“Photography, making amazing tutus, keeping it real.” These are the interests of Iekeliene Stange—one of modeling’s true originals.

Iekeliene was born on July 27, 1984, in the Netherlands. She was a 15-year-old multimedia design student when she was scouted on the streets of Rotterdam by Victor De Bie, who is now her art partner. Victor was working for IMG when he saw Iekeliene and ran after her. He describes how she had dreadlocks and “piercings everywhere—she was like a walking rainbow.” He asked her if she wanted to be a model, and she said, “Me a model? But I’m not beautiful!” Iekeliene says she thought, “Oh, this silly man, who is this! I had no idea, I was an art student and a punk rocker with dreadlocks in my hair. Victor still makes fun of me. It was quite a funny situation.”

Although Iekeliene was always into photography and applied to go to art school to do photography, she ended up studying multimedia design. After Victor scouted her, she modeled for a few years locally in Holland and then moved to London at age 17 to continue with her studies. Once she got there, she realized she couldn’t afford to live in the city. So, when another agency scouted her in London, she decided to give it another go to create some financial stability. Iekeliene confesses, “I complain about it a lot, but actually I must admit that it’s helped me a lot, financially. It has broadened my vision a lot, the traveling, meeting so many different people. I do realize that I was very lucky.”

Her print advertisements have included work for Marc by Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Sonia Rykiel, Topshop, and D&G. Iekeliene has appeared in runway shows for Chloé, Chanel, Emanuel Ungaro, Kenzo, Erin Fetherston, Rodarte, Alexandre Herchcovitch, and Alexander Wang, as well as opening Marc Jacobs’ Spring show. Iekeliene famously removed her shoes while opening the Marc Jacobs show due to difficulty walking in them. “My shoes weren’t working out, so I had to take them off and walk barefoot!” she says of the big moment. “But everyone cheered.” Iekeliene says of the shows, “Galliano and Dior are always the best ones…the makeup and hair are always extraordinary.” She also has worked with W, Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, Vogue, and Tank magazines.

Iekeliene’s personal style is closely followed, blogged about, and ultimately copied. She says that it is influenced by Tokyo street fashion. “I like crazy, colorful clothes,” she says. She describes her style as “a big mix of things. I don’t take things too seriously and wish people could have more fun with how they dress. I like to get into a different character every day…it’s fun to play around. I have a two-bedroom apartment in London with my boyfriend, and one of the bedrooms is just considered my wardrobe. It’s covered in sequins, tutus, cat suits, and colors everywhere you look. I love to make people smile when I walk down the street. I wear a lot of hairpieces, like hats, headbands, tiaras. I also have an obsession with anything sparkly!” Iekeliene describes herself as a “vintage queen.”

 “My boyfriend had a pair of big glasses with no lenses that he had worn to a costume party. I started wearing them and got really obsessed. It looks quirky, and you can hide behind them. Most models are trying to look sophisticated—it’s fun to just look like a nerd.”

Iekeliene is aware that she won’t be a model forever. So, in between jetting around the world for fashion shows and shoots, she exhibits her photos, which are her real passion. During Berlin Fashion Week in January 2009, Iekeliene put on a solo exhibit titled “I Like Ponies.” The show, which was composed entirely of Polaroid shots, offered a glimpse into Iekeliene’s personal life: “I will be showing some of my most personal work through the medium of the instant photograph, providing an insight into my every day, a compact referent of my world. It will offer a taste of the absurd and the surreal within the world in which I live and work.”

Iekeliene shoots a lot of pictures backstage at fashion shows. “It mostly started as a way to entertain myself while waiting backstage,” she explains. “I want to focus more on documentary photography, so I thought it would be a nice project to document the backstage fashion world, as I have such an original perspective on it. Everything is always so rushed and dramatic, running around from show to show, and I try to convey this in my photographs. It’s great to see all the different creations designers come up with.”

A London exhibition, called Umfeld (which means surroundings or atmosphere), showed a mixture of her photography and paintings from artist Victor De Bie (who originally scouted her). She says, “We’re kind of on the same level of our little imaginary world.” He says, “I guess you could say she’s my muse. All the pictures you’ll see are friends and family, all in different situations. It’s a story of our surroundings, our lives, our homes, Holland. That’s why it’s our ‘Umfeld’; it’s our surroundings, all our close family and friends, very personal. We’re also kind of disconnected with what’s going on in the rest of the art world, so we just do whatever we think is nice.”

In the future, Iekeliene says, “I want to get into more photojournalism. My biggest inspiration is those old-school Magnum photographers, where they were just really passionate about it. I think that’s what I aspire to do. I’m hoping to have more time in the future. At the moment, modeling is a sure thing. I don’t have anything to complain about. I just want to show people these different cultures. I think it’s really interesting.”

“I want to go to Eastern Europe, Romania, and Ukraine, and I also want to go to the north of Scandinavia, where the Sami people live, and I’d love to do something about them. These people are the only indigenous people in Europe, and they’re getting extinct. We just live such funny lives in this side of the world; we’re busy with such silly things.”