse

She’s fully embracing her “nerdy tech self” in this year’s Pirelli Calendar.

By HALIE LESAVAGE - published 21 Nov 2022

To be one of 14 models selected for the 2023 Pirelli Calendar, titled "Love Letters to the Muse," legendary photographer Emma Summerton had one casting requirement. "I think it was important to me that the women had voices and more than just their beauty," she tells BAZAAR.com. "One of the things you learn working in fashion for so many years is that beauty is a way more complicated and layered thing than just showing up and looking good."

So as Summerton handpicked her muses—models including Karlie Kloss, Ashley Graham, Bella Hadid, and Precious Lee—she looked for women with close, real-life affinities for the dreamy figures they'd portray. Emily Ratajkowski, essayist and podcast host, is The Writer; Cara Delevingne is The Performer. In Kloss's case, the concept branched out from the storytellers and painters of yore into something very 2022. She embodies a futuristic Tech Savant, a nod to her work at her coding nonprofit, Kode with Klossy.

It's Kloss's first appearance in the Pirelli Calendar since her debut in 2013. The most important shift she's felt in the intervening decade isn't one you can see, even in the universe of Summerton's images. "Looking at my involvement in the Pirelli Calendar 10 years ago, and how I feel and who I am today, I feel so proud of the growth," Kloss tells us. "And I hope 10 years from now, I'll feel like I've grown that much as well."

Some of that growth, she says, is the earned wisdom and strength that comes with simply growing up and becoming a mother. Another aspect is slowly embracing that she is, in fact, a muse in her own right. When I ask Kloss how she feels about being called a "muse," her response is "tremendous imposter syndrome." But that was earlier in her career, when social media collapsed the boundaries between her shapeshifting on the runway and her sharing her "real" self online.

Those feelings came at "a point in my life where I was like, 'Who am I? I don't even know!'" she reflects. "And I have people who are telling me they look up to me. That was a really surreal and an almost awkward dynamic for me, because it was this imposter syndrome that I felt."

Then there were the double standards that come with an image-based profession. Kloss says that 10 years ago, she thought modeling was "meant to be seen and not heard." (The side of Kloss that would earn a Tech Savant superlative? Definitely not heard of back then.)

But as Kloss's career hurtled forward, "I realized that in actually embracing all aspects of who I am, including my nerdy passions, that there's so much strength to it, both within my own inner confidence and awareness of the potential that we all have."

Returning to the Pirelli Calendar through Summerton's fantastical lens was an opportunity for Kloss to be her authentic self—at least, in spirit. For the March page of the calendar, Kloss poses in a blue wig through the soft haze of many, many glow sticks, refracted by a reflective dome. "I was excited to be my nerdy tech self, but in this kind of fantastical fashion fairy tale on her set, which is what I love to do."

See how the Pirelli models portrayed "Love Letters to the Muse" in the images above and online at pirellicalendar.com.