Chances are that you've seen her face, with its distinctive caterpillar eyebrows, icy blue eyes and button nose, somewhere in recent months, but you might not yet know her name.
From the giant Burberry billboards with her smouldering alongside actor Eddie Redmayne to the stylised images of London streetlife captured for this season's Pepe Jeans campaign, Cara Delevingne is the hottest face on Planet Fashion. And she is on track to become – just like Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy and Kate Moss before her – the latest British model to become a household name. Even those who show no interest at all in the machinations of fashion and pop culture will not be immune to the creeping of Cara into our national psyche.
This coming week she will return home from walking the runways of New York to bless London fashion week with her coltish presence, then it will be on to Milan and Paris, fitting in editorial shoots, designer parties and a multitude of witty tweets along the way. Named model of the year at the 2012 British Fashion Awards, the kooky 20-year-old Londoner is the latest in a long line of well-connected English beauties to grace the cover of Vogue, with 10 pages of its March issue dedicated to a fashion shoot and – more tellingly – a weighty profile feature.
Delevingne's star is clearly in the ascendant, and many have hailed her as the successor to Moss's crown. "Sometimes someone comes into the industry and just knocks everyone sideways," says Sam McKnight, the esteemed hair stylist who regularly works with the young pretender – most recently in Paris last week on a shoot for Chanel. "Cara has an energy about her that brings an edge to every job we do. She is unthreatening, playful, warm and lovable – and is up for anything. The camera loves her, and she is a complete natural in a very uncontrived, cool way. In that, she is very like Kate, but they couldn't be more different."
The daughter of Charles, a self-made property developer, and glamorous Selfridges personal shopper Pandora, both popular stalwarts of the London social set, Cara and her willowy sisters – Chloe, 28, and 26-year-old Poppy (also a model and ambassador for the British Fashion Council) – have always enjoyed a gilded life.
In contrast to Moss's humble beginnings in Croydon, south London, Cara boasts an illustrious lineage: her grandfather, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, was chairman of English Heritage and her grandmother was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, while her paternal aunt, the social butterfly Doris Delevingne, was a friend of Winston Churchill.
Joan Collins is Cara's godmother and she is surrounded by a circle of friends who are equally at home in the pages of Tatler, Heat and Hello magazines: Georgia May Jagger is her flatmate, Harry Styles of One Direction is her ex, indie musician Jake Bugg is said to be her current beau, while Rita Ora and Rihanna are in awe of her eccentric English character and Charlie Chaplin-inspired sense of style. Growing up with Twitter and Instagram at her fingertips, this is the model who instinctively created her own brand via social media, posting candid photos of herself larking around in a onesie, munching a McDonald's and pulling juvenile faces for the camera, all endearing teenage traits amplified by her aspirational lifestyle. She is, quite simply, the girl we all wish we were, or could be with.
"She's the kind of girl that you just want to hang out with," says the make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury, who worked on the Vogue shoot with Cara and is a family friend of the Delevingnes. "She's witty, intelligent and there's never a dull moment with her. Her face is strikingly beautiful with those dark eyebrows, defined features and piercing blue eyes. She reminds me of Jean Shrimpton, but has great range as a model: she can go from classic beauty to quirky, from commercial to conceptual, with ease."
Walking the line between big commercial campaigns and edgier editorial projects is a vital balancing act for any model, and it is her agent's responsibility to manage her career strategically, to earn the big bucks while retaining her innate cool and quirky character. This season Cara is the face of high-street chain Zara and Donna Karan's diffusion line DKNY, but also appears on the cover of Katie Grand's too-cool-for-school style magazine, LOVE, and the cutting edge periodical iD.
Like Moss, Cara has had her career nurtured from the start by Sarah Doukas, MD of London agency Storm Models and – conveniently – a family friend. "I've known her since she was four years old and she was hilariously funny even then. The Cara I know is cute, sexy and more than a little unpredictable, but she's also very hard-working, unpretentious, gracious and generous – and she has great empathy with the women of her generation. She is living a very sophisticated but frenetic life at the moment, but I also feel that she has a wise head on her shoulders and has been ready for her success for a long time."
There is no doubt Cara has the beauty and work ethic to follow in Moss's hallowed footsteps with a long-term modelling career, but those close to her say Cara's first loves are music and acting. She bought a drum kit with her first modelling pay cheque and described her time on set playing Princess Sorokina in Joe Wright's film of Anna Karenina as "the best time of my life. I was, like, this is where I belong. I've never worked or enjoyed myself more in my life."
Watch this space.
