Taylor Hill By Mario Testino Burns Up V Magazine Fall 2016 with Troye Sivan, Lucky Blue Smith & Kacy Hill
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V Magazine calls Taylor Hill the 'ultimate millennial model', saying that she's gone beyond the norms of a 'new wave of mannequins' with a social media presence outside the fashion industry and non-tweens.
Hill is part of a new wave of mannequins that are also burgeoning celebrities beyond the pages, catwalks, and billboards: they’re millennial socialites (social media-ites?), who, with varying degrees of strategy, use the power of the digital world to perpetually build their personal brands. Others in this vortex include Kendall Jenner, the biggest, Gigi Hadid, the second biggest, Gigi’s sister Bella Hadid, Karlie Kloss, and Hill’s fellow cover star here, Lucky Blue Smith. The difference between them and other social media A-listers is that even non-tweens and non-fashion people know their names. They kind of complete the pillar of rapidly evolving fame; they’re multi-hyphenates, repping the fashion ring, but very much of interest beyond it. What’s especially slick (if not intermittently maddening) is how easy they make it look. Obviously, good genes help—people like looking at good genes—but they’re all also seemingly cool customers.
“I’ve just learned to be myself,” says Hill of her electronic persona. “Social media is a huge part of my life, but I don’t post a steady rhythm of pictures. I don’t post at a certain time of day to get the most views. You learn to live your life with it.” It’s compelling and terrifying all at once to realize that people her age and younger, for the most part, enter adulthood grafted inextricably to social media. If there are any red flags, Hill is pretty much past the point of no return. Her audience is only going to snowball from here, and too, her book-ability. Good on her, then, for going about it organically.
