--- title: Cheryl Tiegs description: Celebrate Cheryl Tiegs, the iconic American supermodel whose Sports Illustrated covers, famous pink swimsuit and fashion career helped redefine modeling. canonical_url: https://marktheday.info/cheryl-tiegs language: en-GB date: 2026-09-24T18:13:07Z notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://marktheday.info/cheryl-tiegs. Schema.org structured data included at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. markdown-tokens: 3646 --- > **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://marktheday.info/cheryl-tiegs. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content. > **Structured data** as JSON-LD may be found at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. > **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above. Cheryl Rae Tiegs was born on September 25, 1947, in Breckenridge, Minnesota, the daughter of Phyllis and Theodore Tiegs. Her family later moved to Alhambra, California, where she grew up and attended Alhambra High School. Southern California placed the young Tiegs much closer to the developing fashion and advertising industries, although international modeling fame was hardly an obvious career destination when she was still sitting in classrooms. Her entrance into modeling came while she was a teenager. Tiegs began appearing in advertisements, and an early bathing-suit ad for the swimwear company Cole of California brought her wider attention. The photograph appeared in Seventeen magazine, and the response helped persuade the young model that what had begun as occasional work might actually become a profession. Tiegs enrolled at California State College in Los Angeles, studying English, but modeling increasingly demanded her time. The choice between lectures and professional photography sessions eventually resolved itself in favor of the cameras. She left college before completing her degree and began pursuing modeling full-time. The timing was excellent. Fashion photography was changing during the 1960s, and models were becoming increasingly recognizable personalities rather than simply attractive people displaying clothes. Tiegs possessed the healthy, sun-kissed California appearance that became enormously popular during the era, contrasting with some of the more formal fashion imagery of earlier decades. Her career accelerated quickly. Tiegs appeared on the covers and pages of major magazines including Glamour, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Elle. She worked with leading photographers and became increasingly recognizable to people who had little interest in remembering who had actually designed whatever she happened to be wearing. That last development was important. For much of fashion history, the clothing was supposed to be the star and the model was the elegant human apparatus employed to display it. During Tiegs's era, that relationship began to change. Audiences started recognizing particular models, following their careers and buying magazines partly because those women were on the cover. Tiegs became one of the clearest examples of the transformation. Her relationship with Sports Illustrated proved especially important. She appeared in the magazine's celebrated swimsuit issue multiple times and became the first model to appear twice on its cover. Her appearances helped establish both Tiegs and the annual swimsuit edition as major fixtures of American popular culture. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit assignment was very different from traditional studio fashion photography. Models traveled to beaches and tropical locations, working in natural conditions that could be considerably less glamorous than the finished photographs suggested. Sun, wind, sand and water all had opinions about the day's production schedule, none of which could be negotiated with through an agent. Tiegs nevertheless became closely associated with the relaxed outdoor style that the magazine favored. Her athletic appearance and approachable image fitted the changing American ideal of beauty during the 1960s and 1970s, when fashion increasingly embraced a more casual, active lifestyle. She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1978 in a story examining the growing importance of fashion models as celebrities. Appearing on Time represented something significantly different from appearing on a fashion magazine: Tiegs had become culturally recognizable enough that the model herself was now news. The accompanying attention helped cement her reputation as one of America's first genuine supermodels. Although the term "supermodel" existed before Tiegs reached the height of her career, it was not yet used with the frequency it acquired during the era of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista. Tiegs belonged to the generation that helped make that later phenomenon possible. Her commercial success reflected the change. Tiegs signed a major contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, reportedly worth $1.5 million, an extraordinary figure for a modeling agreement at the time. The deal demonstrated that advertisers were no longer simply hiring a face for a photograph. They were hiring Cheryl Tiegs because consumers knew who Cheryl Tiegs was. The distinction may sound obvious today, when models, actors, athletes and assorted internet personalities routinely attach their names to products. During Tiegs's rise, however, the concept of a model functioning as a recognizable brand was still developing. Then came the pink swimsuit. In 1978, photographer Peter Beard photographed Tiegs wearing a pink fishnet swimsuit. The suit itself left relatively little work for the imagination, and the resulting image became one of the most famous modeling photographs of the decade. It was reproduced as a poster and sold in enormous numbers. The photograph became part of 1970s popular culture and remains the image most immediately associated with Tiegs. Countless posters appeared on bedroom and dormitory walls, where they presumably contributed very little to anyone's academic concentration. For Tiegs, however, the famous image represented only one portion of a career extending through magazines, advertising, fashion and business. She continued working as a model while also becoming one of the first major models to capitalize on her name commercially outside traditional modeling contracts. In 1980, Tiegs entered into a partnership with Sears to create a clothing line bearing her name. The Cheryl Tiegs Collection proved extremely successful and expanded beyond clothing into other products. At a time when celebrity fashion lines were far less common than they would later become, Tiegs demonstrated that a model's public identity could be converted into a substantial retail business. The Sears partnership was significant because it brought the image associated with high-fashion magazines into