Serge Rigvava, 17, Vienna
Modeling competitions can be hit or miss, but one unimpeachable winner is Rigvava, who came out of the 2014 Elite Model Look contest in Austria to become a runway must-have over the past year. Indeed, it’s hard to name a single important European brand that the Germany native hasn’t walked for in 2015, from Raf Simons, Bottega Veneta, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and JW Anderson to Topman, Burberry, Dior Homme, and Hermès—finding time for campaigns for Ermenegildo Zegna and Valentino along the way. “I shot the Valentino campaign with my favorite photographer, David Bailey, which was one of the greatest moments of my whole entire life,” he says. “I’d never expected to even see him ever, so that was really amazing.” A painter and former basketball player, Rigvava says he is currently preparing his art portfolio to apply for university and continuing to play the cello, an instrument he chose for its intimacy. “You can feel the vibration of the sound because it’s laid against your body with its whole entire weight,” he explains, “and you can’t do anything else while doing it.” And for someone with rampant creativity looking for an outlet, modeling has allowed Rigvava access to a world that has opened his eyes. “This was a really, really great thing for me,” he says of his new career. “To have a view into how all of this works is amazing.”
