Tales of A Model - Teresa Lourenco

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She was 14 and having been brought by her parents from the warm cocoon of life in the West Indies to the cool glistening beauty of Hamburg, Germany, it was only a matter of time before she was stopped and that life-changing question was posed. "Are you a model?" Two months after, the then designer for Givenchy, John Galliano saw her German comp card and lost his mind. She was flown to Paris, and swept into the fabulous vortex of Couture Culture. In other words, Teresa entered the business not from the ground up, but from the very tip of the fashion pyramid.
Four years later with Dior, Genny, and Gaultier campaigns under her belt, having walked down runways in London, Paris, Milan and New York for everyone from Gucci, Valentino and Gaultier to Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Anna Sui. Teresa is now sitting here oblivious to the rarity of such an instant career, sifting through a plate of steamed vegetable dumplings while her beloved 112 thumps in the background.
	It is easy to see why she works. She is what could be best described as an all-purpose beauty. She's Indian and she's European. She's frequently mistaken for being Brazilian, listed by cutting edge publication Trace as one of their ruling black girls and yet beloved by very traditional designers such as Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera. At a time when ideals of beauty are shifting and being reframed to include everybody from Jade Parfait to Alek Wek, Teresa is racially complex in a way that makes her a part of this new edge but so classically beautiful, she would have worked 10 or even 20 years ago.
"I bet you never even aspired to being a model, " I ask and she gulps quickly before smiling to answer, "Not really. I mean other people always thought that from, like when I was twelve, thirteen but I never really had time to consider it. It happened and I went with the flow." "You took to it like a duck to water though. I remember the first time I saw you. It was backstage at the Anna Sui. Remember that really Viking collection and you were chilling with Charlotte Connelly and I remember thinking, "How come the most beautiful girl in the room isn't doing the actual show." And I thought you were so cool to be chilling backstage at a show you weren't actually in cause most girls would have been too egotistic to do that." "Really," surmised Teresa. "God. Who makes up all these stupid rules." A photographer I know (who has a lot of that "whatever" attitude that is the hallmark of a new fashion generation) named Jayson Keeling has this great saying which I love to co-opt. He likes to say. "People don't understand but Fashion is a Thing. " He's so right. It's a very insecure thing, a very bitchy and judgmental thing but still, it's a thing. It's a code of conduct with a lot of rules and a select committee agrees upon those rules.