Presley Gerber, model and son of Cindy Crawford, dies at 27

Presley Gerber, the son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Rande Gerber, died Sunday morning at age 27.

Gerber died at a rehabilitation facility, according to online records of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. The medical examiner did not provide a cause of death. An autopsy was performed, but more testing is required before investigators can give a cause. Santa Monica police said in a press release that the department was investigating Gerber’s death as a suspected overdose.

The death was confirmed by Allie Jenkins, a representative for Crawford and Rande Gerber, who were married in 1998.

“The family is asking for privacy during this very difficult and painful time,” Jenkins said in an email Sunday night.

Gerber was a model and the older brother of model and actor Kaia Gerber. He had been open about his struggles with mental health and substance abuse, documenting his journey on Instagram. He even started a “Mental Health Mondays” series on the platform to raise awareness and share wellness tips. Across multiple episodes, he related his own experiences with substances, as well as his time at rehabilitation facilities.

Raised in Malibu, California, Gerber signed with the management agency IMG as a teenager and made his runway debut for Moschino at 16. In 2018, he appeared alongside his mother – whose famous beauty mark he inherited – in a Pepsi Super Bowl ad that paid homage to her 1992 commercial for the soda brand. That same year, he and his sister shot a campaign for Calvin Klein jeans.

Gerber later signed with DNA Models. His biography on the agency’s website describes him as an entrepreneur and model who was inspired by “his mother’s legendary modeling career and his father’s lucrative business career.”

Gerber’s modeling biography also described him as an “avid surfer and skater.” In an Instagram video posted in July 2025, Gerber described growing up as a dedicated athlete who spent hours in the water nearly every day – a routine that came to a halt when he started working. With less physical activity, Gerber said, he was put on more medication, and his quality of life suffered.

“For me it took 10 years of looking back at my life being like, ‘Well, what changed?’ A lot of the time people would ask, like, ‘You were such a happy kid; what happened to you?’” he recalled. “What happened was life happened, and I wasn’t able to worry about one thing, which was my next meal, and then get back in the ocean. Like I had to start making money, I had to start – I got a job.”

In an interview with Vogue last month, Kaia Gerber praised her brother for being so open about his experience with addiction.

“My parents for most of our lives were very, very private and didn’t share anything, and now we have this absolute teacher, my brother, who says, ‘I’m gonna be very human for everyone,’” she told the magazine. “There’s only so much you can hide from the world. And trying to put a lid on something just makes the person feel like you’re ashamed of them.”

In addition to his testimonial videos, Gerber’s Instagram was a collection of modeling shoots and memories that stretched back to childhood. His life around cameras influenced his own interest in photography as an art form.

“I have always been the type of person to stop and take a picture when everybody is just focused on the destination,” he told Vogue in 2016, on the occasion of his runway debut. “I feel like people walk by a countless amount of beauty in the world every day and I hope that I don’t miss all of it.”

DAILYSABAH