Linda Evangelista has learned the power of friendship.
On Wednesday, Feb. 19, the supermodel, 59, spoke about her positive experience showing her friends her mastectomy scars from her journey with breast cancer during Shiseido’s Potential Has No Age Summit, hosted in collaboration with Forbes.
Evangelista participated in the Facing the Pressures to Look Youthful panel with Jenna Lyons and Shiseido chief marketing officer Agnes Landau.
When asked about a time she felt most beautiful, she recalled her February 2024 photo shoot for Zeit Magazine, shot by Lyons’ fiancée Cass Bird, in which she appeared shirtless with a jean jacket.
“Jenna was there that day,” the model said. “We brought her into the pictures, but when I was changing, they asked me, ‘Can we see your…’ I don’t know what you said, if it was my chest or my whatever. I have had a double mastectomy and I had never shown anyone besides my family.”
After showing the scars from her surgery, she recalled being told that they were “so beautiful.”
Evangelista noted that she was doubtful at the time and benefited from the reassurance from her peers. “I should have known myself, looking in the mirror. Something I don’t love to do, but I should have known that it is beautiful. And they made me feel beautiful,” she said.
Following that sweet interaction, the model agreed to take her shirt off for the photo. “I’m beautiful, but I needed to hear it from someone else,” she explained. “So I just really think it’s important that as women, we support each other and uplift each other. I think we’re all in this together.”
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Evangelista told WSJ. Magazine in September 2023 that she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 after an annual mammogram. Stating that “the margins were not good,” she shared that she immediately “opted for a bilateral mastectomy.” A few years later, in July 2022, the model discovered that the cancer had returned.
Following her second diagnosis, she told her oncologist, “Dig a hole in my chest. I don’t want it to look pretty. I want you to excavate. I want to see a hole in my chest when you’re done. Do you understand me? I’m not dying from this.”
Evangelista later said on The View, “I’m okay with scars. I think scars are trophies. I’m good with scars.”
The Shiseido event was timed to the launch of the brand’s Vital Perfection Concentrated Supreme Cream, advertised as an anti-aging product that leaves skin looking lifted and firmer.
During the panel, Evangelista also opened up about her own skin care routine. “I wear sunscreen every day, even if it’s winter,” the model said. “In the winter, it’ll be built into my moisturizer.” She added that she is also mindful of “the way I eat, exercise.”
Her ultimate skin care advice, however, is to “finish the bottle” when trying new products.
“I’m able to get my hands on great skin care. But I think that everyone has access to great skin care. My advice is just finish the bottle. I’m guilty of not finishing the bottle because then there’s another one that comes and you get excited about that one. I feel like we owe it to these companies to at least finish it so we can see the results that they were promising us,” she said.
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