Code Red

With a flourishing music career, model KAREN ELSON has finally found her voice

- Samantha Simon

Karen Elson’s career choices over the years have been as bold as her flame-colored hair, starting with her first major fashion shoot back in 1997. For the cover of Italian Vogue, the English model shaved off her eyebrows at the urging of photographer Steven Meisel and makeup artist Pat McGrath, and needless to say, the daring move paid off. “That zany look was my most monumental moment,” she says, laughing. “It really got people to start noticing me.” Elson, 39, hasn’t experienced a dull workday since. “I built my career on being this off-kilter person,” she says. “So the shoots I do are never boring.”

After nearly a decade on fashion’s runway circuit, she settled down in Nashville with her then-husband, Jack White of the White Stripes, in 2006 (the couple had two children before divorcing in 2013). Elson continued to model, but after becoming a mother, she realized that she was ready to be more than just a pretty face. So she picked up a guitar and started singing. “Half the time I feel like I can express myself better in my songs than I can by talking,” says Elson. “Music is the perfect vehicle to quantify those things that we’ve all felt in our lives, from feeling alone to being in love or having a broken heart.” Finding the courage to share her deepest thoughts with the world wasn’t easy. “I had a lot of real personal stuff going on for a while,” she says. “I just didn’t feel ready. I had to wait until the time was right.”