Girl on Top Article
Here is the article from the Australia Vogue June 2006 issue:
Girl On Top
London, Paris…Tweed Heads. Could this be the face of modellings future?
Words: Alexandra Spring
Photograph: Patrick Demarchelier
She has been shot by Patrick Demarchelier, top photographer Robert Erdmann called her “the most ravishing thing that I know of” and leading Australian snapper Richard Bailey predicts a great future for her. With an exotic beauty that is thanks to her part Aboriginal, part German heritage, 15-year-old Samantha Harris looks set to become Australia’s next big modelling talent.
The teenager, who lives in Tweed Heads, New South Wales with her proud family says she decided to become a model after coming second in her very first competition at the local shopping centre at age five. “I just like all the glamour and clothes and the attention,’ she says, “and I thought it would be fun.” She was one of the finalists in the 2004 Girlfriend Model Search competition, has appeared in various fashion shoots and pounded Mercedes Australian Fashion Week catwalk. This year she was appointed a David Jones Youth Ambassador alongside friend Abbey Lee, and toured the country to promote the stores autumn/winter collections.
Harris is proud of her heritage as her early success. Not since Vogue cover girl Elaine George in the early 90s has a model of Aboriginal origin risen to such prominence something Harris is aware of. “It’s a great thing to be Aboriginal,” she says and she hopes her success will inspire other Aboriginal girls to reach for their dreams.
She does however remain charmingly unaffected by the hoopla. Although she thought it was a good experience, she admits she didn’t know who the eminent Demarchelier was until her agent explained. Her sartorial savvy doesn’t stretch far beyond jeans and unlike some of her precocious peers she’s hard pressed to name favourite brands, “just any really”. It’s this ingenuousness that Baily says makes her special. “She has a real innocent in how she works that’s very unaffected. She doesn’t pose; she’s very open and natural, which is great.” That’s something that is sure to set her apart in the rough and tumble at the top of the modelling world.
Typed up by me