“Relaxing on the couch in the living room with Snoop and my homeopathy books! Taking a break between clients.” — Danielle Zinaich. Photograph: Caroline Rice.
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At a glance
- Danielle Zinaich continues modelling while running Remedy Your Health, the homeopathy practice she developed alongside fashion and motherhood.
- Her story explores returning to study, setting boundaries and beginning again in new places after 50.
- Her next chapter brings earlier experiences forward: fashion remains part of a life that also includes study, family, nature and new relationships.
From international runways to a second career in homeopathy, Danielle Zinaich is still finding new paths to pursue after 50.
Danielle Zinaich’s latest turn on the Chanel runway felt almost too perfectly cast.
For Chanel’s Fall/Winter 2026 Haute Couture show in Paris, the 52-year-old model wore a Jack and the Beanstalk-inspired look that she describes as featuring interwoven tweed and copper bean-and-coil buttons. For Zinaich, a practising homeopath who once grew beans indoors with her sons, the connection felt personal. “I’m obsessed with nature,” she says.
The show marked a return to familiar territory. Zinaich had walked numerous Chanel runways under the late Karl Lagerfeld, and recalls being flown between New York and Paris on the Concorde when he needed her for a show on short notice. This time, she found herself alongside younger models who wanted to know how she had sustained such a long career.
Her answer could just as easily apply to the life she has built beyond fashion: keep moving, stay curious and don’t be afraid to start somewhere new.
An unexpected start to a life in fashion
Zinaich was 15 when a photographer spotted the tall, athletic teenager at the mall and suggested she try modelling. She later won a competition that attracted interest from international agents but, at her parents’ insistence, began her career close to home in Pittsburgh, near her hometown of Weirton, West Virginia.
At 17, with opportunities in both New York and Paris, she headed to Paris at her parents’ urging; they saw Europe as the safer choice and a chance for cultural and language immersion. Once there, she navigated packed schedules of castings, fittings and shows with limited French and only a paper street map to guide her.
Most days she was exhausted and in tears, wondering what she was doing there. But she kept going and her perseverance paid off. Zinaich went on to work with many of fashion’s biggest names, including photographer Steven Meisel, and appeared in Vogue, major advertising campaigns and runway shows around the world.
The success was exhilarating, but it came with anxiety, exhaustion and pressure to seize every opportunity while it lasted. She recalls a British Vogue photo shoot during which she was repeatedly thrown into the air above a mattress despite voicing concerns about pain and bruising. She says she was eventually injured, resulting in a bulging disc and months of physiotherapy.
The experience taught her to trust her instincts and set firmer boundaries. “You can sleep on it. You can think about it. You can say no,” she says. “You don’t have to say yes to everything and end up exhausted.”
Motherhood presented another balancing act. Zinaich continued modelling internationally after having her two sons, sometimes bringing them along while she worked. When they remained at home, she pumped breast milk between jobs and flew back from overseas with it packed on dry ice. “This is liquid gold,” she remembers thinking.
Danielle Zinaich, photographed by Caroline Rice.
Looking beyond the runway
Even as her modelling career flourished, Zinaich had developed an interest in holistic wellness. She traces that back to an experience with a homeopathic veterinarian whom she consulted after her dog developed a concerning eye growth. She recalls the growth improving afterward, an experience that prompted her to read, attend study groups and explore nutrition, yoga and meditation.
In some ways, the interest brought her back to the person she had been before fashion. As a child, Zinaich sold rocks instead of lemonade, worked in her family’s garden and spent hours looking for shapes in the clouds. “I always kind of had that in me,” she says.
Years later, while raising her sons and continuing to work, she began thinking seriously about what else her future might hold beyond modelling.
When a mentor told her about a four-year homeopathy program offered in New York through London’s Centre for Homeopathic Education, she enrolled immediately. Having bypassed university for the Paris runways, Zinaich worried about writing papers and mastering the technology. But this time, higher education felt right. “Finally, at this point in my life, this is what I wanted to go to school for,” she says.
