Cintra Wilson wrote a profile of Agyness Deyn, née Laura Hollins, for today's "Style" section in the Times. After asking her several questions like, "Do you have a collaborative creative process with designers and photographers with whom you work closely?" and getting answers like:

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I just like to experience different feelings, even if it’s, like, uncomfortable?”

Wilson concludes Deyn Hollins (dammit!) comes off as a bit "dim." But surely that means something. Hollins's rise from punky unknown fish-and-chips shopgirl in Manchester to famous model signifies important things about not only Hollins, but the times in which we live.

[T]his dimness, I suspect, is strategic. I’ve seen this before; actresses sometimes evade answering questions by obfuscating them in colorful fogs of positive nonsense. It is understandable: actual information limits the ability to be all things to all people, so vagaries protect the brand.

Hollins won't talk about future acting or music projects. (She's been rumored to have a starring role in the BBC's Dr. Who.) Her agent says she'll model forever. But beneath Hollins's very deep dimness, it sounds like she has different ideas about that:

“You know, even though I’m in fashion, I don’t, like, do fashion,” she said. “Fashion isn’t me, even though I work in it. It’s just materialistic stuff. I just want to do whatever makes me happy.”

So does that mean when she steps out of the house in studded high-top Converse, a mass of cowlicks on her head, a giant white T-shirt with the cover of an Elastica album on it, and jeggings she is not, in fact, trying? Good to know.

Of the Moment, and Thinking Ahead [NYT]