Well suited: Jessica Gomes at Customs House in Sydney.
LISA MAREE WILLIAMS / GETTY IMAGES
Jessica Gomes might be one of Australia’s hottest models right now – she’s about to shoot her fifth Sports Illustrated swimwear edition and she is to South Korea what Megan Gale once was to Italy – but when she walks into the Carlton café in her slightly baggy casual pants and top, she could be any of the other uni student types in the place.
If you went up to any of the tables in here and introduced Jessica as the swimsuit model who’s been in the famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition four times, I bet they either wouldn’t believe you or wouldn’t care, which seems to suit Gomes fine.
Suits me fine, too. Under the radar is where we’re flying today, which makes it easy to do the interview. No one recognises her and, being hip and Carlton, no one seems to wonder why I’ve put a tape recorder under her chin.
Gomes is just back the day before from Singapore, where she helped launch a floating Louis Vuitton store, two storeys under water. Cate Blanchett was there, she says, and Estelle performed.
“I got flown over, dressed head-to-toe in Louis Vuitton and made an entrance and it was beautiful,” she says. “They had Korean celebrities, Chinese actresses, all of the Asian celebrities there, so they invited me along.”
She’s vibrant, enthusiastic about life and – despite all the attention and, it has to be said, adulation – seems well grounded.
From being a tomboy haring around on a BMX – and worrying her mother for not being girly enough – to supermodel took a decade.
Gomes grew up in Perth, the youngest of four children. Her father is Portuguese and her mother Chinese-Singaporean.
In Perth they lived on the edge of a national park. Her parents wanted to raise the family around bushland. “I grew up very sheltered in the sense that I lived in my own little world, my own little jungle … Where I grew up was very hillbilly. I was going to bonfire parties … I used to ride BMX bikes with my brother at the back of the house.
We had jumps and dirt roads and we were bush bashers.”
At 10, her mother was concerned. “The reason I got into modelling is because my mum was a bit worried about me because she said I was really sort of a tomboy and aggressive, always hanging out with my brother and just getting into trouble a lot,” she says.
“I was not the classiest little child and that’s why she put me into grooming and deportment classes because she wanted me to act like a lady.
“I mean, I did love my Barbies and stuff, but I did like to be with my brother and in the dirt.”
She says that amid all the mud and scratches from coming off the BMX, her mother’s friends saw something special in teenage Jessica. She enrolled in a local grooming and deportment academy.
“We would learn how to walk, how to put your make-up on, how to dress,” she says. “We would do fashion parades for our families at the end of every year. There was a pageant at the end of the year and I would win every year.
“My mum realised, ‘Oh she’s got something going here, she’s really loving it’, and I did. I absolutely loved it. I remember I couldn’t wait to go to class every week.”
The academy was more fun than school. “I didn’t really like school. I was teased a lot. I always (felt) like a bit of an outsider because I was the only Eurasian girl in my class, so I was teased a lot about that. The kids would say ‘ching chong’ and, you know, whatever … Kids are just mean.” (She now calls herself “ethnically ambiguous”).
She “wasn’t the most academic kid” and was starting to consider a career in front of the camera.
“I loved to dance and I was always doing plays with my brother. We’d make up these things where I would be drowning in the pool and then he would rescue me … We would always come up with these little games.”
Through the academy she was cast, aged 10, as an extra in a TV series called Bush Patrol. “That was sort of my first taste of what it’s like to be on set and it was really cool. I really enjoyed myself. I got to miss out on school to do it.”
She started doing fashion parades. “I was actually starting to get paid at 10 years old, so I was really happy about that.” She completed year 12 and, at 18, after entering a modelling competition, she was approached by an agent wanting to represent her.
Things were moving quickly for her. She says her parents were never pushy. “I am telling you right now my parents were not at all pushy. They always let me go and do things on my own stride. In a way I sort of wanted my mum to be sort of more pushy.”
By now Gomes had shelved the idea of working in a beauty salon or starting, with her sister, a modelling school for kids. “I always took an interest in make-up and cosmetics and things like that, so I always thought that I would be a beauty therapist or (teaching kids modelling). (My sister and I) would always talk about it … ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we had our own modelling school’.”
It was her own modelling career that was now white-hot. She appeared in Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle and on the cover of Men’s Style.
