Propped up against a vintage car, a 15-year-old Presley Gerber gave his best blue steel.
Dressed casually in a pair of blue denim jeans, a white t-shirt, black jacket and with two analogue cameras draped around his neck, Gerber – son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, a former model himself – marked his fashion debut modeling alongside his younger sister Kaia for the prestigious CR Fashion Book in 2015.
Styled by the renowned editor Carine Roitfeld, she praised their ‘beauty,’ and declared: ‘I like the idea of the brother and sister duo born with fashion in their blood.’
Unbeknownst to Presley, such genetics would be an albatross around his neck, with that first foray into modeling kickstarting a future dominated by substance abuse and a years-long battle with bad mental health.
It was ultimately these troubles that led to his tragic death at 27 earlier this month, mere hours after he was checked into a rehab facility in Los Angeles.
Questions have since been raised about how young he was thrust into the modeling industry and the oft intoxicating world of celebrity that accompanies it.
Presley Gerber’s first foray into modelling exposed him to an existence plagued by substance abuse and a years-long battle with his mental health (pictured in 2019).
Presley’s modeling career took off almost overnight
‘It was all too easy for Presley to break into modeling,’ a family insider told the Daily Mail. ‘He had the looks and the name recognition. When he was in his mid-teens everything just fell into his lap. It happened so fast he didn’t know what hit him.’
A sporty teen who spent his life in the water – surfing, swimming and playing water polo – Presley had afforded little time to properly consider a modeling career. ‘I never even thought about it for a second, and I never really liked being in front of a camera,’ he previously told W magazine.
But that changed when he was scouted at the age of 15 and signed to IMG Models, the same agency as his sister Kaia, now 25.
Soon Presley was juggling academic work with a burgeoning modeling career that saw him and Kaia touted as ‘the next Gigi and Bella Hadid.’
‘Within the first week of signing I’m in New York and people are taking pictures of me, like, shirt off,’ he recalled to the Studio 22 podcast in 2023. ‘My whole life changed within a month, and it was just a very profound experience because I had to grow up quickly.’
In 2016, a year after getting his modeling break, he made his runway debut for Italian label Moschino, and soon he was the face of Calvin Klein and posed topless in tiny Tommy Hilfiger pants for shoots alongside the likes of Camila Morrone, as well as walking runways for brands such as Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Bottega Veneta and Ralph Lauren.
‘Both Cindy and Rande weren’t concerned at first,’ said our family insider. ‘They thought it was just a phase. A fun experience for a year or so then he’d go into business with Rande. That was the plan. Sadly, it played out very differently.
‘Rande even presented him with business models for them to partner on. Presley would usually seem like he was interested but nothing ever came from them.’
They thought he would ‘go into business with Rande… Sadly, it played out very differently. Rande even presented him with business models for them to partner on. Presley would usually seem like he was interested but nothing ever came from them’ (pictured with his father Rande and sister Kaia).
Presley struggled with pressure of his famous family
A year after his modeling debut, Presley had talked about his hope of going to business school and later revealed he was studying for his real estate license.
But ‘he always turned back to modeling,’ our insider said.
‘Presley had an addictive personality. He found modeling to be lots of fun at first. He loved the attention. It was his focus. It even changed his personality. He’d always been the quiet one in the family. Suddenly he found he was the center of attention and he was loving it. He became addicted to it.’
The youngster was immersed in a world of fashion week parties where drugs and debauchery were in abundance.
‘Rande never stopped trying to push him to quit modeling and join him in business ventures,’ our insider said. ‘By this time Presley was old enough to make his own decisions. Suddenly his world became the modeling world. There were parties all the time. Most of his new friends were from that world. He became a celebrity in his own right.’
Enjoy it he may, but our insider previously told us that he also struggled with the insurmountable pressure to prove himself. After all, his mother was a supermodel and his father had modeled in his younger years.
