Days later, Angelina was “launched” – the second stage of a supermodel’s creation – making her runway debut closing the Khaite show in an episcopal white gown. In the complex hierarchies of fashion month, where the odds are so often stacked against unknown models, she became the breakout face of the season. Her phone buzzed with runway bookings: Altuzarra, Givenchy, Loewe, Valentino, Louis Vuitton, Chanel. On The Fashion Spot, a new fan forum sprang up.
“Does anyone else think she’s kind of giving early Gisele?”
“Now that you mention it… And she’s got Brazilian roots by the way.”
“Since then, she has transcended,” Angelina’s agent, Matt Walford, tells me. It’s the final Saturday of the spring/summer ’25 shows and we are talking – yelling, actually – over a deafening funky-house soundtrack in the near-darkness of the lobby bar at the Hôtel Dame des Arts in Paris’s 6th arrondissement.
Angelina’s first job outside of Australia was for Burberry, which photographer Tyrone Lebon shot in Antigua. Not bad, considering she was only discovered a few years ago (by Simone Hellicar at The Scouted, her mother agent in Sydney), before being directed to the main market. At just 19, she’s notched up Fendi, Versace and Louis Vuitton campaigns too. Right now, Angelina is upstairs getting red-carpet ready for the evening’s Business of Fashion gala at the hotel Shangri-La. She’s fresh off the back of a motorcycle – quintessential Paris model transport – but still running late. “Her fitting with Stella McCartney turned into a karaoke session,” explains Walford.
After “discovery” and “launch” comes work. The schedule isn’t for the fainthearted. In the preceding weeks, from the front row, I’ve observed Angelina character-switching. There she was playing a late ’80s prepster on the Ralph Lauren runway in the Hamptons; a ’90s vixen (complete with poker-straight hair) at the Versace show in Milan. Here in Paris, at the tail-end of fashion month, I’ve been dispatched to trail her as she shows me what life is like on the brink of becoming super. “From the moment she wakes up, Angelina goes from fittings to shows, fittings to shows,” Walford says, ordering a martini while we wait (waiting is an eternal theme in the world of supermodels).
