Its 9.30 am somewhere in the cobbled wastes of Soho and IMG’s Liya Kebede, fashion’s most coveted girl right this minute, pops through her front door, precisely on time . I’m taken aback not because the model is punctual, but because her skin...the Ethiopian stunner is positively glistening. Her complexion is so pristine, all of Grand Street’s morning light seems to be swimming and coiling just beneath the surface of her cafe au lait skin.

“Come on Liya. What’s the secret. I want perfect skin too” I tease as the car slides through downtown Manhattan . “Uhmm. You’d have to get pregnant” she laughs.

And indeed Liya is seven months pregnant , an eventuality that did not impede her last five bookings: Steven Meisel for American Vogue, Mario Testino for the cover of V, Micheal Thompson again for American Vogue, Ines van Lansweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for the latest Vidal Sasson campaign and now Eric Fischer for this MODELS.com cover session.
Hers has been the model success story of the year.

Yet as she prepares for the challenges of being a wife and mother, there is the pointed sense that these early modeling success are only the tip of the iceberg. Because the doe-like Liya in her potent combination of elegance and earthiness brings an essence to the camera that will always be key to crafting the ideal called fashion. And that essence is a clean, unadultarated beauty, the kind that everyone, from edgemongers to Jane Public can clearly identify with. But enough of that. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Liya Kebede , a true beauty, inside and out.