Despite Cox’s confidence, she claims to have an attitude that prevents her from ever getting “too far ahead”
of herself.
CANDICE LAKE
Talk is cheap, sure. But it starts to increase in value with each superlative and as reputations are staked on predictions. Montana Cox, reality television star and captain of Nillumbik House in 2011 at Eltham College – a charming mix of mortal and celebrity the 18-year-old carries well – did not just win Australia’s Next Top Model 2011. She obliterated it.
Let the talk begin. Alex Perry stated, “(Montana) is the calibre of girl you would see in any international fashion magazine”. Sarah Murdoch ran with it and called her “a supermodel in the making”. Harper’s Bazaar Australia editor Edwina McCann trumped the pack, lauding Montana Cox, “Monty” to friends, as “the greatest discovery for any Next Top Model series”.
In a minibus on the way to Cox’s first ever shoot as a professional model, it seems the perfect time to ask, politely, is she feeling any pressure, for example? She shifts in her seat a little, smiling.
“Yeah, I suppose there is, because you’ve got to strike when the iron’s hot and right now is my opportunity and I’ve got to take it. It is the moment,” she says. “There is a bit of pressure to live up to expectations too. There were a lot of things said. And previous winners have done really well. So I have to give it a red-hot go.”
But, if recent history is anything to go by, Cox is being a little too kind. The winner of Australia’s Next Top Model in 2009, Tahnee Atkinson, has barely been sighted since, and 2006 winner Eboni Stocks was waiting tables in a Sydney restaurant less than two years after walking at New York Fashion Week.
The 2010 winner, Amanda Ware, on the other hand, has emphatically risen above reality television’s most epic of fails, when Murdoch mistakenly announced the runner-up, Kelsey Martinovich, as the winner. Ware has since launched a stellar modelling career and resides in New York, where she is signed with S Models. The ex-Gold Coast waitress has walked at New York, London and Paris fashion weeks for designers including Nicole Farhi, L’Wren Scott and label Kenzo.
So winning the competition is no guarantee of success in this “stitches-and-bitches” industry.
“I’m so in awe of Amanda’s achievements,” Cox says as the minibus pulls up to the footpath outside the Lamborghini showroom near the corner of Chapel Street and Alexandra Avenue.
There’s a moment, as we’re climbing out of the minibus with the 8am sun in our eyes that is as striking as any later captured by Vogue street-style photographer Candice Lake: Cox, in a sheer blue dress, standing tall (she’s more than 1.8 metres in heels) with her arm raised to shield her eyes, silver sequined clutch in hand. Behind her, a burnt-orange Lamborghini Aventador: there are striking lines in the background and the foreground.
Frank Sinatra once said: “If you want to be someone you buy a Ferrari. If you are someone you buy a Lamborghini.” You get the sense this young woman already fits into the latter category.
It’s Cox’s lovely, unaffected grace during in-between moments such as this – when she is not trying to be somebody, but just “is” – that inspires Rose Marie Pengelly, the marketing rep on site for today’s Betts for Her photo shoot. The West Australian-based men’s and women’s shoe shop has narrowed its range to women’s only in the Melbourne concept store, located across from the Jam Factory on Chapel Street.
“The beauty about a good model is that you don’t have to tell them too much. They know themselves and they know their bodies,” says Pengelly, who works for marketing company The Arc Factory. “Montana knows the right angles for her face, the right posture of her body, she knows how to do it. For someone so young she’s really got her head screwed on … It’s all about shoes today and she knows how to do her strides so that it’s all about her feet. You can’t teach someone how to move that naturally.
“You look at someone like Tahnee Atkinson in comparison,” Pengelly says. “I don’t know how she’s doing. You haven’t really seen her since she won. Because of her physique, it’s hard for her to get international work. Whereas Montana, we’ll probably see her on catwalks. She’s got longevity in the industry because of her physique. She’s really tall and lanky and proportional.”
Despite Cox‘s confidence – well and truly on show throughout the shoot on Church Street Bridge, as she deals with wolf whistles from car windows, cyclists wobbling past the posse and Candice Lake’s instructions, delivered like a sporting coach – she claims to have an attitude that prevents her from ever getting “too far ahead” of herself. Even as Top Model progressed, and she emerged as the one to beat, Cox never expected to win.
“I’m just not that kind of person,” she says. “I never put myself in that light. I just take things day by day and I don’t think about the outcome too much. I’m a positive person, but I’m never overconfident; I always just try my best and whatever happens, happens.
“For most of Model I was under the radar anyway. No one really noticed me until the Makeover episode, when I came out of my shell. Until then I just barely snuck through each stage.”
Whatever Cox’s strategy was, it worked. The outcome when it came to Top Model will no doubt continue to be a game, and life, changer. Cox won an eight-page spread and earned the right to have her face on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, December 2011 edition, where she looked by turns ravishing and elfin in a range of high-fashion gowns and dresses. Other prizes included a modelling contract with Chic Model Management, $20,000 cash, a Ford Fiesta and a trip to New York City to meet with Next Model Management.
