Karlsson turned her focus toward improving her health and embracing her natural shape, and continued to work as a plus-size model. I just couldn’t enjoy my life - and I wanted to.” I was constantly thinking about what I could eat and what I couldn’t eat. “I couldn’t go out with my friends, because I had to bring my own food. “In 2010, I just hit this point where I was so tired,” she says. Her body just wasn’t meant to look that way, so she stopped forcing it. In order to maintain a “straight-size” model weight (typically sizes 0 to 2), she was working out sometimes as much as three times a day, and adopted beyond poor eating habits. But as she grew older and her body began to develop beyond the gawky teenage and model-requisite dimensions, she found herself exhausted and unhappy. By the time Karlsson was 15, she was booking fashion shows across Europe. She was discovered at the age of four in Sweden, where her Swedish father and Gambian mother still live. Karlsson has always possessed the power to captivate a room. She was also hilarious - and just as much as her deep brown eyes and angular bone structure lit up the camera, her cheeky comments lit up the room. I am a wild cat.” It’s true: On set, the petite, 25-year-old brunette was lithe yet determined, and every movement she made had a tangible sensuality. Katie Ermilio Chantilly Lace Tee, $995 American Apparel Cotton Spandex Jersey Cross-Back Bra, $14 Dsquared Jazz Jeans, $477 Vans Leather Sk8-Hi Slim Zip, $80.įrench model Ines Rau describes her look as “strong and edgy, but also very sexy. Let me attach myself to that.’ what is beautiful for me inside and put that out into the world.” “I take a lot of pride in being myself and finding what is beautiful for me rather than going, ‘Oh, that’s beautiful. “Now, it’s more about personality and more open-minded.” Smith’s positive, live-in-the-moment spirit is also what makes her beautiful. Smith, now 24, credits this shift in the fashion industry in large part to social media. Earlier this year, she was featured in Sports Illustrated. She walked in Chanel at the Grand Palais, Balenciaga, and Prada. She booked shows - big ones - the kinds of jobs she was told she would never get. I just wanted to make some money, so after a year, I decided to quit."īut her agent convinced her to go to Paris before throwing in the towel Smith obliged and her luck quickly changed. “They were putting me in a box in the beginning. “They said, ‘You’ll never do the shows, you’ll never be editorial,’” says Smith. Though casting agents loved the gap between her front teeth, her body was not what they were looking for. But when she started in the modeling world, that mindset didn’t exactly work in her favor. I don’t know how this is gonna work.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know either.’”Īs a punk kid with a self-described “fuck you” attitude (and rainbow hair), Smith had always embraced standing out in a crowd. “And people were hesitant - you know I don’t have a very typical body - especially coming from East Texas, where you eat Taco Bell three times a day. It was more about, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m just gonna go out there and do it,’” she says. “I’m a free spirit, so I didn’t have the fear of failure. She fell in love with the city, but the fashion industry didn’t fall in love with her - at least not right away. Though everybody around her had a “You’re born in Texas, you stay in Texas” mentality, as soon as she turned 18, Smith packed her bags and moved to New York. The Texas native was discovered at South by Southwest when she was a punk teen sporting half-inch gauges in her ears and a lip ring. Ashley Smith’s modeling career had a sluggish start - it almost never happened at all.
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