AllyG: Have you ever noticed the difference between Canadian models and othermodels? Our models just have that je ne sais quoi quality about them. They look like they got a little more soul. You know? Take Coco Rocha, our current favourite Canadian It Girl (I love the term “It Girl”). There are many reasons I love Coco. First off, she was discovered at an Irish dancing competition ( I can totally relate…not to being discovered, but I was a Scottish dancer so I was pretty much equally as cool as Coco) and not “at the mall” which is what you hear from almost every other model when speaking of their life-changing moment. Also, she has loudly spoken out on the prevelance of eating disorders in the modelling industry. And she hasn’t been shunned for it. She was quoted by the associate press as saying, “I’ll never forget the piece of advice I got from people in the industry when they saw my new body … They said, ‘You need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexia. We don’t want you to be anorexic but that’s what we want you to look like.” That sounds like something totally out of a modeling mockumentary. It’s that insane.
I also love her website. If you haven’t checked it out, you need to. I usually abhore website “intros”, but I actually sat through this one and enjoyed myself. Mind you, I was also eating a rasberry turnover and didn’t want to get the computer keys sticky.
She also has an adorable blog. Not as adorable as our blog, but it’s close. Check out her video with her “Coco pop” too cute. Ah, screw it, I’ll post it for you lazy arses.
How do we feel about her black hair? It’s hard to appreciate the darker locks when I loved her red hair so much. Did you see her red?
She went red for Vogue mag this past year. Speaking of Vogue I nearly lost my peanut butter fudge ice cream the other day while flipping through the latest issue. I came upon a picture of Jessica Alba. The Alba does not a Vogue model make.
She can’t act. She can’t model. She can’t rock bangs. Get out of my Vogue. Speaking of this month’s Vogue, it features Sienna Miller! GREAT article.
Ok, sorry back to Canadian models. Another Canadian I’m loving is Elise Hélène Gatschene. Here she is sans makeup. I will steal a line from L-A and declare that I would maim for that nose.
Again, I just can’t help but feel as though Elise, like Coco, has this grounded, quirky quality to her that is so prominant among our Canadian modeling contingent.
The above is from the A.F. Vandevorst SS09 show. This designer is amazing. It’s sort of twenties flapper with nineties grunge. I know I am going off-topic, but you need to see another pic from her collection.
There’s a fantastic post about her SS09 collection at A Mixed Neon Clarity. This is a great blog written by Satori (equally great name) based out of Montreal.
L-A is all up on the latest in the modeling world (you need to check out her live tweets on CNTM btw. They are hilarious) so I’ll flip it over to her.
L-A: You know what I think of The Alba in The Fashion Bible? She is what Tyra would call “commercial”. She’d maybe sell you something in a JC Penny or Sears catalogue, but she is not a Top Model. Speaking of which, Coco is, to borrow from Tyra again (shame on me!), fierce with the red hair. I adore The Coco. Check her out dancing to Single Ladies in a car or buying fast food in couture (it’s like when Us magazine shows us that stars are just like normal people!). But we’ve covered our love for Coco already and I need to talk about some of the other models that Canada has produced. My first two were born abroad, but were raised in Canada and therefore we claim them as our own.
Irina Lazareanu:
Irina (at Oscar de la Renta Resort 2010 and Chanel Couture 09) is kind of all over the globe, having been born in Romania, moved to Montreal at age five and then to the UK to study ballet at the age of 15. She became a model at 17. But if you’re okay with claiming someone this adorable as Canadian, then so am I (I’ll forgive her for her dalliances with Pete Doherty):
She was recently on Canada’s Next Top Model to teach the girls about charisma and designers. It was awesome. (It was also the episode where Jeanne nearly had an aneurysm over pronounciation of designers, which made it super-awesome).
Next up on FPQT’s Top Model: Daria Werbowy. This Polish-born, Mississauga-raised girl may be familiar to you as the model from the Matthew Williamson for H&M ads:
I couldn’t find many recent runway shots of her on Style.com, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t busy. In addition to gracing the covers of both Paris and UK Vogue in May, she had a spread in the US edition of Vogue in May:
Our next model is Jessica Stam, or The Stam as she is known, and is apparently the 15th best paid model in the world:
Despite the “doll face”, she totally kills it on (and off) the runway. Check her out at the Fall 09 shows for Giambattista Valli and Marc Jacobs
She’s totally from small town Ontario, raised in Kincardine and went to school in Walkerton (which is better known for it’s water problems than it’s models…although they’d probably prefer I talk Stam than water). While her discovery story isn’t as cute as Coco’s, I do like it: she was discovered in a Tim Horton’s. Makes you wish you spent more time at a Tims when you were in high school, n’est pas? (Although, I spent a lot of time at a Tim’s in my teen years. Aside from not really being model material, I don’t think we got many modelling agents passing through Deer Lake). Want to know what makes her even more awesome? This:
A bag? Oui! And not just any bag. It’s the Marc Jacobs Stam bag, named after The Stam herself. While I’m not a huge fan of the bag (I really don’t dig chains) and it’s days as an “It Bag” have passed, I still think it’s damn cool to have Marc Jacobs name a bag after you. And here’s some Stam and Coco, backstage at Michael Kors, for you:
And no post on Canadian models could neglect mentioning one of the top supermodels of all time, and totally from the husband’s hometown: Linda Evangelista!
In an industry where you’re old by the time you hit your mid-20s (as Tyra reminds hopeful models on a weekly basis), Linda defies age. While you’re more likely to see her in the front row of a show, she could probably out runway even the best of today’s models. Here’s a shot of her on the runway in 2003 (age 39):
Hott, with a capital ‘H’ and two ‘T’s. Forget looking fierce, I think Linda defines fierce. And has been doing this since the heyday of the 1990s Supermodel.
I love that shoot Chanel shoot by Stephen Meisel. Look at Linda with Carla Bruni (long before Sarkozy) and Naomi. Fierce. And honestly, I’m not usually a fan of the word ‘fierce,’ so I don’t use it lightly.
I don’t know what it is about Canadian models, maybe it’s something in the water. Whatever that je ne sais quoi is, it is awesome. And to leave you on a fierce note, here’s Linda, Naomi, Christy and Cindy bringing the sexy in George Michael’s video for Freedom:
If that wasn’t enough George Michael and Supermodels for you, watch Linda kill it on the runway in Too Funky. We should just give these videos to the girls on ANTM and CNTM and tell them to study these. Seriously.
