Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model Brooks Nader wasn’t allowed to wear a bikini until she turned 18.
The Louisiana native grew up outside of Baton Rouge, where her mother dressed Nader and her three younger sisters in matching dresses and bows.
But once the bikini prohibition was lifted, aspiring model Nader moved to New York City and set her sights on appearing in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, a goal she’d had since childhood.
“Growing up, I had a copy of the magazine pinned to my bulletin board,” the 26-year-old told The Post. “Being from a small town in Louisiana, I never thought this was an option, but my parents always encouraged me to chase my dreams and that’s exactly what I did.”
Despite her first agent telling her she “didn’t fit the mold” of a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, in 2019, Nader convinced her mom to fly to Miami with her for the Swim Search open casting — which she ultimately won, beating out around 10,000 other hopefuls.
“I loved the process because they didn’t even look at me in a swimsuit for the initial casting,” the brunette recalled of being interviewed by judges including Christie Brinkley. “They got to know me as a person and asked what I was passionate about. They wanted to know Brooks the person, not as a model. I was surprised when I didn’t just walk in the room and hear, ‘OK, next.’ It was like a therapy session.”
Since winning the Swim Search casting in 2019, Nader has been featured inside the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition every year, but never on the cover.
That all changed this week when the model made her debut, sharing cover duties with Martha Stewart, actress Megan Fox and singer Kim Petras.
“I am still in shock,” Nader said. “And to be alongside Martha, Megan and Kim, who are such legends. I can’t believe it.”
For the cover, the model and aspiring jewelry designer stuns in a sexy “Baywatch”-style, high-cut one-piece by Matthew Baruch, accented with chunky, geometric bracelets from Noir.
She’s also flashing gold button-shaped earrings, which she designed with Electric Picks.
“It was more fashion-y this year,” said Nader, whose collaboration with the jewelry brand drops on June 27 at ElectricPicks.com.
The SI shoot took place in Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic, and Stewart recently talked about how “All these people were prodding me and talking about ‘the girls.’ I have never called my breasts ‘the girls’ in my life.”
According to Sports Illustrated the swimsuits are “sexy and playful while exuding tons of powerful feminine energy.”
Feminine energy is something Nader is very familiar with, having grown up with three younger sisters.
“It was definitely chaotic,” she says of her girly upbringing. “We had humble beginnings, living on my grandparents’ property in a small, two-bedroom house. We are very close in age — all four of us are five years apart — so we entertained ourselves and played in mud piles.”
Nader’s hometown of Maringouin, outside Baton Rouge, is famous for a rather odd reason. “It means mosquito in Cajun French,” she said, laughing. “It really did have a lot of mosquitoes because it was between two bayous. It’s really gross now that I think about it.”
Mosquitoes aside, the close-knit family stayed traditional.
“Being Southern we were into bows, hair and smock dresses,” Nader said. “My mom thought it was adorable. We went to church every Sunday at 8 a.m. in our dresses and bows and stayed for three hours.”
These days, Nader’s religious family is on board with her successful modeling career.
“My whole family in Louisiana lives and dies by the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition,” she said. “They cry every single year and it’s a whole dramatic thing. My grandmother waits outside CVS at 5 a.m. on the day it comes out.”
“My dad keeps a copy in his office and asked me if that was weird,” she added. “I’m like, I don’t know.”
Nader herself has a tradition of buying the magazine at her local bodega in Tribeca. “The guy behind the counter didn’t believe it was me at first because I rolled up in my sweatpants.”
But this year, she didn’t get the chance to pick up her own copy because the SI team surprised their cover star in dramatic fashion.
During a photo session for her jewelry line with Electric Picks, the crew blasted confetti guns filled with pieces of her cover.
“The SI Swimsuit team jumped out from behind the set, and I immediately started shaking and crying. Pretty sure I blacked out!” she recalled. “Then we FaceTimed my parents who also started crying.”
Her husband, Billy Haire, 36, is equally supportive.
The couple has been married since 2019, after a disastrous first date at Bond Street that ended with Nader in the hospital.
“It was so embarrassing,” she remembered. “I literally had one bite of sushi, sprinted into the restroom and threw up. Billy became my emergency contact when I’d only known him for like two days.”
As a Vice President with media company The Arena Group — which owns Sports Illustrated — Haire understands the pressures of her job.
“He’s busy, too,” she said. “He does his thing and although sometimes we are like ships passing in the
night, it works perfectly for us. And when we do get annoyed with each other, I’m probably about to jump on a plane.”
Nader has also welcomed her doppelgänger sisters — Grace Ann, Sarah Jane and Mary Holland — to NYC as they follow in their big sister’s stilettos.
Recently, the quartet worked together on a few gigs, including the covers of Grazia and The Daily Front Row.
“They copy me, but I love it,” Nader said of her siblings. “They’re like, we wanna do what you do. I’m that girl that’s preaching to them all the time. Like, ‘You don’t know how hard I had to work for you to be on this cover.’”
Now that all four sisters live in the same city, she compares the brood to the “Beverly Hillbillies” of New York.
And even with their newfound big city sophistication, the siblings are all still diehard LSU football fans and go home for games, crawfish boils and Christmas.
Despite her homespun background, Nader was always into fashion and followed the careers of supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Brinkley.
In September 2019, she was able to meet Crawford, her model muse, at a charity event honoring the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
“They announced me on the trading floor, and I was having my moment,” Nader said. “And then they said, ‘Oh, we have another Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, Cindy Crawford.’ I was like, ‘Oh wow!’ The younger traders were the ones who cared about me, but the older ones were freaking out, like, ‘Move out of the way, we want to talk to Cindy.’”
“It’s been lifechanging,” Nader added of her SI story. “It put me on the map as a model and opened doors for my career. I have made lifelong friends through the process. I am going to have an album of all my Sports Illustrated issues to show my kids one day because I’m so proud.”