In true Queen’s Gambit style, Carmen Kass is one of the most prominent female faces in the world of chess, but the truth is that her rise to fame was not thanks to her ingenuity on the boards. The model, born in Paide (Estonia) on September 14, 1978, is one of the most recognized faces of Victoria’s Secret, and has also starred in several of the most prestigious covers in the world of fashion.
Despite the fact that her great passion since childhood was chess, the path of life led her to become one of the renowned faces in the world of fashion. At just 14 years old, she was discovered in a supermarket by a talent scout and began working as a model in Milan. It was not easy for him, since he did not have the support of his parents, but he was finally able to prove himself to them, since it only took him three months in the Italian city to win advertising contracts and storm the covers of the most prominent magazines of all time. time.
At the age of 18, she already lived in Paris and appeared on various covers of magazines such as Elle or Vogue. In fact, this last publication, she chose her “model of the year” in 2000, at the age of 22. She has also been the image of Calvin Klein, Versace, Gap or Chanel, among other brands. Carmen is generally considered one of the most relevant models of the generation after the original supermodels. It is estimated that she has even collected the annual salary of the President of the United States for a single Victoria’s Secret parade and up to 5 million dollars in a year. A true diamond in the world of fashion.
His face with soft features and his sky blue eyes were his best calling card. So was her peculiar way of moving through the catwalks, without giving in an iota of her particular personality or the slavery of social commitments, something essential in the world of fashion stars. “She hates going out to parties. She is very homely. She prefers to stay at home playing chess with her boyfriend,” Carla Royo-Villanova, public relations for Pedro del Hierro, told Ideal. And it is that the model came to work with the Spanish firm in some campaign.
There was a campaign in which Carmen participated that made a special impact on the minds of many viewers. In the year 2000, Kass appeared bathed in gold for the image of Christian Dior’s J’Adore perfume. Despite her significant impact in the world of fashion, she decided to jump into other spheres and lent her support to the Res Publica Party of the Prime Minister of her country, Juhan Parts.
Subsequently, in 2004, he stood for the elections to the European Parliament with the aforementioned party, after Estonia’s entry into the European Union in May. She obtained 2,000 votes from the Estonian electorate, but was not elected. Despite that setback, she was indeed named president of the national chess league. “When I play I manage to escape from reality. It’s an amazing workout for the brain,” she said then.
The model has become an example against the cliché that many have that models are not usually intelligent. Kass has been called “the intellectual model” during her career. “It’s a cliché to think that all models are stupid and it’s a bad cliché, because models come very young into a difficult world and even when you know you’re not stupid, a kind of shadow falls over you, and you end up wondering if you really are. doing everything so wrong. There is no profession in which everyone is extremely intelligent,” he told La Vanguardia in an interview in 2019.
In recent years, the model is still active. At 44, she continues to star in covers and advertising campaigns, even in our country. In 2018 she became a model for a Zara campaign, and in 2020 she was on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Spain on the tenth anniversary of this publication in our country. She also remains linked to the world of chess, her great passion. Undoubtedly, an example that prejudices in the world of fashion are just that, prejudices.
