Kate Upton has landed her very first Vogue cover, going from Sports Illustrated to the pinnacle of high fashion in less than a year.
Dismissed as a girl with “the kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy”, by Victoria’s Secret earlier this year, Kate Upton appears on this month’s issue of Vogue Italia with the simple tagline “Seductive”.
Wearing Fendi fur and a Patricia Field bustier, Kate Upton, 20, was photographed by Steven Meisel for the Helmut Newton-style November cover.
After shooting to fame at the start of this year thanks to her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover, Victoria’s Secret famously dismissed Kate Upton as unworthy of its brand image.
But soon after her revealing GQ cover shot by Terry Richardson, Kate Upton landed her first profile in U.S. Vogue’s June issue, and the magazine dissected her high fashion appeal – did she or did she not, have any?
Now, with two inside shoots for U.S. Vogue under her belt, the most recent seeing her model classic sportswear in a crisp palette of red, black, white and blue for its own November issue, there is little doubt that the model is now a bona fide member of the high fashion set.
Hailed as “The New Girl” by American Vogue, Carine Roitfeld has also embraced her, shooting her as the cover girl for the first issue of her new fashion magazine CR Fashion Book.
The French former Paris Vogue editor told The Daily Beast: “I didn’t want a normal model. I wanted someone with a sensual body, someone who could be a mother for all these babies… I would not say she’s a controversial model, but she’s not a classic model. And I like that.”
And the model says she has no plan to embrace the super-skinny high fashion look.
“I don’t want to starve myself,” she told U.S. Vogue.
“I still want to hang out with my family and be a normal girl. You have to be confident, and that doesn’t mean starving yourself.”
“I think it’s important to look at magazines and think a healthy lifestyle is attainable,” she explains.
“Now that the fashion industry likes the idea of me, I’m happy if I can have an influence.”
Kate Upton says she is particularly comfortable in a swimsuit because she grew up near the beach in Florida, where it was “no big deal”.
“When I lived in Florida, the swimsuit was the key wardrobe piece,” she says.
“I lived ten minutes from the beach, but I never sat there and said, <<I want to be every man’s fantasy>>.”
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