ordinary American stores. Consumers did not need to purchase designer clothing photographed for Vogue to participate in the Cheryl Tiegs look. They could walk into Sears. The collection reportedly generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales during its run, establishing Tiegs as a businesswoman as well as a model. It also anticipated the later development of celebrity branding, where a familiar public name could support clothing, cosmetics, fragrances and lifestyle products. Tiegs's fame naturally brought television appearances. She appeared as herself on numerous programs and became a familiar guest on talk shows and entertainment programs. Her celebrity had expanded sufficiently beyond modeling that audiences recognized her even when no magazine cover was involved. She also experimented with acting. Tiegs appeared in the 1983 adventure comedy The Brown Bunny—not to be confused with the later film of the same name—and took various television roles and appearances. Acting never replaced modeling as the foundation of her fame, but it broadened her presence in entertainment. One of her more unusual adventures came through her marriage to photographer Peter Beard. Beard was renowned for his photographs of Africa and his fascination with wildlife, and Tiegs spent considerable time traveling in Kenya. The experience introduced her to conservation issues and a world far removed from American fashion studios. Tiegs later became involved in environmental causes and conservation work. Her interests included the preservation of wildlife and natural environments, and she used her public profile to draw attention to ecological issues. She also became associated with organizations and campaigns addressing health, fitness and environmental concerns. Fitness had long been part of the image surrounding Tiegs. Her career coincided with a broader cultural shift toward exercise, outdoor activity and a healthier-looking approach to fashion photography. She became associated with that movement and later spoke frequently about exercise, nutrition and maintaining an active lifestyle. Her personal life also attracted considerable media attention. Tiegs married four times. Her husbands included advertising executive Stan Dragoti, photographer Peter Beard, aspiring actor Anthony Peck and yoga instructor Rod Stryker. She has three sons, including twins born through a surrogate. As the modeling industry evolved through the 1980s and 1990s, a new generation of supermodels became international celebrities. Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and others benefited from a fashion culture in which models could become household names, command enormous fees and develop careers extending far beyond the runway. Tiegs had helped prepare the ground for precisely that development. Her career demonstrated that a model could become famous independently of the designers, photographers and products surrounding her. She could appear on talk shows because audiences knew her name, negotiate contracts based upon her own commercial appeal and launch merchandise that consumers purchased partly because of her association with it. That may be her most important contribution to modeling history. Tiegs was not simply one of the most photographed women of her generation; she helped redefine what a successful model could become. She also emerged during an era before digital photography fundamentally transformed the business. Fashion shoots involved film, carefully planned lighting and photographers who could not immediately examine dozens of images on a monitor. Magazine covers mattered enormously because newsstands were one of the principal places where the public encountered famous faces. There was also no social media allowing models to communicate directly with millions of followers. Fame was built through magazine covers, television appearances, advertising campaigns and posters. If someone wanted a photograph of Cheryl Tiegs on the wall, there was no screen to swipe. Somebody bought the poster, found some tape and committed to the decorating decision. Her famous pink swimsuit photograph remains a useful illustration of just how powerful a single image could become in that environment. It was not endlessly reposted through digital networks. Physical copies circulated through stores, magazines and poster racks until the photograph became instantly recognizable. Tiegs continued to make occasional modeling appearances long after her initial period of superstardom. She also appeared on reality and competition television, including The Celebrity Apprentice, where established public figures were placed into business challenges under the watch of Donald Trump. Tiegs's participation was brief, but by then she had already spent decades demonstrating considerably more practical business experience than many people associated with modeling might have expected. She later appeared in the film Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens, joining a franchise that had discovered there was apparently no upper limit to the number of famous people who could be placed near airborne sharks. It was not exactly Vogue, but nobody could accuse her career of becoming predictable. Through interviews and public appearances, Tiegs has reflected on the enormous changes in modeling since she began. Modern models operate in an environment of social media, personal branding, digital photography and instant global exposure. Yet many of the opportunities now considered routine—the celebrity contract, branded clothing line and model as independent public personality—were considerably less established when Tiegs began exploring them. Her career therefore belongs to an important transitional period in American fashion. She arrived when models were becoming recognizable and helped carry the profession toward the era when the most successful models could be celebrities on the same scale as movie stars. The photographs remain central to her legacy, naturally. Magazine covers preserved the changing styles of several decades, while the pink swimsuit image became almost impossible to separate from the popular culture of the late 1970s. Yet Cheryl Tiegs's importance extends beyond being photographed exceptionally well. She understood that fame could become a business while the idea was still relatively new for models. She moved from magazine pages into advertising contracts, television, retail fashion and public advocacy, creating a template that generations of models would later follow. Today, calling someone a "supermodel" hardly requires explanation. The word immediately suggests international fame, major advertising contracts, magazine covers and a recognizable personality extending beyond fashion itself. Cheryl Tiegs was helping invent that job description while everybody else was still deciding what to call it. 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