Karlie Kloss, the 17-year-old face of Dior, Hermès, and Oscar de la Renta, among other brands, appears on the cover of the new issue of Teen Vogue. In the last year she logged 150,000 airline miles traversing the world for fashion shoots, shows, and other fabulous things. However, in her other life as a high-school student in St. Louis, Missouri, she is a normal girl. Albeit one who drives a silver Land Rover she bought herself and who takes her high-school classes online when she’s traveling for what is shaping up to be a long career in modeling. But despite all that, despite the Tribeca apartment she has, she’s normal at heart.
Teen Vogue’s Jane Keltner writes:
I had offered some ideas of what we might do this afternoon [on the first day of Fashion Week]. The seventeen-year-old supermodel doesn’t walk her first show until tomorrow, and she’s taking advantage of the rare day off to hang out with her high school buddy. This is Brittney’s first time visiting Karlie in New York and catching a glimpse of her friend’s “other life.” I had suggested pedicures or shopping, thinking a little pampering would come as a welcome treat. “I kind of ” — Karlie hesitated, not wanting to hurt my feelings — “would you want to go to Central Park and make snow angels with us instead?”
Why would she want to get her nails done or go look at clothes at the beginning of show season when she’s about to spend four weeks doing that sort of thing nonstop for work? Snow angels, on the other hand, she won’t be making so much of.
Kloss, who baked peanut-butter cookies for Alexander Wang to give to him at her fitting, has also stayed a good girl. Though her sexy side is emerging in her work, she doesn’t smoke cigarettes backstage or have a boyfriend on her arm at shows. Instead, she reads The Great Gatsby for her English class, and always has an adult traveling with her. It might be her uncle or her high-school English teacher, who traveled with her to the couture shows once. “I need that support,” Kloss says. “I don’t want to be on my own yet. I’m not ready for that.”
Though the industry has labeled her the next great American supermodel, Kloss plans to get a degree in medicine. She is looking for a guy who is “Tom Brady–ish.” The young men in her class are finally almost as tall as her.
Karlie Kloss: All-American Supermodel [Teen Vogue]
10 Things You May Not Know About Karlie [Teen Vogue]