‘When he was getting huge modeling gigs, he didn’t think it was because of him,’ the family friend told us. ‘He thought it was because he was Cindy Crawford’s son. The stress became a huge obstacle… his biggest problem was he didn’t ever think he was enough.’
But any suggestion that 60-year-old Crawford ‘pushed Presley to model at a young age,’ another source said, is simply ‘not true.’
‘Presley wanted it when he was young,’ the source said. ‘He said in a video he was “thrown” into modeling but that is not accurate. He wanted it. And Cindy guided him the best she could.’
It would be only be ‘later,’ they added, that ‘Presley didn’t want it’ anymore.
And that bubble did eventually burst, the family insider said: ‘He loved the spotlight until he didn’t anymore.’
‘It all came crashing down and became too much for him,’ they continued. ‘When he started using is still a mystery. Cindy and Rande didn’t know because he was on the road so much. He was also no longer under their roof.’
Presley and Kaia (pictured in 2016) were once touted as ‘the next Gigi and Bella Hadid.’
‘Rande never stopped trying to push him to quit modeling and join him in business ventures,’ our source said.
Presley openly documented his battle with opioid addiction
Presley was jet setting around the world and in 2023 bought his own home – a three-bedroom $3.4 million mid-century Hollywood Hills property complete with a guest house and a pool.
‘He’d got his own place which was pretty normal for someone who could be independent, but coupled with a successful modeling career it was getting tougher and tougher for his parents to watch over him.’
Signs of his struggles slowly started to reveal themselves. He was arrested for driving under the influence in December 2018. He pleaded ‘no contest’ to the charge the following year and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
That February he debuted a face tattoo, the word ‘misunderstood’ to reflect how he felt in life and soon followed reporting of his parents’ failed attempts to get him treatment. Then in 2024, Presley revealed he was ‘dealing with [a] current, very high opioid addiction.’
He spoke candidly about those struggles in his Mental Health Mondays videos, an Instagram initiative he launched in March 2023 to talk about his own experiences with substances including ketamine, ‘poppy seed tea’ – sometimes used to treat pain – alcohol and nicotine as well as a plethora of prescription medications, and to help others feel less alone.
In December 2025, he told his fans in a since-deleted social media video that he was struggling. He said he was on 1mg of Buprenorphine, a prescription opioid used to treat both pain and opioid use disorders, twice a day.
He also said that the ‘benzos have been fluctuating up and down depending on what’s been going on in my life’ and that he was taking a dose of Xanax at night or when the ‘panic attacks are really, really bad.’
In January this year, however, he looked healthy, posing at an event for the release of his close friend Paris Hilton’s second album.
His parents struggled to keep watch on their son who moved out of the family home, was traveling the world and found himself turning to hard drugs.
Presley’s hopes for recovery ended in tragedy
And in March he revealed he had undergone an ‘Ibogaine Flood Dose’ at the Beond Ibogaine clinic in Cancun, Mexico, where treatment starts at $12,500 for a ten-day program.
‘I faced what I had been running from, and somewhere in all of it, I started finding my way back to myself,’ he wrote on Instagram at the time. ‘We shall see… Praying it’s the last time I have to come back.’
Patients are administered a high dose of ibogaine, a naturally occurring psychoactive compound derived from the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga that is reported to help withdrawal symptoms and ‘reset brain pathways.’
But hope of prolonged stability was short lived, and on September 20 he died of a suspected overdose at the luxury recovery facility Resolutions Living in Santa Monica.
An autopsy was completed by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, but the official cause and manner of death are deferred pending toxicology results, which can take several weeks or months.
His death made one of his first interviews all the more poignant. Speaking to W magazine in 2016, on the cusp of his modeling career, he said he had a hidden talent for ‘fixing things.’
‘I can fix stuff pretty good, kinda like everything,’ he said, unaware of how he would never quite be able to fix himself.
The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Presley’s family for comment.
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