Insta Model
When Charlotte D’Alessio attended the Coachella music festival in 2015, she was scouted three times: twice by two different model agencies and once (most crucially) by social media – the latter changing her world overnight.
The 16-year-old Beverly Hills High student had attended the event with best friend Josie Canseco, daughter of major league baseball player José Canseco and his former wife, model Jessica.
It was while the duo were dancing; wearing cut-off denim shorts, flash tattoos, bracelets layered up theirs arms and pink vest tops, that photographer Bryant Eslava, who is acclaimed for his pictures of photogenic festival and party-goers, spotted them.
He uploaded a sun-drenched hippy-inspired shot of the girls to his Instagram feed, which had just under a million followers at the time; but now has four million, it instantly went viral with tens of thousands of likes piling in.
Subsequently the image appeared on Instagram’s trending page and the festival’s official Twitter account; plus, photographer The Cobrasnake also uploaded it, as did musician The Weeknd – exposing the friends to his two million followers.
‘I WAS A REALIST. I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A MODEL BUT “STUFFED IT DOWN”’
“To this day, Coachella and that side of my modelling still gets brought up,” she says, when we
