You guys already know what I think of Cara Delevingne. I’m not a fan of the 21-year-old model and I don’t really understand why so many fashion people are making her “happen”. Notice I didn’t say “trying to make her happen.” It’s too late. She’s already happening, as her appearance on the cover of the September issue of W Magazine proves. It doesn’t even matter that the photoshoot is not all that great or that Cara flashes a nip in one of the photos. She has arrived. Angry Baby McEyebrows has arrived. W interviewed her too – you can read the whole piece here. She’s not a great interview or anything either – she just seems like a pretty typical posh girl who has been told for years that everything she does is magical and special. There is a fearlessness about her which is somewhat admirable, but I take it more as just her arrogant youth.

Cara on her psoriasis: When she’s stressed or nervous, angry red patches flare up on her skin. “It only happened during Fashion Week!” Delevingne told me, calling from her agent’s office in London. “Which is, of course, the worst time of the year for me to be covered in scabs. Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, and I’m sensitive. Kate [Moss] saw me before the Louis Vuitton show at 3 a.m., when I was being painted by people to cover the scabs,” Delevingne recalled. “She said, ‘This is horrible! Why is this happening? I need to help you.’ She got me a doctor that afternoon; Kate gives really good advice.”

When she started as a model: “In the beginning, I was thinking, How do I set myself apart from the other girls? So many girls were taller, skinnier, and prettier. And I’m not a girly girl at all—I didn’t get boobs until I was around 18! As a teenager, I kept thinking, I’m so short, and I have no boobs—what do I do?” ­Delevingne said, laughing. She began to look at modeling as playing different roles. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been noticed,” she said. “I treat the camera like a person—I gaze into it. Photos are a flat thing, and you need to put life into them.”

She’s aristocratic: She was “discovered” by Sarah Doukas, the owner of a London modeling agency whose daughter went to school with Delevingne and her sisters, Chloe and Poppy. The Delevingne girls are British aristocracy: Their mother, Pandora, was an It girl in the ’80s before she married Charles Delevingne, whose grandfather was a viscount. Pandora, who until recently was the head of personal shopping at Selfridges and counts the Duchess of York among her closest friends, once had a nasty heroin addiction. (It has been rumored that Poppy was named for the drug.) Pandora was in and out of rehab for much of the girls’ childhoods.

Learning from her sisters: “Poppy was a model, and I never liked to do the same things my sisters did. After the Bruce Weber shoot, I didn’t think about it. I wanted to be either a musician or an actress.” She has played the drums since childhood and was in a band, the Clementines, when she was 12. It was around that time that she asked her parents for an acting agent as a present. “I wanted to be a Disney Channel star! I wanted to be Hannah Montana. They said no!”

Sending an audition tape to Tim Burton: At 17, while she was a student at Bedales, a very arty private school in Hempshire, Delevingne got word of Tim Burton’s big-screen production of Alice in Wonderland and made an audition tape. “My interpretation of Alice was a little crazy,” she said, laughing. “I overplayed it—the way a young girl would overplay all her emotions. I sent my tape off, and then I was at a wedding and this woman came over to me. She said, ‘You don’t know me, but I know exactly who you are.’ ” It was Lili Zanuck, the wife of Richard Zanuck, the film’s producer. “She told me that they all loved my tape!” Delevingne recalled. “And I went to Tim Burton’s house and met with him. I didn’t get the part, but that experience lit a fire in me.”

Cara’s bad-girl rep: “Everyone worries about me,” she said. “It’s hard for my family, and I know I have to be careful. People have to realize that I can take care of myself. I’ve done a great job so far.”

She’s restless: “I want to make music, I want to act, I want to sing, I want to do something that doesn’t make my skin erupt. I was just on holiday for three days in Greece with my sister, and I thought that would make me happy and relaxed. But when I stop everything, it’s really bad. I go crazy. In Greece, it was a lot of couples, and I felt alone, which made me sad.”

She’s closer with women in public: “I called Rihanna,” she continued. “She said ‘It’s easy to drown yourself in work. That’s a form of escapism. So, if you’re alone and you want to cry, cry.’ And I did. But by then, it was time to leave and get back to my life.”

[From W Magazine]

So her mom had substance abuse problems and the UK press has noted several times that Cara seems to be quite a hard partier too. I wouldn’t say Cara “has done a great job” taking care of herself so far, but we’ll see.

Did anyone else roll their eyes at this? “Maybe that’s why I’ve been noticed. I treat the camera like a person—I gaze into it. Photos are a flat thing, and you need to put life into them.” Yes, Cara. You are so different from every other model. No other model ever thought to “gaze into the camera” and treat the camera like a person. It’s just you, because you are a special snowflake. As for why Cara seems to be the new hot model these days… I think it’s because she actually has some personality, some arrogance, plus those trademark bushy eyebrows and that aristocratic smirk. I do have to admit, I would prefer to talk about someone with an actual personality, like Cara, rather than trying to convince myself that Karlie Kloss is anything other than a bland piece of toast.

Photos courtesy of Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/W Magazine.