Karen Elson was “discovered,” to use the modeling industry’s vaguely gold-mining term, when she was 15 and living in Manchester, England. She left her hometown a year later and appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue, photographed by Steven Meisel, on her 18th birthday. In the years since, Elson, now 42, has remained dominant, her beauty—ethereal, surreal, and powerful—still in demand from brands, magazines, and all the arbitrary things that constitute a model’s “relevancy.” Based in Nashville with her two children by her ex-husband, musician Jack White, she also has a prolific singing career, swinging in and out of the culture from her deliberately low-key base.
After 18 months of the universally painful and isolating COVID-19 experience, the modeling industry has been one of the first to revert to less…