You would think, with a few months now to have absorbed the win, that Cox would be somewhat used to her post-Top Model life.
But she sometimes entirely forgets that the whole thing ever happened. Until, that is, a reminder comes, which it does daily and in a usually unsettling way: “I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll think people will be eviling me,” she says, hunching her brows.
“But then I’ll remember that I was in Model. Then I remember that I won it. The whole coming up to me on the street thing is always exactly the same, especially with 14 to 15-year-old girls. It starts with staring and pointing, then they kind of wave and you wave back and say ‘Hiiii …’ And then they say, “Are you Montana?” And I say, ‘Yeahhh’, and they say, ‘Can we get a photo?’ Then, ‘Thanks, I love you!’ That’s word for word what everybody says. “There’s a million shots of me on other people’s Facebook. My friends were telling me that they saw these shots of me with random girls at a Safeway, and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’.”
Cox, who is single, a fact that is rather oddly included on her Wikipedia page, concedes that the attention is not all from girls. “A little bit” has certainly come from teenage boys too. Unfortunately for them, and even more so for the likely lads she met at Schoolies Week, she’s a tough crowd.
“I think boys are probably at their worst at that age. Especially when you throw in alcohol, no parents and their own hotel room. It’s not a good mix.”
She was scheduled to have a week-long break at Schoolies but returned home alone after a couple of days. Instead of partying with her friends, whose summer mantra is apparently “no commitments”, she’s back in her family home at Eltham, continuing hers in a follow-up phone interview.
“(Schoolies) was fun for a night, it was like ‘wooooo’. Then I just found it gross. Everyone was there to get really drunk. I just wanted to go home. It was the same thing over and over. It gets monotonous. I think I’ve grown up quicker than my friends, because they were all ‘woop woop’ and, I don’t know, I just found it really boring. It’s probably because I’ve been exposed to the adult world through Top Model. You’re just introduced to so many people and you’re constantly around adults and around their experiences. You learn off them and you have to interact with them on a certain level. That cultivates maturity. You can’t really act immaturely in those circumstances. You have to be professional. You can’t be this stupid little 18-year-old.”
Back in her family home, an “old rustic house with vines all over it on a nice big property”, Cox’s voice is relaxed and slow. She doesn’t have to be anything in this place, other than a daughter and a sister. She speaks of her love for their life there, which includes “heaps of animals”, a chicken coop and other country trimmings, such as a mother who cooks huge home-made pies for eight, that are demolished by the family of only four.
“I had a homely upbringing but I grew up as much in the city. I’m not a country girl at all. I do love Sydney but I’m definitely a Melbourne girl. It’s my favourite place. It’s a generalisation, I know, but people are just nicer here and our nightlife is much better. We have better music and better bars and restaurants.”
From the cool and quiet of her bedroom, a place of “controlled chaos”, Cox looks to the future. Her manic life, and the expectations that sudden success has thrust upon her, are far enough removed to get some peace.
Her dreams are crystal clear: to walk at high-fashion runway shows for designers such as Alexander Wang and Isabel Marant – her favourites – and to travel. To Paris and Milan first, of course. But in her mature, methodical way, Cox reframes the question so it’s less about the future than it is about the day after today.
“To make it as a model you have to be really patient and you have to be good with people,” Cox says.
“You’re thrown in with new people all the time, stylists and photographers and make-up artists. I think you have to be a nice person. People aren’t going to want to work with you if you’re grumpy and angry all the time. Supermodels do have that reputation, so I guess I’ll just have to be lovely until I get to that point. Then I can be a complete bitch … Right now I’m making my way up there, and it’s pretty easy for me because I do love doing this as a job.”
Five looks \ Montana talks summer style
I like to think I have style, but not a particular one. I’ll just wake up one day and wear a Ramones T-shirt and my Vans. And then another day I’ll wear a really nice fur jacket. It depends what mood I’m in and where I’m going and what I’m doing. It changes all the time, which I like. I’m not really like a set person.
At an open-air market \ You’ve got to wear a long skirt, with big, round ’60s glasses and lots of little trinkets and little jewels. Lately I’ve been into antique jewellery. Just a really natural and flowy vibe.
At Portsea Pub on the grass \ It seems to be all about Ralph Lauren down there, especially Portsea. I do own a Polo cap. I once wore it in Sydney and my friends up there were saying, “What is that?” I said, “It’s cool in Melbourne!”
At the beach \ A good pair of high-waisted shorts and you can’t go wrong. I always like going to Savers and getting a big T-shirt and cutting the sleeves off. I think that works a charm every time. That’s pretty much all you need with a good pair of sunnies and some black Havaianas thongs. They go with everything. I’m always wearing sunscreen, too, by the way.
Al fresco late brunch \ White tailored shorts and a good singlet in a nice material and a good black belt. I like basics, nothing too extravagant. Just cool and easy.