Fornarina

By Terence Pillay

A new South African supermodel is stalking the catwalks of the world. Terence Pillay gets up close and personal with Mooi River beauty Candice Swanepoel.

It's nearly six o'clock in the morning and the Mr. Price catalogue crew, with photographer Anton Robert at the helm, are frantically chasing the early morning light at the Japanese Gardens in Durban North.

While the lighting and camera assistants prepare the location to shoot part of the store's new range of clothes, a team of makeup and hair stylists put the finishing touches to their star model. And amid the fuss and frills, the model is telling me how happy she is to be back home. Briefly, as it turned out.

Candice Swanepoel is the new big thing on the world modeling scene. She's young, spellbindingly beautiful and she's from South Africa. She's also making huge waves overseas as one of the most sought after models by magazine houses and designers alike. All this and she's just 16.

Candice's story is the stuff of fairytales. In just under a year this unassuming girl-next-door has gone from living a life of relative obscurity in the country town of Mooi River to earning 5 000 euros (about R40 000) for a single shoot in top international campaigns.

But although Candice grew up in a small farming community, she had big dreams and recalls wanting to be a model from the age of ten, when she would spend hours watching Fashion TV.

"I've always been fascinated by the world of fashion and modeling," Candice says.

"When I was still very young, I watched a lot of it on TV, but I never thought that one day I would be up on that ramp with some of the most famous models in the world. It still seems so unreal when I watch the international shows I've done."

Candice was brought to the attention of local model boss Tiffany Prior after being spotted in a flea market by designer and model scout Kevin Ellis. Ellis, realizing her potential even after just one meeting, arranged for Candice and her mother, Eileen, to meet Tiffany.

"When she walked up the stairs of the agency, our jaws just dropped," Tiffany recalls."She was just this fresh-faced, beautiful, doey-eyed, gorgeous-featured kind of girl with very willowy, long limbs. I knew right then and there that she had the potential to be huge in the industry."

With no makeup and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, Tiffany snapped a few Polaroids of Candice and sent them to Select, a sister model agency that handles international bookings, in Cape Town.

Within 25 minutes the pictures made their way to Select in London, who represents the likes of Sienna Miller and Helena Christiansen, and they insisted that Candice fly immediately to castings in Europe and the US.

"Everything happened so fast that I didn't really have time to think about what was happening," Candice remembers.

"Tiffany and I went to London and New York and sat through almost 40 castings in two weeks. I had to learn the business fast and I could not have done it without her. I hadn't actually been to London or New York before - in fact I hadn't even been overseas before. The entire experience was completely overwhelming."

Candice had to prepare quickly for life in the fast lane. In the six months that followed she was sharing a catwalk with the likes of Alek Wek at the Dolce and Gabana show, and being used in shoots for Italian Vogue, Fornarina and Top Shop. In those six months she went from being a schoolgirl to a gold card frequent flyer. Read more...