When Vivian Wilson slinked down the runway of Demna’s debut Gucci show in a floor-length white gown and incredible hair, the 21-year-old instantly became the talk of Milan Fashion Week. Her brief? To embody Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
Wilson’s path to the Gucci runway began with a casting tape filmed in her own driveway. She walked “like a crazy person, like eight million times” until she had the perfect take. The result? A spot in a line-up that included the likes of Kate Moss and Mariacarla Boscono. “When I found that out, I was shaking in my boots,” Wilson tells Chloe Malle in today’s episode of The Run-Through. “We did it, though.”
But before all the glamour of fashion month was a very different life. Wilson spent time studying Japanese at a university in Tokyo, with plans to earn a TEFL certificate and become an ESL teacher. A Teen Vogue cover changed everything. “It completely transformed my career,” she says. Now she’s in Paris, doing the modeling thing—castings every hour, NDAs on NDAs—and entirely at peace with the pivot. “I wanna see how big I can get,” she says. “We’re just locking the fuck in.” Off the catwalk, she reads gay fantasy fiction and has a passion for Excel spreadsheets; she’s a John Oliver devotee; and she has genuine ambitions in voice acting.
Also in the episode, Vogue editors share their thoughts from the Balmain, Courrèges, Dries Van Noten, and Saint Laurent shows at Paris Fashion Week.