Gigi Hadid Revisits Tahiti Photos on Her 31st Birthday

gigi hadid turned 31 on Thursday, April 23, and her Tahiti photos from SI Swimsuit were brought back into view. The birthday rewind points back to a model whose SI Swimsuit work began in 2014 and reached French Polynesia in 2016.

Tahiti in 2016

Hadid’s feature on the island in French Polynesia came after she first posed for SI Swimsuit in 2014 on the Jersey Shore with photographer Ben Watts. She returned for the following two years, working in Kauai, Hawai’i, and the Islands of Tahiti with visual artist Yu Tsai.

During the Tahiti shoot, she said, “I’m really hard on myself,” then added, “You only have a certain amount of time with the perfect light, and you only have a certain amount of time until the tide goes up and then you’re too deep in the water.” That sort of clock-driven pressure is baked into location work; a missed window can cost the frame.

31 and still in rotation

Her birthday retrospective arrives with a résumé that extends beyond swim issues. Hadid has landed covers of Vogue, V Magazine, W, Elle, InStyle, Harper’s Bazaar and others, and she is the proud mom of one child.

In September 2022, she launched Guest in Residence, starting with a core collection of cashmere basics before expanding into clothing for both women and men, along with dresses, jumpsuits, cardigans and jackets. For a model whose image has long been part of the product, the brand shows how a runway name can become a retail one without leaving fashion behind.

Hadid’s birthday revisit

The retraced Tahiti images work because they catch Hadid in a specific moment: 31 now, but already tied to a 2016 shoot that she treated like a deadline. She put it plainly then, saying, “I was like, ‘I have to get this right. I have to get this right or the moment is going to pass.’”