the surreal life

FASHION DARLING AND GUCCI GIRL HANNAH LOCSIN BURSTS THE FASHION BUBBLE

- ALYSSA LAPID

Hannah Locsin has the whiff of a dreamer. Hitting the three-month milestone of being a New York transplant, Hannah, in her Bushwick apartment, exudes off-duty model effortlessness. In a denim jacket, a white tank, and a bandana wrapped around her head, she is barefaced and all smiles.

Since graduating from De La Salle University with a degree in Communication Arts in 2018, the model has already walked Paris, London, and Milan Fashion Weeks, and, more recently, snagged global campaigns with Levi’s, Uniqlo, Moncler x JW Anderson, Maybelline, Balenciaga, and, her favorite, Gucci.

Did I mention she’s only 25? And that she’s only been a full-time model for two years?

WHATEVER IT TAKES

Hannah’s parents let her model on the side in college, on the condition that she’d keep her grades up. She did. “I was a low-key overachiever back then. I was trying to aim for the highest grades,” she says. She attended go-sees she’d hear about as a freelancer, and, through the PMAP models she met at the shows she booked, she was eventually invited to join the group.

A quick study and an easy favorite, she routinely booked projects in Manila. But her sights were set on a more competitive playground: New York. Determined to fast-track her growth as a model, she knew she had to make drastic life changes—including uprooting her life to move elsewhere. While US visa issues delayed her move, she wasted no time. She spent a month in Malaysia as a “trial run” (“My time in Malaysia was training for me. Can I hack being away from family?”) and then eventually moved to Paris for about a year.