She later completed additional science studies and says she has now operated her private practice, Remedy Your Health, for 15 years. She conducts extensive virtual consultations in which clients discuss everything from their physical symptoms to sleep, food preferences and emotional well-being. Zinaich believes deeply in homeopathy’s value after seeing what she describes as meaningful improvements in her clients’ lives. Her approach is rooted in individualized care, taking time to understand each client’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. For Zinaich, the most rewarding part of her work is building meaningful relationships with clients and supporting them throughout their personal wellness journeys.
Zinaich describes herself as highly sensitive and empathetic—qualities that help her listen closely but can also make the work emotionally demanding. Because clients sometimes share traumatic experiences, she sees a therapist when she needs help processing what she has heard.
Danielle Zinaich with Snoop, Brett’s collie, and her border collie, Sadie. Photograph: Caroline Rice.
Making room for what comes next
Her move into homeopathy was an expansion of her life rather than a departure from fashion. Zinaich remains represented by Next Management and says she continues to take on special assignments, including her recent return to Chanel. She is candid, too, about the less glamorous work involved in modelling at 52—from covering her grey roots with hair mascara between salon appointments to following a skincare routine she sometimes finds exhausting. Modelling, she says, also taught her that it is possible to land in an unfamiliar place and make a life there, a lesson she has used repeatedly.
Case in point: after her 28-year marriage ended and her younger son left for college in Savannah, Georgia, Zinaich moved there too, drawn to its oak trees, Spanish moss and slower rhythm. On her 50th birthday, she met Brett, a wealth manager, at a hotel bar after taking the empty seat beside him. A conversation began about their collies (both have heterochromia) and eventually led to a long-distance relationship, with Zinaich recently moving to the Chicago suburbs to join him. “It’s been the time of my life,” she says. On each return to Savannah’s Hotel Bardo, they sit in those same seats where they met. “The bartender there knows our story and takes a picture of us when we come in.”
Today, Zinaich isn’t staging a comeback; fashion never entirely disappeared from her life. Nor does she see reinvention as abandoning what came before. Modelling, motherhood, homeopathy and her willingness to begin again in a new city have all become part of the same evolving life.
If there is a lesson in her unconventional path, it is to remain open to where life might lead. “Modelling has shown me that you can pick up and move anywhere and start fresh,” she says. Her advice to that overwhelmed 17-year-old who once struggled to find her way around Paris is simpler: “Live more presently, pace yourself—and enjoy every minute.”
About Danielle
Danielle Zinaich, BSc (Hons), RSHom (UK)
Registered Homeopath · Bachelor of Science with Honours · Reiki Master
Learn more about Danielle’s practice at Remedy Your Health.
At home with Danielle
A portrait series by Caroline Rice.
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- “Clearing the energy in the house and my office space with sage.” — Danielle Zinaich. Photograph: Caroline Rice.
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- Danielle Zinaich in a portrait by Caroline Rice. Photograph: Caroline Rice.
Health context: NCCIH’s guidance on homeopathy notes limited evidence of effectiveness and recommends continuing evidence-based medical care without postponing professional advice.
The photograph that stayed with me
A personal photo diary by Danielle Zinaich · July 1997
Danielle Zinaich in Halston for U.S. Vogue, July 1997. Photograph: Steven Meisel. Fashion editor: Grace Coddington. From Danielle’s personal archive.
This is one of my favorite images because it represents such a pivotal moment in my career. I had gone up to Vogue many times to meet with Anna Wintour, who would check my hair color and insist it was too dark, and I heard “no” many times before finally making it into the magazine. Grace Coddington, with her unmistakable red hair, really loved me and continued to push for me.
This image was photographed by Steven Meisel for American Vogue, with Grace as fashion editor, and I’m wearing a Halston dress, which makes it even more meaningful because I would later go on to shoot the relaunch of Halston with Steven Meisel. That same month, I was also on the cover of Italian Vogue, photographed by Steven, and I was working with him extensively during that period.
“Grace and Steven truly helped shape my career, so this photograph holds a very special place in my heart.”
Danielle Zinaich
The archive · U.S. Vogue, July 1997 · “Euro Flash”
Photographer: Steven Meisel · Fashion editor: Grace Coddington · Hair: Garren · Makeup: Kay Montano · Dress: Halston.
Vogue later described Zinaich as an “original Helmut Lang muse”, recalling the momentum her work with Meisel brought to her career in the 1990s.
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