“Modeling is sort of like The Godfather,” says Emma Leth. “I try to keep getting out, and they keep pulling me back in.” The Copenhagen resident, who comes from a film-industry family, has been acting since childhood; she’s worked as a journalist and producer for Danish TV and radio and just wrapped a documentary film about feminist art. But she’s also a fixture of her city’s fashion scene: Some designer friends, like Sophie Bille Brahe and Sabine Poupinel, ask her to pose for lookbooks or social media shots, while she supports others, like Saks Potts, from the front row. Now, despite her efforts to the contrary, Leth’s ineffable cool is about to go global: At the relatively advanced age of 27—and as a new mother, to boot—she’s starring in Balenciaga’s Fall 2017 campaign.
“When I got pregnant, I thought this is the perfect way out [of modeling], because no one’s going to want me,” Leth recalls with a laugh. But then she was tapped for Balenciaga’s Fall 2017 show earlier this year when her son, Abel, was only 3 months old, and designer Demna Gvasalia asked her to stick around to shoot the campaign. The high-profile gig will no doubt add to the 26,000 followers she already has on her Instagram, a slyly Surrealist body of images that somehow manages to seem entirely unpremeditated. It also offers clues for how to be a new mom and still dress like a badass. (Beyoncé might take notes on both fronts.) Leth makes sweats and a pink terry headband look high-end, or pairs defiantly dorky white cross-trainers with a fluttery rainbow-gradient dress. And who knew cornflower blue tights could be so chic? “I think good style is very close to bad style. It has to be very, very close,” Leth explains of her fashion philosophy. “And also, no matter how rich you are, it’s not like you can buy style.” In other words, don’t expect her imminent fashion-world fame to result in any spon-con. “I have a principle that if designers send me something that I don’t want to wear, I tell them not to send it,” she says. “I only take something if I need something.”
It’s this refreshingly grounded attitude—and, of course, her beguiling makeup-free face, which could have been lifted from a Danish Golden Age painting—that sets her apart from other would-be It girls. Leth, in the modern era of the personal brand, embodies that all-too-elusive quality: mystery. Her friend and perhaps the most powerful woman in Danish fashion right now, Ganni creative director Ditte Reffstrup, might best sum up her appeal. “I first saw her years ago when I was a buyer and she was a fit model for Acne,” Reffstrup recalls. “I was like, ‘who is that girl?’ There’s really just something about her.”