Cara might not be quite so big on
Insta, if her go-to photo face were the same pout or distant gaze most
models assume when a camera is pointed in their direction. Instead, this
prodigious gurner is, as often as not, cross-eyed and poking her tongue
out. It’s a face, inevitably, with its own Twitter account,
@CarasBogEye. She looks ridiculous, of course, but there’s something
endearing about a beautiful woman who doesn’t try to come across as
alluring. Cara has always seemed much more interested in making her
mates laugh.
Perhaps it’s just hard to take modelling seriously as a career, when it all came so easily. Cara’s elder sister Poppy Delevingne was already working as a model when Cara signed up to the same agency, Storm. Sarah Doukas, the founder of the agency and the woman who signed Kate Moss, had a daughter attending the same boarding school as the younger Delevingne girls and spotted the potential in both of them. In fact, the professionally prescient Doukas was a bit late on this one. Cara had already done her first shoot, aged 10, modelling Philip Treacy hats for the photographer Bruce Weber in Vogue Italia. She has since appeared several times on the cover of British Vogue and various international editions. Her godfather is Nicholas Coleridge, president of Vogue’s publishing house Condé Nast International.
No, modelling holds no challenge for Cara Delevingne. She’s often said she’d rather do something more creative – and less irritating to her psoriasis. “I want to make music. I want to act. I want to sing. I want to do something that doesn’t make my skin erupt,” she told W magazine in a 2013 interview. A talented drummer and a half-decent singer, Delevingne recorded some music under the aegis of Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller, before sacking it off to focus on the modelling. (Fuller’s management company 19 Entertainment owns a controlling stake in Storm.) Rumours of a collaboration with Rita Ora and Pharrell Williams have swirled persistently since last year, but as yet no tracks of her music have materialised.
Then there’s the acting. She is following up a small role as Princess Sorokina in Joe Wright’s 2012 version of Anna Karenina with a role in the fairly obnoxious-sounding British indie Kids in Love. According to reports from the set, it’s a Notting Hill-set tale of rich kids who love to party. Handily, the director Preston Thompson’s father also owns the key shoot location, Ealing Studios. Her biggest role to date will be in Michael Winterbottom’s controversial new film, The Face of an Angel, based on the story of Amanda Knox. It’s a more intriguing film, but Delevingne’s character, Melanie, is still someone she can easily relate to. As she told the Daily Mail: “The idea I had of her is that she’s like me and a lot of my friends who are 21 and travelling around Europe.”
Delevingne wouldn’t be the first British model to attempt to add a string to her bow, but perhaps she will be the first to use it to pick out a tune. Lily Cole, the British model du jour a few jours back, has yet to make good on the acting promise exhibited in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), and the aborted pop careers of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell have both been mercifully forgotten. Remember Campbell’s 1994 single “Love and Tears”? Or her album Babywoman? No? Probably just as well.
Until such time as Cara eclipses these efforts, she’ll have to make do with being internationally adored not for any specific creative achievements, so much as for being posh, pretty and young. It’s a winning combination, which pops up in every generation, conferring party invites on the possessor and revealing the zeitgeist to the rest of us. Evidently, the age which made Cara a famous “It” girl is one that loves #selfies, supportive female friendships and has a blasé attitude to categorising sexuality. It’s also one where family connections matter as much as they ever did.
That’s no diss to Cara herself. Like good cheekbones and sexual orientation, family is just something you’re born with. As for British media attempting to pass off its scraping fealty to the new aristocratic classes as an appreciation of something called “Style”? Well, one has to raise a bushy eyebrow at that.
Life In Brief
Born: Cara Jocelyn Delevingne, London, England, 12 August 1992.
Family: Her father is property developer Charles Hamar Delevingne; her mother, Pandora, is a personal shopper. Her maternal grandmother was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.
Education: Frances Holland School for Girls, London, and Bedales School, Hampshire.
Career: Discovered by Storm modelling agency while at school, she became the face of Burberry and Chanel and was named Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards 2012. She first appeared on the cover of British Vogue in February 2013.
