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the Telegraph, UK (?) Source: Devon Aoki is the Bomb DEVON AOKI, Chanel's new face of the summer, made quite an impression on the actor John Malkovich. The fashion designer Bella Freud asked him to direct a short film of her collection as a change from the standard catwalk show. Malkovich spent a rather frustrating day on set, waiting for his cast - an unreliable bunch of models who drifted in late from New York and Paris. At about four in the afternoon Devon wandered in. Part Japanese, part British, part German, Devon's face is making her a fortune - thanks in some ways to Kate Moss and a set of well-connected friends and family in the fashion industry. Devon's mother and stepfather were both models, while her godmother is a fashion designer who used to work for Calvin Klein. When Devon was five, her godmother's best friend, the celebrity hairdresser Sam McKnight, introduced her to the weird world of fashion when they played dressing up together. McKnight, who is best known for doing Princess Diana's hair, would put wigs on Devon and do her make-up. Her career really took off when Kate Moss spotted Devon's sulking china-doll face in Interview magazine a year-and-a-half ago. Moss was knocked out. She said she thought Devon looked just fantastic. Next time Moss tottered into Storm, her model agency in London, she showed Devon's photograph to Sarah Doukas, its managing director, who took one look and signed her up on the spot. 'I had never seen a face like hers,' says Doukas. 'She almost looks unreal, as if someone has painted her.' I meet Chanel's new muse in a cafe around the corner from her private school in north London, at four in the afternoon, just after she has finished lessons for the day. She is tired and has missed four days of school this week. She says she had the usual teenage difficulty in getting out of bed this morning, but unlike the rest of her class, she had jet lag. Yesterday she was in New York being photographed by Steven Meisel for American Vogue. The day before she was shopping in downtown New York, with a camera crew from CNN for company, following her around all day. I ask her what she's been doing at school. 'I have just started reading Noam Chomsky, do you know who he is? I had English, French, maths, history, science and photography. I'm doing a project for my English class on Social Commentary, that's why I'm reading Chomsky.' A grade-A pupil, she says she doesn't feel her education is suffering 'now that I have a career as well'. After all, the young British designer Jeremy Scott apparently helps her with her homework, and it seems that Karl Lagerfeld has taken her on not only as his latest muse, but also as some kind of private pupil. She spent time in his house in Biarritz recently where he shot her for the Chanel campaign. 'People say I am missing out on my studies but I'm spending time with a man who speaks five languages. Working with him is such an incredible experience,' she says hotly. 'He has books piled up to the ceiling. All the time when I was waiting around, I was reading.' Devon ('my mum named me after the place, she thinks it's beautiful') is the daughter of the millionaire Japanese restaurateur Rocky Aoki and American artist Pamela Price. She was born in New York, spent her early teenage years living in Malibu and moved to London two years ago where she now lives with her mother and stepfather, two of her nine brothers and sisters and her pet snakes, Snake and Kidney. She says she never thought about becoming a model. 'Sometimes friends at high school in Malibu would say, "Oh you could be a model", but it's just another way of saying you're good-looking, isn't it.' It all started one night in New York at the tender age of 12 - although Devon doesn't sound as if she was ever that tender. 'I had just got off the plane from London and was in a cab on my own on the way to my father's house when we drove past a concert hall and Rancid [a hardcore American punk band] were playing. I was a big fan of theirs at the time and so I changed in the cab into something a bit more punky. I pulled on a little black leather dress and big combat boots that came up to my knees. I looked weird - I was a strange kid,' she says laughing at herself, as if she were now middle-aged. She didn't have a ticket but managed to get one off the bouncers. But it was when she was trying to get into the VIP backstage area that she was spotted by a casting director who asked her if she wanted to be a model. 'Only if you get me a VIP pass and introduce me to the band,' she replied, not missing a beat. She soon lost interest in Rancid's body piercings and mohawk haircuts when she went to a party with her godmother for the Fifties pin-up Betty Page a week later. It was here that the photographer Ellen von Unwerth first saw her. Soon after, von Unwerth directed her in a Duran Duran video, and some time later she appeared in Interview, which is where she was spotted by Moss. 'She is so cute, she looks like a little pin-up, which I love,' says von Unwerth excitedly. Her face burned in my mind.' Von Unwerth tells me that all the children at her daughter's school are in love with Devon. 'They love her in the way they love Kate Moss.' Therein lies the irony. Has Moss created a younger, unblemished rival? 'Catwalk superstar hasonly herself to blame for new threat' said the Daily Mail bitchily when it picked up on the story that Moss helped to launch Devon's career. It is headlines like this, says Devon, that drive hermad. 'I hate them. I am me, I am not trying to step into anyone else's shoes. There will never be another Kate Moss. Kate is still working all the time.' While not being a close friend, Devon says that Moss was 'not afraid to share her experience when I was starting out. She is a sweet person with a really big heart. I went to her birthday party in Milan at the beginning of the year, but I had nothing to wear. Kate went to her closet and tookout this really great Gucci dress, and said, "Here - wear this." Having nothing to wear is no longer a problem for Devon. 'I have an accountant and I am being careful with my money, but I am a shopaholic,' she says seriously. 'Lately I have been buying a lot of shoes - Manolos, Prada and a lot of Gucci.' Do you get a chance to wear them? 'Yeah, yeah. . . Well no, not often,' she admits. 'I can't dress up to go to school, I think I would scare all my friends away, although they are cool about what's happening to me.' She says she has no time for romance, and shrieks 'Eughh!' when I ask her if she has a boyfriend. 'There are no guys that I would even consider at the moment. I don't know, I suppose my career is coming first. When I was in New York last week I met some cute guys. The truth is, I don't have time to go out much. My friends at school go out all the time, but I am probably away 50 per cent of the time.' She is happy with her new life modelling, but finds her newfound fame 'weird, exciting and frustrating. The only business women can make money in more than men is the fashion industry. I don't know what that says about us as women, but it's not exactly positive is it?' She says she is too young to know what she wants to be when she grows up. 'Maybe an actor. What about a journalist, is that fun? I write a lot of poetry, that is what I would really like to do after college.' A few days after our interview I visit Devon's mother, Pamela Price, in her north London home. On the wall are family pictures of the face of Chanel as a baby; hanging above the Aga, teenage clothes are drying. Aged 48, Pamela Price is tiny and blonde, and a model herself 'for about a month in New York in 1969, but I couldn't handle the rejection. I didn't have Devon's chutzpah.' She says she was afraid when Devon first started modelling, but did not stop her. 'I think you need to start very young in this business if you are going to have any kind of longevity. What can you do? You just have to hope she can maintain her career like Madonna, and not have a very rocky time like Drew Barrymore.' I ask her if the amount of time Devon is missing from school (24 days out of 60 this term) worries her. 'No, she is smart,' she says. 'I hope I don't seem like a bragging mother.' She getsout some of Devon's school reports to show me. She lingers over one, for English literature, telling me she hopes Devon will go on to become a writer. Her teacher wrote: 'Devon has an exceptional gift as a poet, she needs to take herself very seriously in this regard. . . Her gift for poetry belies her years. She should think about an anthology in the not so distant future.' As I leave the house a black cab draws up. Out steps Devon, back from school, and pays the driver. She chats away, telling me what she has been up to. On Friday night she went to a Beastie Boys concert. On Sunday she says she is going to Paris. 'I am doing a shoot for a magazine, which is sort of a pain for me because I have so much revision to do. The last thing I need right now is to go away again.' Too much too young? It looks as if Devon Aoki is of the generation that can keep it, not lose it. |
