MODEL PROFILES: Ali Stephens

Just when you think you have fashion all figured out, it has a habit of going and changing on you. It’s all part of its charm.

For the past two years, the high fliers of the modelling industry have been faces who pack a punch. Edgy, confrontational and even controversial, these faces are unforgettable and dynamic.
They lend an age of cool to any designers’ clothes, and it is their personality, rather than versatility, that sells. But fashion operates in cycles (or seasons if you prefer), and every face has a shelf-life.

In March 2007, a teenage girl from Utah was discovered by an agency scout whilst out shopping with her family. Six months later, Ali Stephens (now signed with Elite) made her debut at the Spring / Summer Prada show in Milan. To put it into perspective, it is the equivalent of winning an Oscar for your first film role.

Stephens was an instant hit, and a very new look for the industry. She was 16 years old, tall, lean and classically beautiful.

Previously, Ali (born in Salt Lake City in 1991), who had spent all of her energies in winning cross-country competitions for her school, and thinking about which college to apply to, found herself, after a chance encounter at a mall, at the epicentre of a fashion frenzy.

Designers were immediately struck by Stephens’ fresh-faced look and clamoured to sign her up for shows. Just two years on from being discovered, Ali can now claim Chanel, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Nina Ricci and Miu Miu among her catwalk credits. Appropriately for a runner, Ali Stephens has taken the fashion world at phenomenal speed.

Using her skills as a cross-country champion, Stephens learned the ropes quickly and overtook her competitors. She now excels – the girl who was once a self-confessed fashion novice now cites Balmain and Alexander Wang as her favourite designers. Knowing the industry is vital for succeeding in it, and an important lesson Ali learned fast. Fashion-literacy is something no model can afford to be without.

Ali’s popularity among designers is attributable to her versatile look. Rolling out high-profile campaigns for design houses as prestigious as Calvin Klein, Chloe, Missoni and Prada Sport, shows that Ali’s strength is moulding her image to whatever the brand requires. It is Modelling 101, but perversely, the hardest principle to master with any degree of success. To be truly versatile is not just down to genetic blessings (although it doesn’t hurt), it goes hand-in-hand with hard work: perseverance and listening to what a client wants. Ali makes every campaign shoot work because she is believable and equally convincing in each ‘role’.

That dedication to getting it right is why she gets re-booked time after time. Ali is part of a wave of models that team edge with effortless beauty to embody the best of both worlds. Ali Stephens is the Classic American who outperforms them all – she taps into the aesthetic of clean-cut, all-American girl who is transformed by a gown or a pair of sunglasses into something entirely new.
It is this transformative effect, the tomboy-to-fashion-princess moment that is at the core of what makes fashion compelling. Fashion, when it’s right, can change the way we feel about ourselves, and that transition spells magic.

For the industry now struggling to maintain consumer interest, it is this pull that keeps costumers coming back for more. The addictive quality of ‘who can I be today?’ is hard to beat, even in tough times like these.

Stephens’ ability to shift from dreamy-eyed ingénue to Label Mabel shows that her career is secure. She can adapt herself to any trend, past, present or future.

When fashion refers to the term ‘All-American’, it conjures up images of bronzed skin, athletic build and frankly excellent teeth. It is bold, winning and practically impossible to resist. Chalk it up to the current wave of nostalgia for the quietly-assured sophistication of models like Christy Turlington (who herself is experiencing a career second act at the moment), or the fact that America finally has everyone on-side again for the first time in nearly a decade, but the popularity of girls like Ali Stephens is not by chance.

Ali’s look harks back to the classic American model, very much of value during the late Eighties and early Nineties. A girl like Ali sells product not by shock value, but providing a timely reminder that fashion is about making women feel beautiful. There is something to be said for a model that is not a trend-setter, but a trend-interpreter. She shows us how it can be done, and this, going beyond all the hype and window-dressing, is what designers crave most of all.

By using aspirational models like Stephens and Turlington, fashion is tapping into the desire to create, not compromise. No-one feels threatened or offended by the Turlington-brand of beauty: it creates desire in male consumers, but does not alienate the woman looking to make a luxury purchase. For any client, this is a win-win situation, which explains why this look keeps reappearing with every new generation of models. In selling terms, Stephens’ look is both reliable and consistent in achieving sales, and that is something everybody wants.

