The Anti-Supermodel

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She's been on the cover of Elle, Allure, and Esquire. Now Erin Wasson is bringing grungy, gritty style back into vogue with her new clothing line. She talks to Rachel Syme about what's next.

Erin Wasson speaks with a slow, gravelly drawl, chewing on her words like sticky pieces of taffy. It’s an unceremonious but deliberate type of speech, with clear roots in her hometown of Dallas, and made all the more prominent by her current lifestyle—she spends most of the year in a Venice, California beach house with a half-pipe in the backyard and surfboards in the garage. Her turns of phrase are that of a 15-year-old boy fond of sneakers—a lot of “fuck, dudes” and “shit, mans,” the sort of sailor-mouth patois that only phenomenally beautiful women and pubescent teens can get away with easily.

“I’m not your cheesy girl that’s going to dress up in a hokey outfit and say all the sound bites that you want me to say.”

Fortunately, Wasson is the former. At almost six feet and with a salty mane of sandy blonde hair, she is both striking and understated—a rare combination of hard edges and smooth lines that pushes a model beyond the runway and into iconic status. She has what Kate Moss has; that barely gritty look that is a little dangerous, a little androgynous, and yet just approachable enough to pop out of the weird-alien tribes of girls that walk the runways and into another level of model-as-tastemaker. Wasson looks at home in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and army boots; she looks almost always as if she has just parked a motorcycle somewhere. At 27, she has already been married and divorced, lived in Brooklyn lofts and beach bungalows, and eschewed the modeling life to start her own jewelry and clothing lines. She has styled shows for designer-darling Alexander Wang, played muse to photographer Terry Richardson, and amassed a huge collection of odd paper mache animal heads that pepper her house like college-mascot costumes. She is crass, dismissive of the fashion industry, and more comfortable in ripped T-shirts than anything with a label on it.

America, meet your next supermodel, your anti-supermodel.

Here’s the thing about Wasson: She’s already a supermodel, at least by fashion-industry standards. She’s been on the cover of French, German, Spanish, and Australian Vogue, Flair, Numero, Allure, Esquire, and Elle. She’s walked for Karl Lagerfeld, Cavalli, Gucci, and Balenciaga. Photographers like Steven Meisel and Mario Testino have been working with her for a decade. She’s been the face of Maybelline and soared over Manhattan in Gap billboards.

And yet, you’ve probably only heard of her in passing, if at all. She’s one of those models who has worked tirelessly and consistently, gaining the respect of designers and obsessive model fangirls. But now, with her own fashion line, she’s taking her career to the next level. “I always knew that I was going to do more than just sit in front of the camera,” she says. “When I started modeling in the late ‘90s, a lot of the girls led these really cool lives. They were all involved in arts and their hometowns, and they all had a lot to say, and they were really educated women. But then I saw these changes happen, and the girls got younger. It was that models were supposed to be seen and not heard, and everything became slightly homogenized. And I was like, fuck Erin, you gotta figure out how to turn this into something else.”

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