Linda Evangelista says she eventually stopped eating while dealing with her paradoxical fatty hyperplasia after a CoolSculpting procedure that left several areas of her face and body with protruding fatty tissue.
The legendary model, who first spoke publicly in September 2021 about how the rare post-procedure complication had impacted her mental health and ability to work, recently shared more details about her experience with the cosmetic treatment with British Vogue for September cover story.
While describing the ordeal, for which she filed a lawsuit with coolsculpting company Zeltiq and has since settled, the model revealed that not only was she trying to fix what happened with the liposuction, but her diet eventually turned up Water reduced in hopes she could get rid of the hard, greasy lumps.
“I have cuts all over my body. I’ve had stitches, I’ve worn compression garments under my chin, I’ve had tight girdles all over my body for eight weeks — nothing has helped,” she said. “I was so embarrassed I had just spent all this money and the only way I could think of to fix it was zero calories so I just drank water. Or sometimes I would have a stick of celery or an apple.”
“I lost my mind,” she added, noting that the mental health impact was visible to her teenage son, Augustin James Evangelista, who Evangelista had with Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault.
The model said that after the procedure she only left her house – fully clothed – to take her now 15-year-old son to a football game. But just as she hid her body from the public, she also hid from him.
“What really got to my heart is when he said to me, ‘Remember when you used to be so much fun? Remember when you were laughing the whole time?’” Evangelista said, recalling a moment that stuck in her mind. “It was such an innocent comment. That was a lot to deal with.”
She eventually opened up to him, noticing that he was beginning to question why, unlike her friends, she wasn’t working. The model says she told him that a lawsuit would make public what happened to her and that he “could hear something and be ashamed.”
“He was as understanding as a 13-year-old can be,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Why should I be embarrassed? I’m sorry for you. I’m not embarrassed.’ Then he said, ‘I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.’”
“What parent wants to be a burden to their child?” she told the magazine, crying and then laughing in exasperation. “So, as you can see, I’ve felt so good about sharing my story.”
During the interview, Evangelista said she misses work, and despite being on the cover of the fashion magazine — along with a Fendi campaign — she’s ultimately hesitant to call any of it a comeback.
“You won’t see me in a bathing suit, that’s for sure,” she said. “It’s going to be difficult to find jobs where things stick out of me; without retouching or squeezing into things or gluing or compressing or tricking things.