Long before the Sports Illustrated covers and the Billy Joel video, Christie Brinkley was a young model posing with a glass of Canadian whisky. Those Black Velvet print ads ran in 1978, and this week the brand brought her back. Now 72, Brinkley stars in a new Black Velvet Canadian Whisky campaign that reimagines the photos she posed for nearly five decades ago, and she told People in an exclusive interview published October 23 that she loved the idea from the start. “It’s proof that some things get better with age, whiskey and models,” she said.
The new pictures are not a shot-for-shot copy. Brinkley wears black velvet again, this time a long-sleeved top with a deep V, and she holds a crystal glass while her blond hair falls in a bouncy blowout instead of the flattened updo she wore in the 1970s. The road between the two ads ran through a Paris post office and a Billy Joel song, and seeing the new photos moved her more than she expected.
How Did Christie Brinkley Become A Black Velvet Girl?
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Brinkley was born on February 2, 1954, in Monroe, Michigan, and grew up in California. After high school she moved to Paris to study art, and in 1973 a stranger spotted her making a phone call in a post office. He turned out to be the American photographer Errol Sawyer, who took her first modeling pictures and introduced her to John Casablancas of the Elite agency, as both Sawyer’s biography and her own retelling to Porter magazine describe it.
Within a few years she was booking steady advertising work, and Black Velvet was one of the brands that signed her, a Canadian whisky that is still distilled in Lethbridge, Alberta. In an Instagram post this week, she wrote that she was “Getting ready to celebrate the relaunch of my campaign for Black Velvet…50 years after my first ad!”
What Happened In The Years After That First Ad?
Black Velvet Canadian Whiskey. A premium import at a very reasonable price. Liquid Velvet & Christie Brinkley (1979) #1970s #ad #ChristieBrinkley #velvet #BlackVelvetCanadianWhiskey #whiskey #vintage #classic #nostalgia #LiquidVelvet https://t.co/43lBYX8F60
— Barbara’s Nostalgia (@nostalgiapix25) August 30, 2022
A year after the whisky photos, Brinkley landed on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in February 1979. She returned to the cover in 1980 and again in 1981, which made her the first model ever to hold the spot three years in a row, according to SI’s own archive and CBS News. She also signed a record 25-year deal with CoverGirl, and in 1983 moviegoers met her as the mystery blonde in the red Ferrari who keeps catching Chevy Chase’s eye in National Lampoon’s Vacation.
That same year she met Billy Joel at a bar on St. Barts, where she was on a magazine shoot. In her 2025 memoir, which she named Uptown Girl, she wrote that he “definitely didn’t look like a rock star” sitting at the piano. Joel told Howard Stern in 2010 that he started the song “Uptown Girl” with several women in mind before it became about Brinkley. She starred in the 1983 video as the polished uptown girl to his working-class mechanic, and the single climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The couple married on March 23, 1985, and their daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, was born that December 29. The marriage ended in 1994, but the song never left her, and when Joel played it at Madison Square Garden in April 2024, she was caught on the big screen dancing along.
Why Would She Pose For The Same Brand At 72?
Her family grew after Joel. Son Jack Paris Brinkley was born in 1995, and daughter Sailor Brinkley Cook arrived on July 2, 1998. Both girls joined her in the 2017 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, shot in Turks and Caicos when she was 63. “When I turned 30, I was like, ‘This is the last time I’m posing in a bathing suit!'” she told People at the time. “But to get to do it with my girls, I thought, ‘One last go!'” Alexa Ray has since built her own career as a singer.
When Black Velvet came calling this year, Brinkley said recreating the old images was “such a good idea” and the shoot was “a lot of fun.” One thing changed. “We did a slightly different hairdo because the old one sort of looked like a flattened beret or something,” she told People. “But that was a really popular hairdo at the time.”
She gives the modeling world some of the credit for the second chance. “I think that the ad probably wouldn’t be happening at all if we hadn’t already evolved to be a much more inclusive industry,” she said, adding that “to be on a set at 72 and be told, ‘You look beautiful,’ is something that wouldn’t have happened 50 years ago.” The pressure she once felt came from trying to please whoever was paying. “Not that I ever thought I was perfect, but I tried to be perfect for the client,” she explained. These days her attitude is simpler: “If they want me, take me as I am.”
What Did She Feel When She Saw The New Photos?
Brinkley told People that seeing the finished pictures was “really emotional.” She could still recognize the woman she was in her twenties in them, she said, but the new shots carried “more confidence and elegance.” She calls the campaign “a continuation” of the original, “classic, yet modern and mature, with the same spirit.”
Asked what she would tell the young woman in the 1978 ads, her answer was two words: “live it up.” She credits humor, curiosity and taking care of her health for how she feels now, and she is “not feeling stressed out by every pound, any wrinkle or whatever.”
Her dream drinking companions say something too. She would love to share one with Jane Fonda, and “of course, my old standby, George Clooney.” But the name she lingered on was Joni Mitchell. “I love Joni Mitchell so much,” Brinkley said. “I’d love to just toast to her, really, more than anything.”
Christie Brinkley is back with Black Velvet, 48 years after her first ad campaign for the brand. https://t.co/o7Z6tUPU2C
— Food & Wine (@foodandwine) October 27, 2026