Model Coco Rocha hits Sydney for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week
COCO Rocha might be one of the world’s leading models, but she’s not above a selfie, and admits she only just learned to wash her face. She shares her beauty advice with news.com.au.
COCO Rocha might be one of the world’s leading models, but she’s not above a selfie, and admits she only just learned to wash her face.
The Canadian beauty is in Sydney this week as an ambassador of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival.
Rocha has enjoyed a glittering career. She has appeared on the cover of Vogue, stalked the catwalk for an array of designers and was presented the award for Elle Style’s ‘Model of the Year’ by Boy George.
Yet, she still takes tips from older models, recently asking Cindy Crawford and Iman to answer fifty questions she sent them.
The 27-year-old supermodel has recently slammed her critics after receiving backlash on social media after she posted an Instagram photo feeding her daughter baby formula saying that she was up for good criticism but didn’t have to stand for nasty comments. “It is up to me how I take care of my child,” Rocha told Seven’s The Morning Show. “Listen, I dried up. I wish I could still breastfeed.
News.com.au chatted with Rocha about body image, her beauty secrets, and the do’s and don’ts of posing for photos.
ON HER BEAUTY ROUTINE:
“I used to be the worst model ever! I wouldn’t take my make up off at night, I just didn’t care. It just didn’t seem like something I needed to worry about, until I realised that that is a bad thing. So recently, I have realised, I am getting older so I must take care of my skin, and like any mummy tells you drink lots of water, take off your make up at night, wash your face at night and redo the whole clean again in the morning. It’s never been the brand that I stick to, but in the winter, I use something [creams] that are a little thicker, and in summer, something a little lighter. I don’t go in the sun. I literally wear some sort of moo and have three towels and am under an umbrella and my baby is doing the same thing. I do believe if you have the skin type that just cannot do the sun, then don’t force it.”
HER MESSAGE TO WOMEN ABOUT BODY IMAGE
“It will take time and you will make mistakes, you will be frustrated with yourself and then all of a sudden you will have this epiphany and realise ‘why do I care so much?’ and I think that just comes with age and maturity. So for me, starting in this industry very young — I of course took everything very personally in my job. [They may say] ‘You are not the model I am looking for today’ and you think ‘Why is that?’ and you can definitely go into a deep dark hole. And then you realise some clients don’t mean it personally — it is just really ‘you are not my cup of tea today’ but you know, that’s okay, moving on, and I think realising that I didn’t need to be everyone’s favourite and wasn’t going to be everyone’s favourite was going to be okay, and to just be happy with who I was.
“I think it wasn’t until I started to date James that I had a different perspective of life. It wasn’t just work. And him telling me ‘hey, you are beautiful, hey, you look great’ and it was realising that you are beautiful and you are great (even though) there are things you didn’t really like about yourself, like my teeth. When I was younger, I had an overbite and I couldn’t close my mouth quite perfectly as most models do. And Steven Meisel would always say ‘Do your open mouth thing’ and then all of a sudden, in all of my photos, people would say ‘Do your open mouth thing’ like that was the cool thing to do. And I thought ‘wait, this is the thing I didn’t necessarily like.’ I think sometimes with most models, their eyes, their ears, their funny little chin, whatever becomes the thing that introduces them to the industry. And I think a lot of people should take into consideration that whatever you find awkward about you is probably the thing that people find awkwardly amazing about you.”
ON THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF POSING FOR PICS
“I would always joke and say ‘Don’t take a selfie!’ but unfortunately now that Snapchat is around even I take selfies. But now I say have fun with it! We’re not in the age of film anymore so you don’t have to be perfect. I think that there is a lot of girls who get stuck in the rut of always pulling the same faces. And then they start to think that is how beauty is and what they should look like and they won’t change — and that frustrates me — have fun! You are not curing cancer; you are just taking a photo.”
ON HER ROLE MODELS
“In the industry itself, and models specifically, I would say Cindy Crawford and Iman are two of my favourite models. Iman, being such a smart business woman — she would go to shoots in the past and they wouldn’t have make up for her skin type, she would have to bring whatever she had in her bag and then all of a sudden a light bulb went off and she decided ‘forget this — I am going to make cosmetics, I’m going to make sure women don’t have this problem’ and now you go into a Sephora or Mac cosmetic [store] and it is widely available now and that is thanks to a model.
“With Cindy Crawford it’s the same sort of thing, she was a business woman. I think she was one of the first models to understand branding. She would not do smoking photos because she was the athlete model, she wouldn’t mix her messages. She did (MTV program) House of Style for ages, and was told it was a bad idea because models don’t speak. Sure enough she kind of paved a way for other models like myself who could start in TV. They are smart women and they can still model if they like to, as well as being business women. To me, I think they are just so smart, and so kind. [They are] the only two that I reached out to [with] questions. I gave them 50 questions each and Cindy Crawford answered 49 and Iman answered 40. Models of my generation, who I love to death, I don’t think they realise how good they have it. If I did that to them, they would answer one question — it’s just how it goes. So it just shows me how these women — who are uber models, are just so humble and willing to help the younger generation.”