It’s pretty rare to sit down to an interview and have the subject immediately lay everything out on the table—no prodding of any kind required. But that’s exactly what happens when Chanel Iman opens up in this exclusive interview.
For those of you who have never opened a magazine before, here’s a little background on Chanel. Her full name is Chanel Iman Robinson. Yes, she was named after that Chanel; no, not after that Iman (her cousin happens to share the name with the seventies supermodel). Chanel grew up in Los Angeles, signed with Ford Models at twelve, landed her first Vogue cover at sixteen, and now at eighteen is one of the youngest Victoria’s Secret models in the company’s history. She’s appeared as a guest judge on America’s Next Top Model, hosted by another former super (she calls Tyra Banks “my mentor”). She’s assumed such a high profile that her name regularly pops up in gossip columns like “Page Six,” which have romantically linked her to everyone from Kanye West to music producer Ryan Leslie. She claims both are “just friends.” Her actual boyfriend, who hangs out on the sidelines during the interview, is, by her own account, “just a regular guy.”
Nineteen-year-old Jourdan Dunn was discovered at a chain store in her native London by the same agency that lifted Kate Moss out of obscurity. She quickly established herself in the fashion elite with a history-making turn on the runway at Prada—the five-foot-ten Brit was the first black model to walk a Prada show in over a decade, the last one to do so having been Naomi Campbell in the nineties. “Everyone kept saying, ‘Jourdan, you know how huge it is if you do this,’” she says. “Prada is notorious for cancelling girls last minute, so I was like, Okay, I’m confirmed, but I’m not going to get all excited until I’m actually on the runway. As I was lining up, I was still thinking, Any minute now they can come round and tell me, ‘Jourdan, you’re not doing the show.’ So once I turned the corner and stepped onto the runway, I was like, Oh my God, I’m doing Prada!’”
The November issue hits newsstands on Oct 13th. You can read the entire interview here:
http://teenvogue.com/industry/coverlook/2009/10/teen-vogue-cover-girls-chanel-iman-and-jourdan-dunn
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