At 20, she moved to New York and the doors started swinging open. She appeared in Italian GQ and did campaigns for designer clothes DKNY, P. Diddy’s Unforgivable fragrance and Victoria’s Secret lingerie. She shot the first of four spreads in the coveted Sports Illustrated swimwear edition.
And then came the call that made her a superstar in South Korea. She was booked for a TV advertisement for South Korean electronics company LG.
“As soon as I shot that commercial and it aired, pretty much what happened to Megan Gale in Italy is what happened to me in Korea. It just catapulted me to stardom there.”
She was offered her own TV show – My Name is Jessica Gomes, a reality TV documentary-style show in which she was filmed at parties in Las Vegas and at photo shoots in South Korea.
“They were just following my life around from when I woke up to the end of the day, and it became a big hit on the On Style channel.”
She was a contestant on the South Korean version of Dancing with the Stars. “I lasted three months on it. I got to the semi-finals and then on the semi-finals we just screwed up our tango … But it was a great experience.
“It was a great discipline for me – I was dancing for four hours a day and it was just a great fitness thing … I got into really good shape.”
Gomes’ fame in South Korea remains huge. “I can’t walk down the street,” she says. “Obviously anyone that starts getting recognised for their work – it is flattering. I am not going to say that it’s not great when people start going, ‘Oh, I know you and you’re amazing’ and, ‘I think you’re great and I look up to you and you know my brother loves you’ or whatever.
“But then it also does start to get sort of stressful. In Korea it’s weird being recognised by people that you can’t communicate with and they’re saying all these things to you in Korean and you don’t understand and you really want to connect with them.”
It wasn’t all wonderful. “It’s just weird when people start following you and they start getting into your personal life and they start sort of talking about you and saying false things about you … They’re really sort of picking you apart and they’re creating these whole websites about you.
“I think that there was a point where it sort of did really affect me; it did really hurt me. But then I realised that, ‘OK, this is the sort of the cost of fame and this happens to a lot of people.
“I just don’t take notice of it any more. The only thing that is important to me is that my family really knows who I am and my friends and the people around me know who I am and (they’re the only ones) I have got to answer to.”
The Sports Illustrated shoots have made her a name in the US, too. “I don’t think Australia gets how huge Sports Illustrated is in the States. It is massive.”
To promote the swimsuit edition, Gomes was flown around the US for parties. “We get sent to the Super Bowl; we go to the tennis.”
At a party for the Oscars she met Justin Bieber, Elton John, Quentin Tarantino, Naomi Watts, all the Glee cast. “It does put you at the top of your game, to be a Sports Illustrated girl.”
Like any self-respecting supermodel, Gomes is planning a parallel business career. “I definitely do see myself as a businesswoman.
“I definitely feel like I am going into the next stage of my modelling career. I am not just a model any more, you know. I am a brand and I am a face. So I definitely want to follow into the footsteps of what Elle Macpherson did.
“I guess Elle Macpherson has always been someone I have looked up to because I always dreamed of doing Sports Illustrated (as she did) … I think she’s gorgeous. I think she has such a healthy image and she just is a really powerful businesswoman. I think she’s over 40 now and she looks amazing.”
Gomes’ parents are thrilled over the success of their once-tomboy daughter. “They’re really proud of me because they’ve seen how hard I have worked.”
Her boyfriend is from Melbourne. “He is a property developer. Well, he’s heading into that. We’ve been together for a year now. I don’t really like talking about my personal life but, yeah, he is very supportive.
“He has helped me in the sense that he’s really good with business. He said the modelling game is the same as any other business game. You know, it’s all about hype and having the right management around you.
“People always ask me, ‘Do you have any sort of advice for young girls who want to get into the modelling game?’ You have to really know how to take rejection. It’s all about pushing yourself and reinventing yourself and believing in yourself, because really if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else (will).”
Good things are ahead of her. “I definitely want to have a family, but my ultimate dream is I want to be just happy with my businesses and I want to be able to sit back at the age of Elle Macpherson … and be like, ‘Wow I have had a really great career; I have fulfilled all my dreams’.”
As we speak, Gomes is winding up her time living in Melbourne and heading to live in Los Angeles. She says she will miss the cool little shopping strip in Rathdowne Street where she gets her lattes, bread and organic vegetables, but she has to go where the work is.
Gomes’ boyfriend is in the café waiting for her, with a group of friends, at an adjoining table. When I leave she joins them.
The glamour of Sports Illustrated magazine and the New York modelling world seem a long way away.