“I’m a Sucker for Beauty”: Paloma Elsesser Explains How She Shops

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Paloma Elsesser woke up at 4:45 a.m. the morning of her appearance on Harper's Bazaar's shopping podcast The Good Buy — not for a call time, not for a flight. To bid on rare Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe pieces at Kerry Taylor Auctions. By the time she sat down for the interview, she was hitting "purchase" on a pair of Phoebe Philo heels. If you needed proof that one of fashion's most important working models takes her wardrobe as seriously as her career, there it is.

Elsesser — who has walked for Marni, Fendi, Balenciaga, and Michael Kors, worn the Victoria's Secret wings, appeared in a Doja Cat video, and collected multiple Model of the Year awards — was first discovered by Pat McGrath while studying in New York, a chance encounter that rerouted a future in psychology toward something far more visible. But her influence has never been reducible to runway credits. She's a writer, a vocal advocate for inclusivity, and, increasingly, a reference point for how to dress when the industry wasn't built with your body in mind. According to Harper's Bazaar, she approaches shopping with the instincts of a serious collector: hunting archival gems, identifying emerging labels, and reworking pieces that weren't made in her size into something entirely her own.

The Philosophy Behind the Cart

Elsesser describes her personal style as "sexy strange" — an aesthetic designed less to aestheticize and more to provoke. "I always want to be a template for an invitation to thought," she said. "I'm okay with people being like, 'She looks terrible.' But I want you to think about why." Her shopping philosophy is similarly charged. She compares spotting a grail piece on The RealReal to seeing a crush across a room — and calls completing a look sourced from multiple platforms "better than sex." Her first major purchase was a pair of Chanel flats at $650, a way into a world that didn't yet make room for her in its clothes. Her forever repeat buy: Phoebe flats, a shape she returns to obsessively. Her dream buy: a Margiela artisanal piece, for what she calls its deeply human creative freedom.

What sets Elsesser apart from the typical taste-arbiter archetype is her deliberate refusal to gatekeep. "I'm not an influencer but I'm a person of influence," she said, framing her platform as a resource for women who don't have access to the physical or cultural geography of fashion's power cities. "I'm a sucker for beauty," she added. "This world is hard, and it's okay for beauty to be a balm." She's also clear-eyed about her specific significance in archive fashion: bodies like hers rarely appear in rare McQueen or vintage Junya, and she knows exactly what it means to change that.

Elsesser isn't just wearing the clothes — she's expanding the visual record of what those clothes can be, and who gets to be seen wearing them.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.