Cocomotion
With a smile that lights up the internet, this self-starter is giving the next generation of models a leg up.
Photographed by Andrew Egan
Styled by Kristen Ingersol
Hair and Makeup By Bruce Dean
Interview by Lynn Yaeger
“I wish someone had sat down with me when I started out and explained everything to me!” the model/ author/activist/entrepreneur Coco Rocha declared, as she looked back at her long illustrious career — two decades as a supermodel, collaborating on the 2014 book “Study of Pose,” co-owner of the Nomad Management Modeling Agency, and now, perhaps closest to her heart, the founder of Model Camp, a retreat where new models are taught the tricks of the trade.
Rocha, who is married to the artist James Conran and has three children, is disarmingly sweet and cheerful, but she also evinces a steely-but-gentle ferocity when she talks about the industry where she has long been a star. The day we spoke, she was just back from Cannes, where she wore an extraordinary dress by Cheney Chan, and was about to leave for Venice, no doubt to take in the wonders of the Biennale.
It’s a long way from British Columbia, where Rocha grew up. At the ridiculously young age of 14 she was scouted at an Irish dance competition and a year later she was doing catalog work in Asia. That anonymity didn’t last long. By the early 2000s she was in Paris, walking for designers like Stella McCartney, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Jacobs. In February 2007, she opened Jean Paul Gaultier’s Scottish Highlands-inspired show by Irish dancing down the runway; American Vogue dubbed it the “Coco Moment.”
Read the full interview HERE