It’s 1992. Cindy Crawford is in the desert. Jeans slung low, white tee tucked just right, leather jacket catching the sun like a reflector panel. She’s holding a mic, staring through the heat haze as she introduces MTV News viewers to the set of Michael Jackson’s latest music video, “In the Closet,” directed by Herb Ritts.
“I’m standing in the desert somewhere outside Los Angeles,” Crawford tells viewers. Her voice is polished and unfazed by the surreal scene unfolding around her. The Salton Sea looks raw and bleached in the background. Naomi Campbell glides through the frame like a mirage.
Crawford closes the segment with a sly grin: “A hot desert, a hot girl, hot dancing. Who knows what to expect?”
More than three decades later, Cindy Crawford is back in the desert. Only now, she’s not covering the scene. She’s living in it, at least part of the time.
Cindy Crawford discusses her love of the desert and how she came to own a home here.
video by james aitken
You’ll find her at The Madison Club, a members-only enclave in La Quinta with the priciest listings in the desert. The community is one of several developed by Discovery Land Company, founded by Mike Meldman, a longtime family friend who has also been a business partner. Crawford’s husband, nightlife entrepreneur Rande Gerber, co-founded the tequila brand Casamigos with Meldman and George Clooney, though they have since stepped back from the business.
Crawford and Gerber were inspired to rent a home at The Madison Club in 2016, when their kids first attended the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and the couple tagged along. They returned the following year too. When the owner decided to sell the property, they bought the place in 2019. Soon after, they purchased a lot within the community and designed a home of their own, which they finished three years ago. This was familiar territory for the couple, who have designed more than 10 destination properties together in locales including Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, Los Cabos, and Ontario, Canada.
The Row trench, available at The Webster in Palm Springs. Jennifer Fisher necklace. Prada sunglasses.
What clinched it wasn’t just the view or the architecture or even the celebrity-caliber discretion of the club, whose residents include the Kardashians and Jenners, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Adele, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. It was the rhythm and the chance to reset in a peaceful place.
“We’re empty nesters now, so we’re trying to figure out what our next chapter is,” Crawford says. While Malibu remains home base, La Quinta provides space to carve out more time with family and friends. “The desert is a smaller community to me, not so spread out like L.A. So it feels like an unintimidating place to try something new.”
The family’s Madison Club home is an expression of Crawford’s well-honed aesthetic: modern yet warm, earthy and elemental, fully integrated with the surroundings. Every detail is chosen with care — smooth stone, floor-to-ceiling glass, and desert tones that echo the landscape.
“Obviously the main attraction in the desert is the view of the mountains,” she says. “There are so many beautiful days when you can keep the doors wide open and really highlight that view.”
She and Gerber work to cultivate what she calls a sense of “quiet luxury” in their spaces, the kind that you feel more than see. Each home has its own signature candle scent — the La Quinta home’s aroma is an amber accord with notes of honey — and Gerber curates a custom playlist to match the mood. It’s not just a house, it’s an atmosphere.
Every residence is built for flow over formality, she says. “We try to create a great room where everyone hangs out. I want people to be comfortable. I don’t want people to have to worry about coasters or putting their feet up.”
Crawford’s life in the desert revolves around festival weekends, family trips, and girlfriend getaways.
The Row jacket, available at The Webster in Palm Springs. Alexandre Birman shoes. Calzedonia tights. Frizzante Fine Jewelers necklace. Replica Etcetera Chair by Somme.
She met her core circle of close friends in a pregnancy yoga class. “It evolved from once-a-week playdates to girls’ nights out to weekend getaways to, Oh my God, now we’re empty nesters,” says Heidi Brooks, a frequent travel companion. Over decades, they became less of a social circle and more of a chosen family. “None of us have siblings in L.A., so we’ve really depended on each other for everything.”
Within the group, everyone has a role. There’s the therapist, the stylish one, the funny one, the organizer. “Cindy is ‘the doctor,’ ” Brooks says. “She’s the smartypants.”
Saint Laurent suit, shirt, and tie. Larroude heels. Frizzante Fine Jewelers earrings, available on El Paseo.
