IT'S hard to imagine that Miranda Kerr lookalike Laura Wood was ever bullied at school.
But life for the slender 17-year-old Lilydale model during her first years of high school was tough.
"I was bullied quite badly by a small group of girls I went to school with and they really made my life hell," she says.
"They would tease me mostly about my looks and tell me my eyebrows were too bushy.
"It was a pretty bad time but I think overcoming it makes you stronger in the end."
It was her unique look and attractive, dark features that prompted her mother Julieanne and grandmother Elfie Broomhall to send her photograph to Chadwick Models agency last October.
"As much as Laura couldn't see it herself, her grandfather who passed away last year would often say to her that she should get into modelling," Mrs Wood says.
"Even as a child, people would comment on how beautiful she was and tell me that I should put her into catalogue modelling, but I wanted to wait until she was old enough to make her own decisions."
Within days of receiving the photographs, Chadwick Models called.
"I was jumping up and down on the spot and almost in tears when they called - I just couldn't believe it," Laura says.
In a magical twist of fate during her first trip to the agency, a scout from New York was visiting and Laura was picked to appear at the New York Fashion Week.
The last six months have been a blur of designer clothes, catwalks and make-up as Laura was snapped in some of New York's most famous sites and appeared in eight shows during the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival.
Next is Sydney fashion week in April, then back to New York in September.
"I still feel like it's all a dream," she says. "But I hope it proves to other girls who may have been bullied at school to work even harder for their dreams. I never thought this would happen to me. I feel like maybe it has a little to do with my Pa and him watching down on me."
