by Natasha Mekhail / Photographs by Tina Chang
Double-breasted trench (Nanette Lepore, $540); Grey pinstripe trousers (Club Monaco, $135); Satin pumps (Isabella Fiore, $377); Sunglasses (Robert Geller, $185); Silk patterned scarf (Blu’s, $195); Wheeled suitcase (Diane von Furstenberg, $290)
Oh, to be Agnieszka Wichniewicz. The Polish-Canadian beauty has graced the covers of Glamour and Vogue. Her statuesque, five-foot-11 physique has arched languidly for a Valentino campaign. Her derriere appeared on Diesel billboards. Her face, with its high cheekbones and green almond-shaped eyes beneath distinctively thick brows, has played the muse for world-famous photographers. She’s strutted on the catwalks of New York, Paris and Milan.
Today the supermodel bounds out of an electric-blue compact sedan, avoiding pond-sized puddles left over from one of Edmonton’s customary late-spring snowfalls. After four years in New York, she’s unfamiliar with streets on the south side of the city. I had to stand on the corner outside the Vietnamese restaurant where we’re meeting to wave her down.
At 22, Wichniewicz is already in life-after mode. She owns a condo in Edmonton and is back home preparing for post-secondary school by upgrading her high-school math, physics and chemistry at NorQuest College. She knows the cameras will eventually focus elsewhere.
I’ve seen enough models to know that talent scouts have a gift. Somehow they look past the awkwardness of overgrown, underweight teenaged hopefuls to some feature – bone structure, eyes – that will become the girl’s trademark. But Wichniewicz requires no imagination. She is drop-dead gorgeous, even when slumming it in the E-Town slush.
Her journey to the world’s biggest runways started at age 15 on the less-glamourous catwalks of West Edmonton Mall and Southgate Centre. The result of years of people telling the shy, quiet girl, who was taller than all the boys, that she should be a model. Eighteen is late to start an international modelling career. But Mode Model founder Kelly Streit, who launched such homegrown Alberta talent as Tricia Helfer and Heather Marks into the big leagues, sent Wichniewicz’s then-thin portfolio to Elite Model Management in New York. A scout was promptly dispatched. “When can you come to New York?” he asked.
Category: Life
