Kate Upton named model of the year, covers Vanity Fair

By Nardine Saad

Sept. 3, 2013 12 AM PT

Kate Upton has been named model of the year and will pick up her pretty prize Wednesday at the 10th annual Style Awards that kick off New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion week.

Reality-star-turned-fashion designer Nicole Richie will host the event, which also honors designer Zac Posen, celeb stylist and designer Rachel Zoe, and New York Giants wide receiver (also turned designer) Victor Cruz. The awards will air on CNN on Sept. 14, according to Glamour.

Upton, the curvaceous, self-promoting honoree, got her start in Florida at age 12, but really catalyzed her career by landing the highly coveted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover spot (twice), having her Dougie YouTube video go viral and embracing the millennial age by becoming an Internet personality.

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“It’s just me sharing my life,” she explained to Vogue about tweeting. “I like it if it’s authentic and in the moment and happening.... I didn’t buy the magazines [growing up] that had models on the covers, because I didn’t know them. So I think this kind of gives me, as a model, a personality that people can connect with.”

But the 21-year-old has been turning heads in the high-fashion realm too, since she’s graced the cover of American Vogue and international versions of the sartorial codex, Elle and now Vanity Fair’s 100th anniversary issue, on which she’s seen carrying the magazine’s celebratory cake.

“I’m not going to name names, but one agency told me, ‘You’re too American, and everybody knows American women are lazy,’” she said in Vanity Fair. “I was so offended! I’ve never been so offended! I was like, ‘You know that you’re in America, right?’ And it wasn’t ‘American models’ — it was ‘American women are lazy,’ period! I feel like a lot of women would disagree with that. A lot!”

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The girl with a signature mole has also become the face of jeweler David Yurman and already has her sights set on Hollywood: She’ll star alongside Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Nicki Minaj in “The Other Woman,” to be released in 2014.

In Vanity Fair, Upton is photographed by Annie Leibovitz and is styled in the epitome of old Hollywood glamor, complete with pinup-girl locks and a vintage bathing suit. She even made the cover her Twitter avatar for her more than 1 million followers to see.

Inside the special issue, she mimics the magazine’s original cover from Oct. 1, 1913, that showed an illustration of a woman lounging on the moon.

The October issue of Vanity Fair hits New York and L.A. newsstands on Sept. 5, and its e-version will be available Sept. 10.

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