Her name means peace
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Shalom’s mother named her after the Hebrew greeting “shalom aleichem”, which means “may peace be upon you.”
She is the godmother of Amber Valetta’s son
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It is no secret that Shalom Harlow and Amber Valetta are best friends. Throughout their modelling career, the duo appeared together on countless runways, magazine covers and fashion photoshoots, and even shared an iconic kiss for Mugler’s Spring/Summer 2022 campaign. In the early ‘90s, Shalom and Amber lived in a shared flat with fellow model Carolyn Murphy. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, they revealed that Shalom is the godmother of Amber’s son Auden McCaw, a testament to their enduring sisterly bond.
She was scouted at a The Cure concert
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At a The Cure concert in Toronto in 1990, Shalom was approached by a model scout asking if she modelled. She told The Cut, “[she] thought that was ludicrous.” Little did she know that she would go on to become one of the biggest supermodels of her time, notably one of the world’s 15 top-earning supermodels as listed by Forbes in 2007.
She is also an actress, a dancer and a musician
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While Shalom made her first film appearance in the 1995 biographical fashion documentary Unzipped and co-hosted MTV’s House of Style with Amber Valletta, she made her first official acting debut in the 1997 comedy In and Out, where she played a small role. Two years later, she secured her first lead role in the indie romantic comedy Cherry and played Judy Green in the famous Kate Hudson 2003 chick flick How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. In 2004, she landed her most prestigious acting job in renowned American director Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda.
Before she was a model and an actress, Shalom was also a passionate dancer and spent her teenage years doing ballet and tap. After she started modelling in her early twenties, she tried to pick up the guitar and later dipped her toes into drums and percussion music.
She was rendered bedridden from late-stage Lyme disease and severe black mould poisoning
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After Shalom’s meteoric rise in the fashion industry, she realised that her success came with a price: her physical and mental well-being. After keeping quiet about her deteriorating condition out of the fear that it would harm her career, Shalom took a year off in 2000 and continued to model intermittently for the next few years, but her health soon caught up with her. In 2013, just before her 40th birthday, the model was rendered bedridden from late-stage Lyme disease and severe black mould poisoning from her home on the Big Sur, the central coast of California. “I did have complex PTSD from the level of infections in my body,” she shared in an interview with InStyle. After moving to the West Coast to focus on her healing, she made a glorious comeback on the runway of Versace’s Spring 2019 show in Paris.
Editor
Kaitlyn LaiCredit
Lead Image: Condé Nast Archive