No. 1 FAN – Josephine Skriver

Danish supermodel Josephine Skriver is the sexiest football fanatic we’ve ever encountered

- By Thomas Freeman. Photographs by Gilles Bensimon

When I speak to Josephine Skriver over the phone, she has just returned from vacationing in Iceland with her fiancé, the musician Alexander DeLeon, also known as Bohnes. “Oh my God! It was so fun!” the 28-year-old Danish supermodel, who has modeled for the likes of Victoria’s Secret, Maybelline, and Versace, gushes. “I don’t know if there’s another place quite like it. We were able to see lava, glaciers, and so many things in one day. It really is the land of fire and ice.”

Visiting Iceland seems like the sort of trip most people would anticipate all year, perhaps their entire life, but Josephine is noticeably more excited for the fall—not for the return of Fashion Week but instead football season. She is the first supermodel I have ever interviewed who’s more interested in sports than high fashion. “Soccer is the biggest religion in Europe, probably worldwide,” she says. “Sports have always been such a big part of my life, but there was not this fan community that I have found in American football.”

It is surprising to hear Josephine profess to be such a football fanatic in her cool Scandinavian temperament. It is even a bigger surprise to learn her favorite team: the Las Vegas, formerly Oakland, Raiders, who have the most notorious fans in sports. “My fiancé is a third-generation Raiders fan, so it was an easy sell,” she says. “As a European, it was awesome that they were silver and black, something that could fit into my style. I also loved the backstory of Al Davis and that they were the underdogs, the black sheep of the whole league.”