Allie Rizzo: Super Model or What? ‘I ain’t taking your shit…’

Nordstroms, Macy’s, Target usually net Ms Rizzo at least $3-4000 a day) but I always have the most fun just being me. Work is just that- a job. Which is to say, wearing a pair of jeans, my hair wet, loose and knocking back some drinks in some cheap ass dive bar suits me to a t. Thankfully I’ve caught a few good opportunities- landing DKNY when I was 16 and Ralph Lauren rugby.

(She pauses to reflect)

Ultimately, I’m just an ordinary girl.

At this moment another bevy of guests, the 6th in the last 8 minutes come by and greet her, exchanging high 5′s before Allie returns her attention to me.

A part of me can tell that as much as she is over the attention, she loves it- but perhaps in small doses. Not that attention ever comes in small doses when you are one of the most recognizable faces in the city. Excuse me – in America, or perhaps in the world.

I met Mario Testino (famed fashion photographer) once at a casting- and he told me- Allie you are beautiful, but just that- you don’t have the it factor that separates you from everyday beauty to a work of art. You will never do anything magnificent. Yes you will work, but you will never be as big as some of the other girls….

SCV: Did that bother you?

AR: Not at all. You think I haven’t been thinking the same thing as Mario?

SCV: I’m curious. How did you break into modeling?

AR: It happened when I was 15. I was scouted by accident, picked up by Wilhelmina Model Management and by the time I was 17 I was living in NY full time (Allie grew up in Virginia and in the beginning of her career would rush back there on the weekends before returning to the jungle Monday mornings).

I think getting to work with Peter Lindbergh at the age of 16 for the DKNY campaign got me to realize modeling could now be a career not a hobby. Really – I never planned on being a model. I thought I was going to end up going to college and study literature. Isn’t that what normal girls do?

Of course Allie Rizzo is not your normal girl, having already walked the planks for Diane Von Furstenberg,