Go behind the Cindy Crawford cover shoot with photographer Yu Tsai.
video by james aitken
These days, their La Quinta weekends involve late dinners, early hikes, and long mahjong games. Brooks, who owns the mahjong brand Mahj To Go, taught them how to play a few years ago.
“Cindy’s all in,” she says. “She’s competitive, but in a fun way. She wants everyone to have a good time.”
One surprise twist of this chapter: The supermodel has taken up a new sport.
“OK, I wouldn’t call myself a golfer,” Crawford laughs. “However, having access to such a beautiful golf course, sometimes I just go out and ride along with my husband. Or we’ll both tee off, and if mine’s good, I’ll play my ball.”
It’s less about the game and more about slowing down, being outside, learning something new.
“If you play once a year, you never get anywhere,” she says. “But if you play four or five days in a row and you get a lesson, you’re actually seeing improvement.”
That kind of steady progress aligns with where Crawford is now. More presence, less pressure. It’s a shift that’s mirrored in her relationship to fitness.
“When you feel strong physically, it translates to a kind of mental fortitude,” she says. “And of course, that’s not why I started working out. I started working out to look better or look good in swimsuit shoots. But I realized it’s very empowering — especially for women, I think — to feel strong.”
You don’t spend four decades at the top of the fashion world without becoming something more than a face. Cindy Crawford makes it look easy, but she’s been setting the standard from the moment she stepped in front of a camera.”
The Row jacket, available at The Webster in Palm Springs. Frizzante Fine Jewelers necklace.
Raised in small-town Illinois, she was discovered at 17. Though she was accepted to MIT, Crawford chose Northwestern for chemical engineering until she left school to model full time. By 21, she’d landed the cover of Vogue and helped ignite the supermodel era alongside Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington.
Can you picture the cultural fabric of the ’90s without Cindy Crawford stitched into it? Sipping a Pepsi in cutoff shorts. Selling out Revlon lipsticks. Hosting MTV’s House of Style. Long before wellness was a buzzword, she spun her personal interest in health into a bestselling fitness video series, Shape Your Body. Shot by music video director Peter Care, the workout looked deliberately cinematic, complete with windblown hair, multiple camera angles, and a soundtrack that included Seal and Primal Scream.
“It was one of those things where everything just lined up, and fortunately they trusted my vision,” she says. At the time, most fitness videos played out in brightly lit studios, filled with pastel leotards and step-aerobic boxes. Crawford had something different in mind. “I wanted this to have a grit to it and a strength and beauty.”
It became a blockbuster hit, selling 7 million copies.
The Row trench, available at The Webster in Palm Springs. Jennifer Fisher necklace.
Adam Lippes button-down shirt. Laura Lombardi earrings.
Along the way, she became a queer icon too. In 1990, she lip-synced in a bathtub in George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” video, an anthem about self-liberation that became a cultural touchpoint for the LGBTQ+ community. Three years later, Crawford appeared in a Vanity Fair cover shoot at the last-minute request of her friend, photographer Herb Ritts. She ended up in a swimsuit behind a barber’s chair, shaving K.D. Lang, who was dressed in relaxed pinstripes. The scene intensifies inside the magazine as Crawford mounts the chair, her face hovering just above Lang’s as if about to brush lips.
“I didn’t even think twice about it,” she recalls. “They called me that morning to say, ‘Hey, we have this idea, do you want to do this?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool.’ ”
She didn’t realize the ripples the cover would make. The image was groundbreaking for its duality of a hot supermodel with an openly lesbian artist, upending gender roles on a mainstream publication, which was rare in the 1990s.
“It is funny when you think about it through today’s lens. You’re like, what’s the big deal?” she says. “But at the time, it was making a statement in a very big way.”
Adam Lippes coat. Laura Lombardi earrings.
5,000-pound basalt sculpture by Roger Hopkins Stone Sculptors, Desert Hot Springs.
