BLONDE ON BLONDE

Spotlight

Karolina Kurkova's interest in fashion began when she was 13. That was four years ago. "I would watch Fashion File and read all the magazines," she recalls. "Then people began to say to me, 'You're tall, you're skinny. You should try modeling.'" They were right, although just being tall and skinny isn't what made her at 16 one of the youngest models ever to get on the cover of Vogue. Since then she's appeared on the French, British, German, and Italian editions of the magazine. At a time when supermodels tend to be either morbidly pouty or Brazilian, Kurkova's expressive face and delightfully lanky frame have marked the return of the six-foot blonde. Actually, she's five feet eleven, but with legs so long that Calvin Klein had to drop her from a campaign when stylists couldn't find a pair of jeans that fit her, who's counting?

Kurkova grew up in Dean, a small town in the Czech Republic, where her father is a well-known basketball player and a police official "I kind of grew up onstage because my father ' is'very famous," says Kurkova, who experienced instant success after being discovered at age 15 by Alessandro Bazzoni, her agent and current boyfriend. Her fall-2001 campaigns include Versace Jeans Couture, Celine, Helmut Lang, and Louis Vuitton. "The great supermodels all have this personality that separates them, and Karolina is the same," says David LaChapelle. "You can feel that she's just gonna keep going and going."

MICHAEL HOGAN

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