Three months before his death at age 27, Presley Gerber stood between his parents at a gathering in Malibu and spoke openly about a subject that had become deeply personal to him: mental health.

The June 11 appearance would later take on an entirely different significance. It became Presley’s final public event before his death on September 20, and one of the last occasions on which he publicly described the struggles, discoveries and personal changes that had shaped his adult life.

Presley attended the We Are ENOUGH x Aviator Nation launch at Aviator Nation Dreamland in Malibu, California, alongside his parents, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber. Photographs from the evening showed him smiling between them, one arm around his father.

Crawford, 60, and Rande, 64, were there not simply as guests but to support their son as he participated in a panel centered on mental health.

The event marked the launch of a bracelet collection created through a collaboration involving We Are ENOUGH, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie and Aviator Nation founder Paige Mycoskie. All proceeds from the collection were designated to support mental health organizations.

For Presley, however, the evening was more than a public appearance.

It gave him an opportunity to talk about experiences he had increasingly chosen to share with others.

### A Personal Turning Point

During the panel, Presley appeared alongside Blake and Paige Mycoskie, Lauren Scruggs Kennedy, Caroline Baudino and Chance Hindirlane, with Tyler Ramsey moderating the discussion.

Presley spoke about the long process of understanding his own mental health and explained that one of his most important realizations came when he was around 23.

He described having spent years feeling different while taking various medications. After coming off those medications, he said, he began trying to understand which thoughts represented his genuine sense of self and which did not.

That process eventually helped him reach a realization closely connected to the theme of the event: that he was enough as he was.

His comments also touched on another pressure that had followed him since childhood.

Presley grew up inside an internationally recognized family. His mother became one of the most famous models of her generation, while his younger sister, Kaia Gerber, later built a major modeling career of her own.

Living under that kind of attention, Presley suggested, could create expectations about how a person should look, behave and present himself to the outside world.

For him, relief eventually came not from maintaining that image but from becoming more open.

“The most free I felt was when I was finally honest with myself,” he told the audience.

### His Advice Was Surprisingly Simple

Presley’s message that evening was not limited to describing the difficulties he had faced.

He also offered practical advice for people trying to make it through difficult days.

Movement and time outdoors, he said, could matter even when someone did not feel motivated to do much of anything.

“Move your body regardless of how you’re feeling. Get outside. Get some sun,” Presley said, adding that even lying down on the grass could be an option when exercise felt impossible.

At the time, the remarks were part of a broader conversation about mental health.

After his death, they became part of the record of his final months.

Presley died on Sunday, September 20, at age 27. Records from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner indicated that he died at a rehabilitation facility. An official cause of death had not been determined at the time the information was released.

His family — Crawford, Rande and Kaia — asked for privacy as they faced what their representative described as an extremely painful period.

### Years of Speaking More Openly

The Malibu discussion was not the first time Presley had addressed his emotional struggles publicly.

In recent years, he had gradually become more candid about depression, substance use and the complicated reality of trying to manage his mental health.

During a podcast appearance in 2023, Presley described mental health as an issue that occupied an enormous part of his life, calling it essentially a constant responsibility.

He said one of his goals was to use his own experiences to help people struggling with depression or other problems affecting their lives.

Rather than presenting himself as someone who had everything figured out, Presley emphasized learning from mistakes without judgment.

That willingness to speak publicly eventually expanded to social media.

Through videos he called “Mental Health Mondays,” Presley discussed subjects that were considerably more personal than the polished images often associated with a famous modeling family.

In a since-deleted Instagram video shared in December 2025, he talked about panic attacks and taking several medications, including buprenorphine, Xanax and Valium.

He also spoke about experiencing significant loss.

His reason for sharing so much, he explained, was the possibility that another person going through something similar might realize they were not alone.

### Kaia Saw Her Brother’s Openness Differently

Presley’s decision to discuss his experiences publicly also affected the way his sister viewed their family.

In an interview published shortly before his death, Kaia, 24, reflected on how her brother’s struggles had changed the dynamic inside their home.

She said that when a family goes through something so consuming, it can place everyone on the same emotional level.

Kaia explained that she began thinking of herself as the “easy one,” a role that sometimes made her hesitant to ask her parents for help with her own problems.

At the same time, she expressed admiration for Presley’s willingness to reveal parts of himself that their family might once have kept private.

Their parents, she said, had spent much of their lives protecting their privacy. Presley took a different approach.

Kaia described him as someone willing to be openly human in front of others rather than attempting to conceal everything happening behind the scenes.

### More Than a Famous Family Name

Presley was the eldest child and only son of Crawford and Rande.

Like his mother and sister, he entered the modeling world while still young. He signed with IMG Models as a teenager and later walked for fashion houses including Moschino and Dolce & Gabbana. He also appeared in a Calvin Klein campaign.

Yet in the later years of his life, another part of his public identity became increasingly prominent.

He spoke less like someone trying to maintain the appearance of a flawless celebrity life and more like someone attempting to make sense of difficult experiences in public.

That is what made the June gathering in Malibu especially significant.

There was no indication that it would become a final public appearance. Presley was simply standing beside his parents at an event devoted to a subject he had come to care deeply about, explaining what honesty and vulnerability had taught him.

Months later, the photographs from that evening carry a different weight: Presley smiling between Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber while discussing the personal struggles he had decided not to hide.

He is survived by his parents and his sister, Kaia.

And among his final public messages was a simple idea he had spent years learning for himself — that acknowledging difficult moments, speaking honestly about them and allowing other people to see the person behind the image could itself be a form of freedom.