She says: “People ask me, ‘What’s your secret?’ And I’m like, ‘You just don’t pluck them.’ It’s really simple.”
They say: “I think Cara is much bigger than everyone’s expectations. There are whispers about music and movies, but what people should focus on is her spirit.” Pharrell Williams
Perhaps it’s just hard to take modelling seriously as a career, when it all came so easily. Cara’s elder sister Poppy Delevingne was already working as a model when Cara signed up to the same agency, Storm. Sarah Doukas, the founder of the agency and the woman who signed Kate Moss, had a daughter attending the same boarding school as the younger Delevingne girls and spotted the potential in both of them. In fact, the professionally prescient Doukas was a bit late on this one. Cara had already done her first shoot, aged 10, modelling Philip Treacy hats for the photographer Bruce Weber in Vogue Italia. She has since appeared several times on the cover of British Vogue and various international editions. Her godfather is Nicholas Coleridge, president of Vogue’s publishing house Condé Nast International.
No, modelling holds no challenge for Cara Delevingne. She’s often said she’d rather do something more creative – and less irritating to her psoriasis. “I want to make music. I want to act. I want to sing. I want to do something that doesn’t make my skin erupt,” she told W magazine in a 2013 interview. A talented drummer and a half-decent singer, Delevingne recorded some music under the aegis of Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller, before sacking it off to focus on the modelling. (Fuller’s management company 19 Entertainment owns a controlling stake in Storm.) Rumours of a collaboration with Rita Ora and Pharrell Williams have swirled persistently since last year, but as yet no tracks of her music have materialised.
Then there’s the acting. She is following up a small role as Princess Sorokina in Joe Wright’s 2012 version of Anna Karenina with a role in the fairly obnoxious-sounding British indie Kids in Love. According to reports from the set, it’s a Notting Hill-set tale of rich kids who love to party. Handily, the director Preston Thompson’s father also owns the key shoot location, Ealing Studios. Her biggest role to date will be in Michael Winterbottom’s controversial new film, The Face of an Angel, based on the story of Amanda Knox. It’s a more intriguing film, but Delevingne’s character, Melanie, is still someone she can easily relate to. As she told the Daily Mail: “The idea I had of her is that she’s like me and a lot of my friends who are 21 and travelling around Europe.”
Delevingne wouldn’t be the first British model to attempt to add a string to her bow, but perhaps she will be the first to use it to pick out a tune. Lily Cole, the British model du jour a few jours back, has yet to make good on the acting promise exhibited in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), and the aborted pop careers of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell have both been mercifully forgotten. Remember Campbell’s 1994 single “Love and Tears”? Or her album Babywoman? No? Probably just as well.
Until such time as Cara eclipses these efforts, she’ll have to make do with being internationally adored not for any specific creative achievements, so much as for being posh, pretty and young. It’s a winning combination, which pops up in every generation, conferring party invites on the possessor and revealing the zeitgeist to the rest of us. Evidently, the age which made Cara a famous “It” girl is one that loves #selfies, supportive female friendships and has a blasé attitude to categorising sexuality. It’s also one where family connections matter as much as they ever did.
That’s no diss to Cara herself. Like good cheekbones and sexual orientation, family is just something you’re born with. As for British media attempting to pass off its scraping fealty to the new aristocratic classes as an appreciation of something called “Style”? Well, one has to raise a bushy eyebrow at that.
Life In Brief
Born: Cara Jocelyn Delevingne, London, England, 12 August 1992.
Family: Her father is property developer Charles Hamar Delevingne; her mother, Pandora, is a personal shopper. Her maternal grandmother was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.
Education: Frances Holland School for Girls, London, and Bedales School, Hampshire.
Career: Discovered by Storm modelling agency while at school, she became the face of Burberry and Chanel and was named Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards 2012. She first appeared on the cover of British Vogue in February 2013.
She says: “People ask me, ‘What’s your secret?’ And I’m like, ‘You just don’t pluck them.’ It’s really simple.”
They say: “I think Cara is much bigger than everyone’s expectations. There are whispers about music and movies, but what people should focus on is her spirit.” Pharrell Williams
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