The Most Surprising Models to Walk Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2020

Over the past month, as Fashion Week has made its usual circuit around New York, London, Paris, and Milan, the Hadid sisters and Kaia Gerber have been seemingly everywhere. But, like last season, they’ve also benevolently made room for a few others on the runway.

For the first time ever, New York Fashion Week played host to newly minted models like the Hustlers star Keke Palmer, on what turned out to be the day before she went viral. Meanwhile, Slick Woods returned to the catwalk for the first time since Savage x Fenty—aka the show where she went into labor. In London, too, the cameos just kept coming: Kendall Jenner not only returned to the runway as promised (with a new head of blonde hair) but did so both alongside the early-aughts icon Agyness Deyn. From *Stranger Things’*s Caleb McLaughlin to the YouTuber who gatecrashed the Chanel finale, see who else has turned up on the spring 2020 catwalks.

Marie Benoliel, better known as the YouTuber Marie S’Infiltre, was not officially cast in Chanel’s spring 2020 show on the final day of Paris Fashion Week. But that didn’t stop her from leaping onto the runway during the finale, as if she were meant to be there all along. Benoliel, who wore Chanel-style houndstooth tweed, fit in surprisingly well, though her star turn didn’t last for long; a less-than-amused Gigi Hadid soon intervened.

As usual, Xiao Wen Ju has been booking editorial after editorial and campaign after campaign. Still, her turn on the runway of Miu Miu’s spring 2020 show during Paris Fashion Week came as something of a surprise; she’s barely appeared on the catwalk over the past few years, and tends to stick to New York Fashion Week.

The actress Lesley Manville might be new to the runway, but she certainly isn’t new to fashion. Her turn on Simone Rocha’s runway came less than two years after she stole the show in Phantom Thread.  Just a week after she told W about her admittedly vague plans to head back to the runway, Kendall Jenner delivered on her promise. As an added bonus, her appearance at Burberry also marked the debut of her freshly blonde hair.

Agyness Deyn joined Jenner in making a platinum blonde comeback to the runway at Burberry—the same brand that reportedly once fired her for being too famous. (The late-aughts icon last walked a runway in 2015.)

Right up there with Agyness Deyn when it comes to late-aughts blasts from the pasts is Cole Mohr, the heavily tatted It boy of yore who was practically everywhere a decade ago. Like last year, he walked at Helmut Lang, but this time around the 33-year-old model showed up—and elicited audible gasps—at Eckhaus Latta, too.

The Stranger Things actor Caleb McLaughlin left behind Hawkins for the Kings Theatre, in Brooklyn, where Kerby Jean-Raymond staged what’s shaping up to be the most vital fashion show this year: Pyer Moss spring 2020.

The last time that Slick Woods walked the runway—for Rihanna, no less—the model went into labor. Things went a little smoother this time around, when she made her return to the catwalk at LaQuan Smith’s show in New York.

Speaking of being with child, Ashley Graham’s appearance at Zendaya’s latest extravaganza with Tommy Hilfiger wouldn’t be a surprise—save for the fact that the 31-year-old model is currently several months pregnant.

Debi Mazar and her 17-year-old daughter Evelina Corcos brought back last year’s biggest Fashion Week trend—moms—by walking at Kate Spade hand in hand.

Following in the footsteps of her model daughters, Amelia Gray and Delilah Belle Hamlin, Lisa Rinna gave modeling a go at fellow Real Housewives star Kyle Richards’s debut New York Fashion Week show.

The Wolverine and Westworld star Tao Okamoto returned to the runway for the first time in five and a half years to walk Prabal Gurung during New York Fashion Week.

A cancer diagnosis after last season’s Paris Fashion Week didn’t stop the supermodel Pat Cleveland from returning to the runway in New York, where she evidently had a blast walking at Chiara Boni with her daughter, Anna Cleveland.

As a former muse to Hedi Slimane, the Sunflower Bean singer Julia Cumming has always had ties to fashion. But it was still quite the surprise when she turned up in an innocent white cardigan on the catwalk at Anna Sui.

The YouTuber, actor, and singer Cameron Dallas once again solidified his multihyphenate reputation when he made his way down the catwalk at Christian Cowan.

The Hustlers star Keke Palmer spent the day before giving the world the gift that is “sorry to this man” moonlighting as a model for Christian Cowan. Perhaps to balance out the newcomers, Christian Cowan tapped Karolina Kurkova to both open and close his New York show.

With everything going on at the Blonds’ collaboration with the Moulin Rouge revival on Broadway, you’d be forgiven for missing out on the fact that Gigi Gorgeous walked the runway. The YouTube superstar, on the other hand, “literally screamed for hours” when she heard the news.

Veronica Webb resurfaced on the runway last season, and fortunately, the ’90s supermodel appears to be here to stay. This time around, she’s walked Nicole Miller and Tommy Hilfiger x Zendaya—so far, anyway.

—
Photo Credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com