myran
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Brit ballerina beauty with IMG.
*vogue.co.uk
Before the JW Anderson autumn/winter 2020 show, 18-year-old Grace Clover was backstage learning her German vocabulary. By the time she was ready to make her catwalk debut as an exclusive for the brand, she had 40 adjectives down pat. No mean feat considering the hustle and bustle behind the scenes.
“Everything was moving towards an end goal but with a slight lack of structure that surprised me,” Clover tells British Vogue of her first London Fashion Week experience. “I’m sure I’ll learn that this is the nature of the business, as there are ever-changing artistic visions before shows and some 30 models to get ready.”
On the runway itself, Clover – who was first scouted at the age of 14 as one of the “tall children” at school, but only recently signed to IMG – describes experiencing “a lovely moment of calm and clarity”. “I was very focused on my walk,” she explains. “I did realise about halfway round the room that I’d let my lips come open a little, and had a flashback to my run-throughs where I had practised not doing this. I remedied it straight away.”
Post-show, she digested the “surreal” experience over lunch with her mum at Leon in Russell Square. Clover’s background as a ballet dancer had prepared her for how to hold herself on the runway, but she admits she had to loosen up. “The strength, posture, and balance that you develop through dance are invaluable to modelling,” she says, “But I had to relearn how to be less held, which contradicts my training.”
In preparation for her launch as a model, she worked with movement director Ryan Chappell and switched up her look courtesy of hairstylist Syd Hayes, who IMG also introduced her to. The side-swept bob Anthony Turner gave her for the JW Anderson show, made her “immediately sense a character that I needed to channel”. And the look – “I particularly loved the stunning black leather heels with a jewelled ring attached” – gave her the oomph to not “look too tense or studied”.
Her rigorous ballet schedule (upwards of 11 hours per week) has also prepared Clover for what a life juggling university (she plans to study history and German at Wadham College at Oxford – “the results of my A-levels permitting!”) and modelling could look like. Her family has been supportive since she “happily modelled some very unstylish purple trousers” aged seven at a charity catwalk event. It was when her younger sister signed to IMG last summer (she hasn’t been launched by the agency yet) that modelling started to seem like a viable prospect for two tall siblings who had grown into themselves.
Indeed, as well as the comparisons to British Vogue cover star Fran Summers, there have been industry murmurs that the Clovers could be the new Brit model dynasty on the rise. Their name certainly has a nice ring to it, but Grace admits she “is focusing on the present, and taking each day at a time”. Watch this space.
*vogue.co.uk
