What is it like being a seventeen year old girl today? As we step into the dawn of social media, it’s hard to tell. The wealth of information that girls today digest with each scroll has ultimately redefined adolescence. While there is even more imagery pasted across the digital sphere painting the repetitive age-old ideals of femininity, there is also a network of teenagers embracing their individuality.
Leira Pamp at IMG models is part of this movement; she has a classic beauty that’s tied up in modernity. It is in those spacey green eyes and her aura of effortless youth; as if the archetypal cheerleader has blurred into a free-spirited Woodstock girl. It seems in 2016, it’s possible for a girl to be both simultaneously.
For our exclusive Girls by Boys series in our Autumn Winter print issue, photographer Mark Shearwood bottles this feeling of a girl at the edge of womanhood. There are no limitations on her identity; she simply has fun in front of the lens, rummaging through autumnal leaves and exploring her decadent surroundings. Smiles are in abundance - not model smiling - the actual type of candid grins that radiate across the 8-page fashion editorial.
Stylist Rachel Caulfield adds to the dynamic with looks that play on the feminine - adding layers of pink velvet, cowgirl tassels and a punky leopard print shirt. Silhouettes traditionally reserved for the menswear game are relaxed and dressed up with dreamy shades of nostalgia. The end result presents the complexity of girlhood right now; and the evolving forms it can take. The most important message is to have fun - girl power is alive and kicking, it just looks brand new.
