Instantly recognized for her gap-toothed smile, Lauren Hutton knows about beauty at every age. In a society and an industry that are obsessed with youth, she has proven over and over that ideal beauty is a myth—and has refused to fade away as she gets older. Wisely, she never corrected the slight gap in her teeth, and her "imperfections" have made her stand out. As she so eloquently expressed it, "We have to be able to grow up. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be. I don't think I will ever cut my face, because once I cut it, I'll never know where I've been."

Lauren Hutton (née Mary Lawrence Hutton) was born on November 17, 1944, in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew up in rural Florida. She attended the University of Southern Florida and then Tulane University, where she received her degree in 1964. At the age of 20, the young beauty had a brief stint as a Playboy bunny.

After college, Lauren moved to New York and was picked up by the prestigious Ford modeling agency. In 1966, she was discovered by iconic Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and began a long-standing relationship with Vogue. Lauren would grace the magazine's cover more than 25 times, many of those appearances photographed by the legendary Richard Avedon.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lauren's fame and success as a model continued to grow. In 1974, she ushered in a new era of "supermodels" when she negotiated a contract with Revlon in which its cosmetics would be associated exclusively with her. The agreement was unprecedented, making headlines all over the world, and Lauren became the first model to earn a million dollars for being tied to a single brand. She stayed with Revlon for 10 years.

At the same time, Lauren began to make forays into the world of acting. She first appeared in 1968’s Paper Lion and had notable roles in The Gambler with James Caan in 1974 and American Gigolo in 1980 (starring Richard Gere, who was dressed by Giorgio Armani—one of the first times a designer's clothes were used and credited in a Hollywood film).

Since the 1990s, Lauren has worked closely with organizations such as the Women's Campaign Fund and World Wildlife Foundation, and she sat on the board of the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C. In 1999, she became the first television advocate for Hormone Replacement Therapy, the postmenopausal preventive treatment for osteoporosis, heart disease, colon cancer, and Alzheimer's. She is also a member of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and Heartshare Human Services of New York.

Lauren is the original vice president of the Guggenheim Museum Motorcycle Club. She made headlines in October 2000 when she was in a serious motorcycle accident while on a 100-mile ride near Las Vegas with bikers and fellow celebrities Dennis Hopper and Jeremy Irons, celebrating a motorcycle exhibit at the Hermitage-Guggenheim Museum. After losing control on a curve, she skidded about 100 feet and went airborne, ultimately suffering multiple leg and arm fractures, broken ribs, a punctured lung, cuts, and bruises. Lauren traveled down a long road of physical rehabilitation, but was back in action in 2002, launching her own cosmetics line aimed at mature women, called Lauren Hutton Good Stuff, and resurfacing as a Gap model. Over the years, she was offered millions of dollars to pose nude, but waited until October 2005, when at the age of 61, she finally agreed and posed for Big. "I want [women] not to be ashamed of who they are when they're in bed," she told ABC's Good Morning America.