Cindy Crawford responds to critics of her 18-year-old daughter, Kaia, modeling

At just 18 years old, Kaia Gerber has made quite the name for herself in the modeling world.

And this is to be expected, considering her mother, Cindy Crawford, is about as big of an icon as it gets in that realm.

In a new interview with Vogue, Gerber and Crawford spoke about what the young woman learned from her mother and if following in her footsteps was always her goal.

"If anyone had a point of reference, I definitely did and one of the best ones," Gerber said about her legendary mother. "For me [modeling] wasn't a foreign world to go into and I felt like I understood it. I knew what I was kind of getting into."

Crawford said one of the main lessons she taught Gerber was "when you go to work with a photographer or designer, it is like do your homework."

"I want to have a language. If I know this photographer shoots this way, when I get to set, I kind of already know what language we might be speaking that day as opposed to just walking in and not knowing anything about the editor or the designer or photographer. By the time Kaia has started in the fashion industry, she was pretty well versed," she added.

Aside from the sage wisdom, Crawford also pointed to social media on how the landscape has changed.

"There isn't a 12-year-old that doesn't know how to take a great selfie and how to retouch it perfectly," she said. "So when people would say, ‘Well, how could you let Kaia start modeling?' I'm like, every young person is modeling in their own life."

She added, "Now, if they might only have 300 followers and I do think having more followers and more eyes on you has sometimes felt like a lot of pressure for Kaia because sometimes she'll want to just post something silly or funny and then all of a sudden you're like, 'OK, does this fit my image?' As you were saying, it's been a great tool but it also sometimes feels like pressure."

Gerber agrees that there are positive and negatives to social.

"Now as models, you see us from the second we wake up until we go to sleep and you're not just seeing us all done up. I think that is really nice to realize that you're not always looking like you look on the cover of Vogue, but it also takes away a bit of that kind of magic and almost suspense," she said.