Barbara de Vries was born in Amsterdam, where she was a shy child until her fourth grade teacher encouraged her to dance on her desk and tease the boys with her zip-down sixties dress. After this pivotal moment of self discovery her life improved and she started to dream of horizons beyond the grey, wet and flat security of the Netherlands. At age seventeen Barbara packed her bags to pursue a modeling career in Paris, but when she refused to strip for designer Andre Courreges (go figure) her agency threw her out. Eventually she became a top model in London for publications and designers like Vogue, Bazaar, Zandra Rhodes, Yves Saint Laurent and many others. She used modeling as a way to support herself through fashion college and launched her own collection which sold at Harvey Nichols, Neiman Marcus and Seibu, Japan and she dressed celebrity clients like Princess Diana. After ten years Barbara packed her bags again and came to New York where, in 1990, she was snapped up by Calvin Klein to become his senior VP of Design and she went on to create the CK collections which made fashion history when Marky Mark and Kate Moss wore (very little of) what Barbara had designed while posing almost naked over Times Square.
Next Barbara stripped for author Alastair Gordon, who soon became her husband. They had three daughters and moved to Pennsylvania, which dampened Barbara’s exhibitionist spirit until she discovered that, now that she’d passed forty, writing was not only the next best way to bare herself, but that from her new perspective she could throw light on the unattainable standards of beauty the fashion industry puts upon women’s self esteem. While she continues to work as a freelance creative director Barbara also writes professionally, such as the piece for NPR’s All Things Considered  on modeling and eating disorders.