This May, Lucky, an American shopping-oriented magazine whose cover is usually reserved for celebrities, features Joan Smalls on its cover and an excellent interview with her inside.<\/p>\n
How much do you know about Joan? Here are our highlights:<\/p>\n
Smalls was born the youngest of three sisters in Hatillo, Puerto Rico, to a social worker mother and accountant father. […] \u201cIt\u2019s country,\u201d she says. \u201cEverything surrounding you is green. It\u2019s pure bliss.\u201d
\nLife on the farm gave her a love of the great outdoors, but it was television that introduced the lanky tomboy to the world of high fashion. She traces her career aspirations back to the series E! True Hollywood Story, which showcased catwalkers Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Christie Brinkley. […] She also recognized a bit of herself in their images. \u201cI was so awkward-looking\u2014tall, super skinny, gangly. The boys at school made fun of me,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019d see those girls on TV and I\u2019d think, Oh, they have my same body type.\u201d
\nAt 13, she began signing up for modeling competitions, which involved traveling\u2014sometimes for hours\u2014to compete at shopping malls. \u201cI lost every single time. We had a gray minivan, and one time it broke down during a long drive home, and I remember thinking, Is this even worth it? But I loved it. And I had my family\u2019s blessing, which was cool. My parents were into it. They were like, \u2018Why not? It\u2019s a fun extracurricular activity, and she has good grades.\u2019 Their support was crucial, because I didn\u2019t have a license to get myself places.\u201d
\nEducation was always priority number one in her household. Before Smalls made an attempt at a full-blown career, her parents had one condition\u2014that she get a college degree. She did so in just two years, barreling through an intensive program in psychology at a university in San Juan, and graduating magna cum laude to boot.
\nDiploma in hand and undeterred by her previous modeling track record, she took a trip to New York and met with a number of agencies. One of them, Elite, promised a contract contingent on her East Coast relocation. Smalls returned home, packed her bags and moved into her aunt\u2019s apartment in Queens, where she slept on an air mattress in her cousin\u2019s bedroom. That summer, she turned 19.
\n\u201cNew York was quite a shock, but I was so eager and hungry,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d take the bus to get on the subway to make it to castings.\u201d And then came the rejections\u2014hundreds of them. \u201cYou\u2019re competing with 40, 100, 200 other girls. You go to a call, see the casting list and you\u2019re number 202. And you know there are just a couple of open spots.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say to myself, I just want to get to a place in my career where I don\u2019t have to do castings, because it was grueling. There are so many places to be at once, you\u2019re always running late and then having to wait your turn. Now I\u2019ll sometimes see models rushing around the city, and I totally feel what they\u2019re going through.\u201d
\nPerseverance paid off, and within the year she had booked gigs with brands including Tory Burch, Neiman Marcus and Liz Claiborne. Then, finally, came a turning point. \u201cI shot with Coco Rocha for Liz Claiborne and was like, wait, I\u2019m in a picture with her? She\u2019s huge! Maybe I can really do this.\u201d
\nThe work remained steady, albeit mainly commercial, until high fashion came calling. In 2010, Givenchy\u2019s Riccardo Tisci handpicked Smalls to star in the French house\u2019s spring haute couture show. \u201cI had been shooting a lot of catalogs up until then. Riccardo bleached my eyebrows and I suddenly became this androgynous, versatile model. It kick-started my career for sure,\u201d she says.
\nShe also works out, often. In addition to sessions with a personal trainer and regular solo visits to the gym, the fitness enthusiast has recently taken up studying Muay Thai boxing, a Southeast Asian combat sport. \u201cI did kickboxing in college, and I wanted to learn another discipline, another martial art. I really like to have a practice\u2014none of that \u2018Oh, I\u2019m boxing for cardio\u2019 stuff.\u201d
\n\u201cI come from a Latin culture; rhythm is in my roots,\u201d she says. It\u2019s also her therapy. \u201cIf I have an early shoot and I\u2019ve just gotten off a plane, or I haven\u2019t slept, or I feel gross, I\u2019ll dance around and be silly,\u201d she says. \u201cI put on Drake or Nicki Minaj or Cultura Prof\u00e9tica, a Puerto Rican band. It gets me pumped up.\u201d
\n\u201cI feel like a good amount of women have used modeling as a platform. People like Gisele and Cindy. And I think that\u2019s really cool, not only for models but for women. It shows that you can have a voice and a say. You can have a brand and be your own boss. It\u2019s empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This May, Lucky, an American shopping-oriented magazine whose cover is usually reserved for celebrities, features Joan Smalls on its cover and an excellent interview with her inside. How much do you know about Joan? Here are our highlights: Smalls was born the youngest of three sisters in Hatillo, Puerto Rico, to a social worker mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,1718,836,1713,1716,795,1148,602,1051,1717,1153,1721,601,1714,1712,1719,615,616,1077,1715,516,1720,1722,1275,806],"class_list":["post-10998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-castings","tag-childhood","tag-commercial","tag-cover","tag-diploma","tag-education","tag-elite","tag-fitness","tag-givenchy","tag-hatillo","tag-img-models","tag-jennifer-yepez","tag-joan-smalls","tag-latina-models","tag-lucky","tag-miguel-reveriego","tag-new-york","tag-nyc","tag-puerto-rico","tag-ricardo-tisci","tag-runway","tag-samantha-traina","tag-sir-john","tag-top-model","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11000,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions\/11000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}