Starring Stella

If You Haven't Come Across Stella Maxwell Yet, You’re About To. The Model From New Zealand Is An Alumni Of The Victoria's Secret School Of Angels, And Is Now Ready For Her New Close-Up – And The Whole World Is Watching

- Georgie Bradley

Models of the moment come thick and fast in the social media age. Every half year it seems there’s a new rising star that we all get to know (and feel we already do know) via the digital intimacy of Instagram. That connection – born of selfies, pithy personal captioning and an all-access pass into their lives, both off and on stage – is actually quite strange. How can we possibly know someone through a (insert filter of choice, we’re going with Valencia) filter?

But personable is one way of describing model Stella Maxwell, who emerged in 2014. She could be your, to use the over-done phrase, ‘girl next door’ because she’s real – even if she is in a world that is for most of us, unreal. She’s known to greet in high-fives, goes by a “stay chill” motto and would reportedly take coconut oil as her desert island product of choice – a holistic, fittingly uncomplicated and clean item under the stranded circumstances. There is a tantalising element that we could be just like her. As much as it reads tabloid fodder, she’s tight with Lily Rose Depp and participates in a group chat with models Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt in a girl gang not so unfamiliar to our own.

The 28-year-old is enjoying a ‘next best thing’ level of success at the moment, not least through her work with the fashion veteran Karl Lagerfeld in the new Karl Lagerfeld and ModelCo collaboration.