Workin’ 9 to 5 With Gigi Hadid

Going behind the scenes of Guest in Residence, the supermodel’s New York–based brand.

Today, you’re going into the office. You put on one of your many Guest in Residence cashmere matching sets because they’re easy, smart, and comfortable—and you’re the boss, so you can wear whatever you want—along with your headphones, and head out the door. Now you need a song to set the mood. Is it a “Neon Moon,” kind of morning? Specifically, the version Kacey Musgraves cut with Brooks & Dunn, which offers a little more forward momentum than the original? Yes. You hit play and start the short commute down your cobblestone-lined block in downtown New York. Just as the song ends—it is less than five minutes long—you’ve arrived.

You’ve been busy parenting and traveling for your other job, so you haven’t seen your team in-person in a minute. You’re excited. Going into an office is a fun, kind of novel activity for you. Why? Because you’re Gigi Hadid, one of the most in-demand supermodels in the world. Compared to fashion week, the office offers stability and calm, in addition to creative stimulation. And because this is office for fashion brand, Guest in Residence, you can fill it with extremely talented people you like to hang out with, and treat the whole thing a little bit like art class.“When I get to the office, I say hi to everyone and catch up with them—I love seeing them. I love our team,” says Hadid. “Then I do this thing that probably stresses them out, which is that I’ll just wander around the office and look at stuff. Sijeo [Kim], our head of design, will be like, ‘G, you’re not supposed to see that yet!’ Sometimes it’s a presentation or a sample. If I’ve been traveling for work, or with [my daughter], Khai, or whatever, I always am a little bit nosy when I get back.”Hadid founded Guest in Residence in 2022 with the intention of creating timeless, well-made, relatively affordable cashmere basics in a range of modern silhouettes and friendly colors. She first started thinking about the brand while pregnant during lockdown (“You can’t model forever,” she’s said), and naturally gravitated towards the kind of luxuriously warm and fuzzy pieces she herself likes to wear. (She is a Taurus, after all.)

“When I was standing in my closet, I was like, ‘What is my wardrobe when I’m not borrowing amazing fancy stuff from brands?’” she asked. The answer included two cashmere sweaters her parents gave her when she first moved from California to chilly New York in the fall of 2013 to study criminal psychology at The New School. Still in her possession and presumably tucked in-between brands like Loro Piana and The Row, they include a gray turtleneck cinched with leather straps from her mother and an oversized button-up cable-knit cardigan from her father. “They’re these heirlooms that I learned to take care of, and they’re very comforting and homey.”The name Guest in Residence—a phrase that hotels will often put under Hadid’s reservation during an extended fashion week stay—is meant to evoke that same sense of personal comfort and hominess, wherever the wearer may be. It’s also a nod to the fact that we are “guests” on this planet, and to Hadid’s belief that we should invest in clothes that last long enough to be passed down from generation to generation, without having to pay thousands of dollars. (Like Loro Piana, Guest in Residence cashmere is also sourced from inner Mongolia, but prices for the fall collection range from $165 to $795.) “A Guest in Residence, to me, is someone that shows up to any place, situation, or event comfortable enough in their own self and what they’re wearing that they can be present in a real way, and experience that moment and the people in front of them,” Hadid explains.Virgil Abloh always comes to mind when Hadid describes the Guest in Residence ethos. “I think about him all the time in this job,” she says. “He taught me a lot, and inspired me a lot.” She tries to channel his warm, generous, easygoing spirit with her own work, as well as his business savvy. Abloh was known for working off his phone in every time zone. (“Virgil time,” as Hadid puts it.) When she’s not in the office, Hadid is in constant communication with her team, sending mood boards, screenshots, drawings, and mock-ups back and forth. Over Slack? No way. “I don't know about Slack,” she says. “I have to ask [about that].” She uses WhatsApp instead. “[Virgil] knew about Guest in Residence, but he never got to see it come out,” Hadid continues. “He saw the first collection’s designs, and he really was someone that made me confident that I could do something like this.”Hadid has held sort-of office jobs in the past, once working in a music studio answering phones, getting coffee, etc. But this is her first time immersing herself in a creative office space—not to mention running one. After Abloh, she had an enviable list of mentors to tap into, including a “fearless” Donatella Versace, and, of course, Tommy Hilfiger, whom she collaborated with closely on four seasons of TOMMYxGiGi. “I learned so much about myself as a leader, and as a team member in a creative process like that,” Hadid says. “Starting there, where I got to have the infrastructure of a huge company like that, and then being able to really focus on that leadership and creative role, was priceless.”“I knew Gigi had what it takes to be a successful designer and business owner from the early days of us working on the TOMMYxGiGi collaboration,” says Hilfiger. “She’s super focused and has a clear vision—plus, she has great taste and knows what the consumer wants.”

There are 11 people at the Guest in Residence office on any given day. Desks are arranged in a circle, with a long table down the middle of the space. “I love sitting there,” Hadid says. “It just makes me feel like we’re all in art class together, and that’s so fun.” She also likes to spread out in a carpeted, living room-like area in the front of the space, either on the floor or the couch with fabric swatches. “Whenever we’re choosing colors for the next collection, we lay everything out and go through it,” she says. “Because we have so many different kinds of people of all ages [on staff]—to hear everyone’s opinion and then battle is amazing, and so entertaining. It’s really very discussion-driven, and everyone’s very involved.”Working with so many people she loves and respects, including her friend, the stylist and editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, putting her foot down is not always easy. “I think that sometimes I have to push myself to be serious and really say what I have to say,” Hadid says. “But I think growing up is learning that you can be assertive without being rude—and it doesn’t mean that you’re a bitch. That’s the whole thing with the comparison between male and female bosses—maybe we do feel that to be assertive is to be bitchy; we’re conditioned to feel like that. And I think it’s just about growing out of that mindset.” When asked if this mindset had trickled into her personal life at all since becoming a boss, she said it was actually the other way around. “I think it started in my personal life, to be honest, and then trickled into work as a second layer, which is good.”

For fall, Guest in Residence will continue to put out variations of its core collection, (“funky classics,” as Hadid calls them), including what could perhaps best be described as a “going-out cardigan” with an inviting hook-and-eye closure, as well as the brand’s Everywear Cardigan, which is meant to be worn from the office, to the airport, to dinner, in new colors. “I would love a set from somewhere, and then go back the next season, and they wouldn’t bring it back, and I would just be so sad,” says Hadid of what she’s trying to do differently. The brand, which ranges in size from XS to XXL, will also release new cardigan shapes this season with a “chunkier” feel—one Hadid describes as “so yummy”—plus cashmere flannels.It’s just as easy to imagine Hadid wearing a cashmere flannel on the streets of Soho as it is on the back of a horse in rural Pennsylvania, where her family has a farm. That’s the great thing about cashmere: It looks elevated in (almost) every scenario, whether you’re a supermodel or a superintern. But Hadid has made a point to surround herself with people that push her out of her comfort zones. “A funny office conversation that happens sometimes is we’re debating, and I have to be like, ‘Look, I can't just be a creative director that only puts out stuff that I like,’” Hadid says with a laugh. (The brand’s After Dark cashmere arm warmers, for example, are perhaps more of a Bella thing.) “Sometimes I have to be open to what other people want. I trust my team. I’ll be like, OK, this is your call today.’”

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