Carmen Kass
Carmen Kass
Carmen Kassis an Estonian model, businesswoman and former political candidate. The longtime muse of designers Michael Kors and Narciso Rodriguez, she has walked the runways of every internationally prominent fashion brand and been the face of numerous advertising campaigns. In the year 2002, she was estimated to have been the second-highest-paid model in the world. Outside of modeling, Kass ran for the European Parliament in 2004 and was the president of the Estonian Chess Federation from 2004 to 2011...
NationalityEstonian
ProfessionModel
Date of Birth14 September 1978
CityTallinn, Estonia
CountryEstonia
Because I have a passion for the play. My father was a chess teacher, and I learned the play of him as a small child. Occasionally I made another career; but now I have again the possibility of maintaining the passion of my early youth days.
I have a figure, and there aren't many girls out there right now who have that.
I don't think Estonians ever really hated Russians. It was more, 'Leave us alone.' We can't change what is past. We can't blame them for what their parents have done. We never hated them. They didn't destroy us that bad.
I don't think just being skinny means necessarily anorexic.
I get paid to work; I don't pay to work.
It's not really like you have a thing like a supermodel anymore. It's more of a word than a real existence. I think, also, looking at it from a designer's point of view, at one point maybe they felt the stars took too much attention away from the clothes.
Places like New York are just too intense, too much about money, too much about ambition; it's all too superficial for me.
We feel free. We're independent. People can be openly proud of being Estonian. I have a lot of belief in Estonia.
You know what I always dreamed of? That with the greenhouse effect, one day Estonia can be what L.A. is right now. I always thought when the end of the world comes, I want to be in Estonia. I think then I'd survive.
I hope one day when I say I'm from Estonia, people don't say: 'What? Where's that?'