Nicknamed “Le Freak” by the media because of her shaved-off eyebrows, tangerine hair, and white skin, “odd” has been Karen Elson’s hallmark. The things that made her self-conscious at school are what make her such a sought-after model today.

Karen was born on January 14, 1979, in Bolton, England. As a child she went to North Chadderton School with her twin sister, filmmaker and model Kate Elson. “I wasn’t the model type,” Karen insists. “At school I got harassed so badly for being too tall, too thin, too pale—too everything that has gotten me where I am now, which is quite ironic.” A modeling scout discovered 16-year-old Karen on the street in her industrial hometown, and soon she was off to London.

After little success in London, a broke Karen relocated to Paris, where she lived in a tiny apartment. “I didn’t even have a mattress, and there were cockroaches all over the place. No phone. No TV. I didn’t know anyone in Paris. I was totally depressed.” Soon she was sent to Tokyo and then Milan, before moving to New York just before her 18th birthday. It was in New York that she had a fateful meeting with legendary photographer Steven Meisel. After he shot her for a spread in Italian Vogue, he convinced her to shave off her eyebrows and cut her unusual red hair into a blunt cut. The startling look earned her the nickname “Le Freak” by the press, yet it also landed her on the cover of Italian Vogue. “It was a strong image. No one had ever seen it before, and it catapulted me into this whole new realm. It was a catalyst,” Karen explains.

Karen is now a Vogue favorite, regularly gracing the cover and editorial spreads. She has walked the runways of many top fashion designers including Marc Jacobs (which she did, famously, while pregnant), Jean-Paul Gaultier, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, and Versace. Her international campaigns include work for Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Christian Dior, Burberry, and Chanel. In 1998 she won the coveted “Model of the Year” award at the VH1 Fashion Awards (the year after Kate Moss won). And in 2005, Karen won the British Fashion Award for “Best Model.”

Karen cofounded and sings in The Citizens Band, a troupe of entertainers rekindling vaudeville-type entertainment. While she lived in New York, she appeared with them at various nightlife hotspots, as well as the downtown gallery Deitch Projects. Karen has also appeared in many short films and videos, including Cyril Guyot’s “Tom Ford Is Missing,” Steven Meisel and Darren Lew’s “War Opera,” and Nick Knight’s Andy Warhol-inspired series, “More Beautiful Women.” Karen has also contributed to Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio.com since 2002. Among her contributions is a video of her singing Danzig’s “Devil’s Plaything” with Melissa Auf der Maur at the Chelsea Hotel.

While filming the video for the White Stripes’ song “Blue Orchid,” Karen met Jack White, and in 2005, the couple got married in a canoe at the convergence of three rivers in Brazil in a ceremony officiated by a shaman. A year later the couple announced the birth of a daughter, Scarlett, and a son, Henry, followed in 2007. They moved to Nashville in 2006, as they thought it would be a better place to bring up kids than New York.

When asked how Jack views her job, Karen says, “He views it quite curiously, but never negatively. A lot of people have real hang-ups about models...it confuses people. When I say I’m a model, they go—well, first of all they probably don’t really think that I am—‘Really?’ But Jack views it like, wow, that’s really interesting; he appreciates beautiful photography. It’s good to be with a man who respects what I do for a living. It’s one of the few jobs where women are actually making a lot of money, and if you can be smart about it and business-minded and not messed up in the head, it can do good by you.”

Grass never grows under Karen’s feet, and in October 2008, she opened a vintage boutique in Nashville with Amy Patterson. The boutique is called Venus & Mars—The Showroom, and it is full of carefully curated men’s and women’s high-end, rare vintage clothing, as well as cheap vintage dresses and jewels, dating from the late 1800s to the early 1980s. A lot of it has been picked up by Karen on international modeling gigs.

Karen has always been very vocal about the weight issues that are so prevalent in the industry, but so often go undiscussed. She has always been thin, a “geeky girl from Manchester” who, in her early teens, was so tall and gawky that her nickname was “skinny whippet.” Mortified, Karen tried to bulk up by cooking big, doughy meals for herself. “I would buy ‘get fat’ cookbooks, I kid you not.”

But she had the opposite experience when she started modeling. The relationship between fashion and eating disorders is often denied, both by the industry and by sufferers themselves. Not by Karen. She was in her late teens and already highly successful when a stylist told her to lose weight. “I know I’m a skinny woman,” Karen says. “That was the biggest head trip for me. It’s not like I ever looked in the mirror and said, ‘Oh, I’m fat.’ But then, this person thinks I am. Which is weird.” Karen says she has never developed an eating disorder, though for a while she lived with the uncertainty of not trusting what she saw in front her. “As an 18-year-old, you have a sense of self, and all of a sudden an adult is saying you should lose a bit of weight. It’s so wrong. Who in their right mind would say that to a young woman?”

Karen has always kept that strong sense of self and has not been afraid to speak out on issues affecting the industry. Because of this, she has achieved a great career in modeling, music, and now retail, alongside her wonderful family. She’s not a freak at all, but one of our favorite girls and an inspiration to young models.