PAPERMAG
Elisa Sednaoui: Beautiful People 2011
BY DARRELL HARTMAN
When I wake up, I'm grateful," Elisa Sednaoui says. And why not? She has bewitching green eyes, a laser-cut jaw line, perfect lips -- the kind of looks that cause car accidents, and they have helped land her, at 23, in the fashion world's inner circle. She's pals with Karl Lagerfeld
and Mario Sorrenti. She has walked and DJ'd for another one of her heroes, Diane von Furstenberg, and describes Christian Louboutin, who has a house near where she grew up in Egypt, as a godfather of sorts. "You can talk to him about every- thing and nothing," she says.
Sednaoui, whose mother is a former fashion editor, began posing for photos at 14 and has been modeling on and off since -- she's the current face of Giorgio Armani. She's also branching out into films and music, guesting on a recent album by Israeli DJ Chaim Avital, and acting in a movie this spring adapted and directed by the French writer Frédéric Beigbeder.
Despite her strong ties to Europe (Sednaoui's first language is Italian, followed by French and English), she lives in SoHo. "I like to be in the center," she says. But she likes to step away from it, too. "I spend a lot of time as an actress thinking about why people behave in a certain way." No matter how fast her life gets, she'll always have her roots by the Nile. (Her father, still lives in Luxor.) "For everything there is a season, and I think I learned that in Egypt," she says. "Also, I learned belly dancing."
ELISA WEARS DRESS BY CHANEL AND HAT BY EUGENIA KIM
http://www.papermag.com/arts_and_style/2010/12/beautiful-people-2011-elisa-sednaoui.php