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"  Maybe I shouldn&amp;#039;t admit this, but I have a love/hate relationship with meeting new models, or what we in fashion simply refer to as &amp;quot;go-sees.&amp;quot; As an editor, it&amp;#039;s an important part of my job, but for me, the common practice of flipping through a girl&amp;#039;s portfolio and then dismissing her with a curt &amp;quot;thank you&amp;quot; is awkward; I just don&amp;#039;t do these thank-yous very well. So I usually end up drilling a girl about her: &amp;quot;Where are you from? How long have you lived here? Do you like modeling?&amp;quot; The thing is, I&amp;#039;m just as attracted to their personalities as I am to their physical attributes. And what do I look forward to most? What they&amp;#039;re wearing. Seriously, I&amp;#039;m obsessed.  I think the off-duty style of models is intriguing and often extremely influential. Here&amp;#039;s how it works: A model walks into her go-see with a designer, the designer is &amp;quot;inspired&amp;quot; by her sense of style, those styling quirks make it onto the runway, and\u2014bam!\u2014the ideas are unleashed into the style stratosphere. Back in 1998, a model agent at Elite called and asked me to please see one of his new girls, a young Brazilian import named Gisele B\u00FCndchen. &amp;quot;Yes, I know it&amp;#039;s all about the skinny Belgian girls right now, but I think you&amp;#039;ll really like her,&amp;quot; he promised. One look at her, and I didn&amp;#039;t even bother flipping through her pictures. I was mesmerized by this bombshell dressed like a tomboy in jeans, an old battered T-shirt, and Converse\u2014and not a stitch of makeup\u2014who talked the entire time, charming me with stories of her life in New York. She left, and I booked her immediately\u2014screw those Belgian girls!\u2014for one of her first American editorials, a fashion story influenced by how I first saw her. To this day, they&amp;#039;re still some of my favorite pictures I&amp;#039;ve ever shot of Gisele. Recently, I was sent photos of a girl named Brooklyn Decker. I knew little about her except that she recently married Andy Roddick and was featured in Sports Illustrated, but when I saw these pictures of her (shown below), once again, I was intrigued. These Polaroids felt so refreshing and honest\u2014a happy new take on the all-American girl. I mean, if Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley had a child, she&amp;#039;d be Brooklyn. And part of her allure? What she was wearing: cutoff jeans shorts and a simple sweater. Nondescript, but it still made an impression. She is a star in the making. Which brings me to my point: Models (some are even affectionately referred to as &amp;quot;muses&amp;quot;) can often be our own unknowing style leaders. Back in early June, I conducted a go-see of about 40 girls who came to my office. They showed up dressed in fashions from the conventional to the wacky, with most wearing some trend I&amp;#039;d seen on the runways for fall. From that stack of go-see Polaroids, I pulled these nine non-fussy, non-retouched, fresh-faced beauties to showcase my nine must-buys for this season.  Because if anything, I knew I could count on their off-duty style to do my job. For that, I say, &amp;quot;Thank you.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a10301/style-a-to-zee-fall-fashion-must-buys-335805/>