LOS ANGELES-Gigi Hadid thinks she started modelling when she was ‘’too young’’.

The 23-year-old beauty admitted she hasn’t always been so confident and there are times early in her career when she wishes she’d stood up for herself in a better way. She said: ‘’Even though I did start at 18, I still feel like I was too young. There are times when I will reflect , and it’s not that someone put me in a bad situation, but I felt that I should have stood up for myself better. As I got older, I got to find that [confidence] in myself.’’ Gigi had wanted to start modelling when she was younger but her mother, Yolanda Hadid, made her wait until she’d finished school and she’s happy that was the case because she got to fully embrace her teenage years.

Speaking at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion event in New York on Thursday (11.10.18), she said: ‘’My mom came to New York at 16 [and she] came to send money home to her family, but as a mom, she chose to keep me in high school until I was 18.

‘’She wouldn’t let me sign. Spring break, my senior year, I came to New York for the first time just to see agencies and I always fought that, but when I look back on it, I would never change it for a second.

‘’The experiences that I got to have in high school, thank god! Instagram had just started and I was posting pictures of flowers with ugly filters. I got to be a normal high schooler and play volleyball.

‘’I used to want to work, and it looked so shiny and sparkly.’’

Gigi has a number of friends in the modelling world and she thinks it’s those ‘’connections’’ that will move the fashion industry forward.

She said: ‘’I know I’m not like the runway queen, but the connections and the emotional things that I’ve had with these designers is what’s kept me around. The friendships that all of these [newer] models are building and the connections, not only emotional but intellectual.

‘’[It’s] the conversations that we get to have with each other that are really broadening fashion. A lot of people would be surprised to see the warmth and support that we all feel for each other.’’