It's a profession where the women make more than the men, the average age of retirement is 26, and the career trajectory and fame is equivalent to that of rock stars. This is Gear's second annual Model Issue, where we pick the up-and-comers, the personalities, the brightest shining beauties. Last year, we pulled a young model by the name of Yamila onto our pages -- now she shimmers at Victoria's Secret. Then there was Gisele -- currently acknowledged as the model of the moment. This year, look at Kim Smith, Nichole, Monica, Anne Marie... You'll be seeing more of them.

Photograph Frank Ockenfels 3

Millennium Girl

"What do I like about my appearance?"

         I guess my eyes are okay."

         "When I'm home I'm just really normal."

         "One thing I've learned about traveling is that it's not only people in Odessa who gossip."

         You are listening to the version 2000 supermodel. She is Guess's Next Big Thing -- following in the steps of Laetitia Casta, Claudia Schiffer, and Eva Herzogova. She's on the sides of buses, the back covers of magazines, a guest on Politically Incorrect.

         She is a 16-year-old from Odessa, Texas, population 96,195.

         Kim Smith goes to high school there, where she diligently does her homework, hangs out with her friends, and is dating a senior who, during Halloween, was not above going pumpkin smashing. "Mostly he's very mature," she defers. "But that's the way it goes in towns like Odessa -- there's nothing for kids to do at night."

         Kim loves her home town. "Everybody says they hate it, how they can't wait to get out, but I tell them, 'It's wonderful. Enjoy it while you can.'"

         Her picture may be all over America, but the biggest change in her life back home is that now the football players like her, and most of the older girls don't.

         "What is she doing here? She thinks she's a big New York model," she hears from senior girls at parties.

         "Hello," she replies. "I'm right here: I can hear you."

In any significant model's career, there is always The Discovery. And Kim's has a bit of fairytale to it. Last year a friend entered Model Search America, an event in Dallas where girls paid $395 to be looked at by talent-searchers, and she was allowed to bring a guest. Kim tagged along, and while she was wandering about, a guy grabbed her arm. "Why are you wearing a guest badge?" he demanded. She thought she'd done something wrong. "No, no, you should be in the contest," he said. The man was David Mogull, Model Search America's president.

         Mogull estimates his company sees some 60,000 hopefuls a year. "Kim's a beautiful girl -- she has that ivory/snow look, great posture. There's nothing stopping her."

         After that, the phone at her parents' house didn't stop ringing until she had an agent, who then sent test shots to Guess president Paul Marciano. "Paul instantly saw her potential and she was on the next flight to Los Angeles," Tina Baker of Guess says. She was booked for the fall campaign on the spot.

Despite the sultry poise of her photos, Kim Smith is more Sixteen Candles than Fast Times at Ridgemont High. No drink, no drugs, no clubs. Her laugh is high, girlish, and she has a hard time looking her interviewer in the eye. Is she shy? A wan smile. "Yes. But I've gotten better."

         And to be looked at as a sex object at 16? "I think it's okay as long as you're comfortable with it. There's some things that I wouldn't do, and I speak up. But I think being a model at 12 or 13 is too young. I was 15 and so scared. I can't imagine being younger than that and having to deal with bills and pay checks."

         Last summer she spent a month living in a "model apartment" in New York, where models bunk four to a room. "I watched what the other girls did and based my behavior on the opposite of that," she says with Texas earnestness over a huge portion of fettuccine. "I know girls younger than myself who go out drinking. Sometimes a girl's alarm clock would go off for a shoot early in the morning and she'd be like, 'I'm not getting up, I don't feel like it...' Oh yeah, you're cool."

         Not that she hasn't taken advantage of the upsides of the career -- such as living out every pubescent girl's dream of meeting Leo. Kim did, at an after-party for Saturday Night Live. "He told me, 'You're sooo cute' -- cute, not beautiful or sexy." Sigh. "Then he asked me how old I was, and after I told him he started talking to someone else." Resigned shrug. "I met Robert Downey, Jr. that night too, and he was really nice to me. We talked for a long while." And if, say, Johnny Depp called you and invited you on vacation, what would you do? She pauses, looks stricken. "I wouldn't want to be in that situation. I would say... 'No. I have a boyfriend.'"

         We leave the restaurant and walk the New York streets toward her hotel. I tell her tat if we pass one of her billboards, she has to pose in front of it. She laughs and shakes her head. After two blocks, she gives out a small shriek.

         "What?"

         Too fast: "Nothing."

         Sure enough, there's a buss stop shelter with a picture of Kim in Guess denim. "Go on," I cajole. She slowly walks over and stands in front of it. The street is bustling. The poster Kim is bigger than the real Kim. Real Kim gives a self-conscious wave, feeling a bit silly, a crooked smile on her face. Poster Kim smiles over her shoulder unblinkingly, perfect, poised, beautiful.