Page 89 - Demo

www.MOSTmag.com || FASHIO N MAG A ZINE || 89odel and painter, Alessandra Velia, of half-Spanish, half-Italian descent was born in Genoa, Italy and grew up surrounded by a horse ranch further north in the province of Cuneo. She is currently based in Paris, France, where she moved a few years ago to have a French high school degree. She was not initially attracted to Paris for the fashion as one might think, but rather because of the opportunities there to develop her own painting business and introduce new and innovative types of paintings.Her modeling career started with a coincidence and gathered momentum very quickly. While she was doing a road trip by bus around Ireland, she met fashion photographer, Josh Caudwell, of which she says, %u201cI am glad to have such a talented and nice person among my friends. He showed me his work and I found it absolutely amazing. It was the first time that I had met a fashion photographer and he talked to me about his world with so much enthusiasm and passion that I had no choice but to experience it myself.%u201dA few weeks later, Caudwell came to Paris for two weeks and together they did photo shoots almost every day, which gave her enough material to start thinking about a career. It was only about a month after Josh left, when she started working for Jana Hernette through her agency Jana Hernette model scouting. But even before that, she had her first glimpse of fashion week as she got hired by the Indian creator Little Shilpa to wear her creations for her show at the Silencio for the FW W/F 13. This turned out to be a very fortunate opportunity, as she proceeded to do all of the following fashion weeks with her ever since. %u201cShe is one of the sweetest persons I have ever met. I was happy to hear that Lady gaga wore some of her creations.%u201dAlessandra continued to work mainly as a freelancer in order to develop her contacts, and it%u2019s as a freelancer that she started working for Corto Moltedo (as a part model) for their SS 14 campaign and Dzmitri Samal, an amazingly creative sunglasses designer. Keeping the momentum alive, Velia recently signed with a new agency, DMA models, plans to sign with another one soon, and is also working to prepare a painting exhibition.Photographer : Benjamin vingriefMake up : Claire plekhofBy Darcy Tharp