If she wants, Ali can have a career as long-lived as Christy Turlington and Erin Wasson. Whatever else is happening in fashion, this type of look will always be in favour, and therefore, in demand. Stephens’ career, already well-starred, will sprint ahead over the next five years, while other, more ‘of the moment’ faces may stall as the whims of fashion change against them.

From fashion-unknown to the top of everybody’s ‘must have’ list within the space of two years, Stephens has proved herself the ready successor to Turlington. Her success is down to more than good timing, or plain good luck. With her willingness to learn, and learn fast, Ali Stephens is part of a generation of girls who are smart, timeless and headed straight for the top.

HELEN TOPE

AGENCY PROFILES: ELITE

Their name means prestige and privilege; the best. It is a tough remit to live up to, but Elite model management has secured itself an unshakeable foothold in the modelling industry.

First, the statistics:

Elite is a 35-agency-strong network, managing over 800 models across 5 continents.

It has bases dotted all over the globe, including New York, Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Copenhagen.

It is responsible for the most influential model-scouting process in the business. The ‘Elite Model Look Contest’, launched in 1983, has found some of the most significant names in the industry, and in turn, has helped shape the look of successive generations of models. What Elite finds, the fashion world wants.

Elite’s list of clients includes Chanel, Dior, Versace, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton. With a client roster like this, there is no chance of an Elite model working under the radar.

A year’s contract with Elite is offered as the grand prize to contestants of ‘America’s Next Top Model’. It is a prize beyond monetary value in terms of what it can do for a new talent’s career, which is goes some way to explaining why the competition between the contestants has a tendency to get a little ugly.

Elite has also recently celebrated its 5 millionth booking – perhaps the most impressive statistic of all.

Elite has a stellar pedigree within the modelling community – a history based on its unflinching pursuit of excellence. But it still tempts the best of new modelling talent onto its books. Recent signings have included two of the hottest names in contemporary fashion: Ali Stephens and Coco Rocha.

The process of an agency can be best understood by the career trajectory of one of its brightest stars – and Coco Rocha is in danger of eclipsing them all.

Born in Canada in 1988, growing up, Rocha had no real handle on the world of fashion. It wasn’t until she was discovered by a modelling scout at an Irish dancing contest, that Rocha began to learn her own value in terms of high-fashion currency.

Signed with Elite, Rocha met with photographer Steven Meisel, which lead to a Vogue Italia cover in March 2008; the highest accolade the industry has to offer any new model. Elite’s expertise in nurturing young stars, coupled with the agency’s heady international presence within the fashion world, ensured that Coco’s rise within the ranks was unimpeded.

She racked up appearances on numerous catwalks for designers such as Prada, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga and Chanel. With such an impressive hit-list, anyone this much in demand must be doing something right.

Where Elite succeeded with Rocha was taking her from fashion girl to the fashion girl, and in doing so, they played to her rather unusual strengths. Securing her a spot in the Jean Paul Gaultier A/W 2007 show, Coco knocked everyone sideways with an unforgettable appearance. Gaultier found out about her dancing background and insisted she start and finish the show – an honour in itself. But she wasn’t to walk down the runway – she had to dance it. Her exuberant Irish dancing caused a sensation, with American Vogue dubbing it the ‘Coco Moment’.

Signing Rocha was a particularly smart move for Elite. Her popularity with fashion editors and photographers boiled down to her unflappable instinct when it came to interpreting stories for editorial shoots. Her intelligent approach to movement and an awareness of how the body creates lines and shapes on camera can be directly attributed to her dance education.

Normally, a model with dance training doesn’t do that well. His or her formal training with emphasis on good posture gets in the way of creating avant-garde shapes and just doesn’t translate on film that readily. But Coco had the best of both worlds, and together they worked in perfect harmony. Rocha had the modelling instinct, and that is what has kept her, and her agency, ahead of the pack.

Elite have surpassed their competitors by being bold enough to take risks on signing faces that do not necessarily fit the fashion mould. On paper, Coco Rocha was a potentially shaky investment. The disparity between dancing and modelling alone would have put many other agencies off that contract. But Rocha is a rare breed; a dancer whose skills add to, rather than impede, the modelling package.

Elite has risen to the top by focusing not on the good, but on the great. In aiming for the best, they have achieved a level of success unrivalled in the industry, and it was all done on instinct. Yes, industry know-how played its part too, but listening to an instinct, however wrong it may seem, is what has put this agency at the top of the game. Elite acted on that instinct when signing Rocha, and it is that very same instinct that is responsible for each and every of one of those 5 million bookings.

HELEN TOPE