A 'Disfigured' Evangelista Is Back on Cover of Vogue

"My big dream was to be on a Vogue cover and it's happening again," says Linda Evangelista, who is on the cover of the September edition of British Vogue. The Canadian supermodel has appeared on the magazine's cover more than 80 times—but a lot changed since she was on the cover of the Japanese edition in 2014, her most recent appearance before now. This is the first time the 57-year-old has been on a Vogue cover since a cosmetic procedure backfired and, in her words, "brutally disfigured" her and left her "unrecognizable," the BBC reports. For the cover and other photos, a makeup artist used tape and elastics to pull back her face, neck, and jaw.

"That’s not my jaw and neck in real life—and I can’t walk around with tape and elastics everywhere," Evangelista says in a Vogue interview. She says that after using the CoolSculpting fat-freezing treatment, she was diagnosed in 2016 with a rare side effect that increased fat cells instead of decreasing them. She sued Zeltiq Aesthetics, the company behind the treatment, for $50 million and the case was settled for an undisclosed amount last month, the Guardian reports. Evangelista says she decide to have the treatment after seeing numerous CoolSculpting commercials that promised to budge stubborn fat with no downtime or surgery. "I drank the magic potion, and I would because I’m a little vain," she says. "So I went for it—and it backfired."

"If I had known side effects may include losing your livelihood and you’ll end up so depressed that you hate yourself," she tells Vogue, "I wouldn’t have taken that risk." She says that while she still struggles with depression and can't look in the mirror, she has received a lot of support from friends. She says she's trying to love herself as she is. Of the Vogue photos, she says, "I always think we’re here to create fantasies. We’re creating dreams. I think it’s allowed. Also, all my insecurities are taken care of in these pictures, so I got to do what I love to do." She is also starring in a new Fendi campaign, and she says that when her son saw the photos, he said, "Damn! You spent five years in your bedroom and then this." (Earlier this year, she spoke out about the procedure and shared photos of the aftermath.)