Alicia Vikander - Young, Talented & Beautiful

The coterie of muses and close friends of Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of Louis Vuitton, is famously tight-knit and exclusive, bound by their shared traits of strength, independence, and beauty. No wonder rising talent Alicia Vikander is a part of the clique, then. 

- Gordon NG

Alicia Vikander is one of those women who make you hate yourself. Let me explain.

She is, first of all, a prodigiously gifted actress: She channels a steely inhumanity in the Alex Garland-directed sci-fi movie Ex Machina, playing a female robot. Here, her training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School shows: a mastery of her physicality rewards us with a discomfiting robot who throws us headfirst into uncanny valley. In Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, Vikander manages to sensitively capture the confusion, frustration, and unrelenting love of the wife of Eddie Redmayne’s Lili Elbe, a transgender woman who received one of the world’s first prominent sex reassignment surgeries. She then surprised us with her comic ability as a ’60s mod mechanic turned covert agent in The Man from U.N.C.L.E..

“I started buying fashion magazines when I was 13 and I looked in awe at all the fashion adverts, but it never occurred to me that I’d be the face of one of those brands.”

To top it all off, Alicia Vikander is painfully beautiful. On the surface: stormy eyes, a tawny complexion, and a softly sculptural bone structure. She has the kind of simmering charisma that wordlessly demands you gaze at her for just a little bit longer. It would be easier to dislike her (out of jealousy, mostly) if she weren’t so charming.

How did you feel about becoming the new muse of Louis Vuitton?

“I was overwhelmed! I started buying fashion magazines when I was 13 and I looked in awe at all the fashion adverts, but it never occurred to me that I’d be the face of one of those brands. My work as an actress is my main profession and any commercial work I take on would have to be integrated with it. I had to say ‘yes’ to Louis Vuitton because they have always used strong, adventurous women in their campaigns.”