Tall, thin, young and pretty. Yes, yes, it’s obvious that Canada’s latest It model, Coco Rocha, has the catwalk criteria down. But if you didn’t know that this fair-skinned 18-year-old, wearing the uniform of any North American teen (skinny jeans, cute metallic flats), is the fashion world’s current reigning mannequin, you could blink and miss her—as I almost did upon entering Elite Model Management’s Toronto headquarters to meet her. But it’s precisely this sort of “double-take” beauty that’s getting the Richmond, B.C., native booked left and right. As fashion’s pendulum swings away from wide-eyed, doll-like baby faces, à la Lisa Cant and Heather Marks, the collective eye is landing on the polar opposite, in the form of edgy belles like half–Irish/Russian, half–Irish/Welsh Rocha and Karl Lagerfeld’s current muse, fellow Canadian Irina Lazareanu.
A large part of Rocha’s universal appeal lies with her Karen Elson–esque ability to transform with a quick splash of eyeliner. Blessed with a symmetrically aligned visage and full lower lip, Rocha can rock gamine sex kitten as easily as gothy androgyne, with every degree of fashion muse in between. Starring solo in this fall’s Balenciaga campaign, she’s miles of dark legs, a massive teased-out mane and an indifferent pout. In the Dolce & Gabbana ads, she’s an ethereal pre-Raphaelite goddess reclining in a setting of baroque grandeur.
With her background in ballet, jazz and, most recently, Irish dancing (yes, Irish dancing), the aspect of the job she enjoys most is performing, whether it be on the runway or in character for a Steven Meisel shoot. After all, it was at a 2002 Irish dancing competition that a model scout first approached the posture-perfect teen.
“She can be a real chameleon,” says photographer Greg Sorensen. “Coco’s very aware of her body—how it moves and how she can shape it. I think a lot of that comes from dance. She has a very natural ability to adapt as you’re shooting, to create really beautiful images.”
“I’ve always loved entertaining—dancing, drama, acting,” she says. No doubt her years of training have honed those skills to the point of major payoff.
But she’s a self-confessed fashion virgin. “In New York, they call me fashion illiterate,” she jokes. While Rocha was home last spring to write her finals, her best friends—ironically, fashion fiends—crammed fashion 411 lessons between study sessions. “At home, it was usually just jeans and running shoes,” she says. “But now because of the designers and the other models, my style’s evolving. I’m getting a lot of help in that area.”
As for her response to the hype surrounding her meteoric rise to fashion stardom, she manages a rather nonchalant shrug. “I’m just going with the flow right now. It’s only just begun.” And while Cinderella stories are nothing new in the fashion world, in her case the take-it-or-leave-it stance is utterly believable—it’s not as if she’ll be returning to life as a barista if this plum gig falls through. “Before all this,” she confesses sheepishly, “the plan was to go into law.”
First published in FASHION Magazine November 2006
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