@taylor_hill has a huge number of virtual pals on social media but only a few close friends. Tonight she is out with one of them, @cindybruna (fellow @victoriassecret model and catwalker), for a goofy dinner at the Hôtel Costes. The Costes is a bit of a scene for Hill, who prefers to ask Parisian non-fashion pals to help her find “the really good food, the real Paris.” The Costes, of course, is super Parisian and has really good food, but it is a mad, mad fashion zone this week and Hill defines herself as a “big old nerd” (albeit one in a @jonathansimkhai lace frock). This is her inner circle: Bruna, @sarasampaio, @romeestrijd, @jastookes, @josephineskriver, and @stellamaxwell (whom she met at age 15 when Maxwell had super-close-cropped hair). They are all VS-ites and they all started working for the company at about the same time. These girls know to start exercising a month or two before the show (that show, not the runways of Paris and Milan); they know about eating lean protein. @taylor_hill, like many young professionals caught up in extraordinary careers of their own making, struggles to find friends “who get what I do for my job” and who also “understand it but don’t talk about it all the time.” Who better to turn to than other VS girls who walk the line between mass and haute?
Hill also retains a couple of close pals from her childhood in Colorado, and knows it is “good and important to have friends outside of fashion.” She took her GED at age 16, but enjoys hearing of her old buddies’ college pursuits. The road not taken isn’t threatening to Taylor Hill, but, rather, fascinating and diverting. Sure, her father, a natural gas engineer, would have preferred she go to university on a music scholarship. “It’s important to have a conversation,” she says, “but also to do what you like.”