SA farm girl to international model, Tully trades tractor for runway

From her family’s Mallee farm to the billboards of New York’s Times Square, Tully Heinrich is making a splash in the fashion industry.

Tully Heinrich is making a splash in the fashion industry.

From the cereal crops of her family’s Mallee farm to the billboards of New York’s Times Square, SA farm girl Tully Heinrich is making a splash in the fashion industry.

The 21-year-old splits her time between the runway at the world’s most famous fashion events and the tractor on her family farm 160 kilometres southeast of Adelaide at Coonalpyn.

She puts getting her foot in the door with the fashion industry’s biggest names and brands down to having the confidence to “have a crack” without fear of failure.

Miss Heinrich said after finishing Year 12 at Mt Barker’s Cornerstone College, she did a six-month acting course, but had never done any modelling before when she applied for a course she thought she’d have no chance of getting into.

Tully Heinrich, originally from rural South Australia, is now modelling in New York and Paris. Picture: supplied

Model Tully Heinrich on her farm at Coonalpyn. Picture: supplied

“In the middle of Covid lockdown I saw some advert for a supermodel over in New York who was hosting a model course, the Coco Rocha model camp, and I thought I’d sign up for it, you know, just ‘cause,” she said.

“I never thought I’d be selected to go but she ended up saying yeah, come over.”

Miss Heinrich said she intended to make a holiday of her trip to the US given she would be travelling so far for three days of coaching.

Tully Heinrich at Times Square in front of a billboard she is on. Picture: supplied

“I did the three-day course and the friends I met there were like, ‘it’s New York Fashion Week next week’, and I thought it would be cool just to go watch some shows.”

She said she casually brought tickets, blissfully unaware that she’d end up walking in the show she had paid to watch.

“It was random – it all fell into place … we had tickets, then we found some castings online with some designers and brands doing open castings,” she said.

“It was crazy … there were 1000s of other models and some of the lines wrapped around blocks and you’d wait for three hours to be in a casting for 30 seconds, you do a walk, it’s like ‘thank you’, and you might hear back, you might not.”

Miss Heinrich said some in the industry found her carefree nature endearing and her freelance-modelling career had snowballed from there with successful castings and invitations to big shows.

She has since been invited to Paris and walked two shows there and most recently, she participated in Cairns Fashion Week; her first time modelling in Australia.

She said it was surreal to have received one-on-one coaching from big names of the industry like Coco Rocha and seeing the likes of Jared Leto at a fashion show in Paris was a far cry from her seat on the tractor on the farm during seeding earlier in the year.

Miss Heinrich is currently back in New York – the city she wants to one day call home – preparing for fashion week before heading to Paris and Milan for runway gigs.

She said while a lot of her story sounds like she was in the right place at the right time, she put down her modelling rise to her courage to go out and try.

“I created a vision board, a board you have with all your dreams on there, I had a big sign saying New York Fashion Week – and slowly that vision board is coming to life,” she said.

“I’m just following my gut really, just trying to have a good time and if I start not having a good time I’ll start following other good feelings and wherever that takes me.”

Miss Heinrich is currently freelancing but has had contact with agencies from New York, Paris, Milan and London.

However, for now her plan is to return to the farm for harvest and resume her seasonal job at the Viterra silos at Coonalpyn, receiving grain.