Her career choices have always followed her life, rather than the other way around. As the spotlight of the supermodel era began to dim, Crawford didn’t cling to it. Instead, she let her evolving interests guide her work.
“When I started having kids, I started working with a company that sold baby products. When I was interested in fitness, I did a fitness video. When I left Revlon, I wanted to do my own skincare — like, ‘Oh yeah, wait. These wrinkles, they’re coming for me too.’ ”
In 2005, she teamed up with renowned French cosmetic doctor Jean-Louis Sebagh to launch Meaningful Beauty, a skincare line that became a major player in the direct-to-consumer beauty world. Around the same time, she brought her signature style to interiors with Cindy Crawford Home, a furniture line that includes bedroom sets and living room pieces made with durable fabrics.
“Now, I have a furniture line that’s not dependent on me being 30 and looking good in a swimsuit,” she says. “It’s more about me as someone who cares about her home and wants to create a sanctuary.”
Adam Lippes dress. Frizzante Fine Jewelers earrings. Black Suede Studio heels.
Even with shoots and travel still on the calendar, Cindy Crawford’s days in the desert unfold at a gentle pace. “I’ll maybe get up, have a cup of coffee, go for a walk, have breakfast, maybe go to the gym, read a book, sit by the pool,” she says.
Her mornings begin early, as they always have. She’s often the first one awake, already deep into a book before anyone else has stirred. Lately, she’s been loving Fredrik Backman’s novel My Friends.
“It’s almost like she has more hours in the day than the rest of us,” Brooks says. “She doesn’t waste a minute. She’s intentional with her time.”
Helsa blazer, pant, and shirt.
Afternoons slip by poolside, until it’s time for dinner with friends. She’s a fan of Bar Cecil and The Barn Kitchen at Sparrows Lodge, both in Palm Springs.
“The ultimate luxury is ‘chill,’ ” she says. “To me, that’s always the ultimate luxury. I don’t want to have to dress formally or whatever to have lunch at the club.”
That ease is part of what draws people to Crawford’s orbit, Brooks says, and it extends to every part of her home.
“Her taste is exquisite, but the vibe makes everyone comfortable,” she says, contrasting Crawford’s lived-in style to formal homes of the ’80s — the kind with white carpet and guest towels that are forbidden to use. “Cindy’s house is the opposite. It’s beautiful, but you never feel like you’re going to get in trouble for putting your feet up.”
That philosophy carries into the guest rooms, which are something of a legend among Crawford’s friends.
“You don’t have to bring anything. Nothing,” Brooks says. “There’s toothpaste, floss, shampoo, aspirin. There’s water by the bedside. A phone charger is already plugged in. It’s better than a hotel, because she’s so thoughtful with every detail.”
The hospitality doesn’t stop there.
“The next morning, she’ll ask, ‘Was there anything missing?’ And she’ll literally take notes, so it’s there next time,” Brooks explains. “So if you need oat milk or almond milk or anything, she remembers.”
That meticulous attention to detail is part of a larger philosophy: an insistence on being present and genuine. Even while she’s filling a new role as an empty nester, this chapter is about refinement rather than reinvention.
“I don’t think about what the world wants from me very often,” she says. “I feel like being authentic is the most important thing you can be.”
The Row trench, available at The Webster in Palm Springs. Jennifer Fisher necklace.
Today, Crawford is less focused on front-facing campaigns and more interested in curating a life that feels intentional, with room to breathe, time to connect, a home that invites you in. All the things that matter most at this point in her life.
Not that she’s abandoned the glam. She just under-stands the performance of it.
“Once in a while,” she says, with a knowing smile, “I’ll have a personal appearance where I’ll say to the stylist or the makeup artist, ‘OK, we gotta give ’em Cindy Crawford today.’ ”
the location
The Wabi Sabi House at Desert Palisades, a quiet enclave in the foothills of Palm Springs, features architecture by Jill Lewis Architecture and was developed by Jameson Neuhoff of Palm Canyon Development with landscape design by Hoerr Schaudt, home staging by Francesca Grace, and styling by Anita Sardisi. Location provided by Jeff Kohl of The Agency.
