Coco Labbée
- beautyandavoice
- Jul 21, 2023
- 3 min read
Coco Labbée: Rejection is Redirection
Coco Labbée grew up in the small city of Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. Her initial interest in modeling emerged very young, when at ten years old she lost her hair due to alopecia, an autoimmune condition in which hair follicles are attacked by the immune system. The effects of her condition caused Coco to grow obsessed with the idea of beauty, worrying that she herself could not be beautiful without hair. Scanning the websites of various modeling agencies, she sought a model of her unique beauty, a beautiful person akin to herself—someone to admire, to identify with and inspire her with confidence. There were no such models.
Now, at 25 years old, Coco has traveled and worked as a model in Paris, London, Milan and Greece. She has featured in the pages of Elle Magazine and walked for Rick Owens at Paris Fashion week. Her career has led Coco to appear as a guest on a variety of talk shows; she now proudly exists as an emblem of success and hope for those, much like her young self, who struggle to feel beautiful due to alopecia: “I’m trying to be the person I was looking for as a kid.”
For Coco modeling has been more than a career, but what amounts to a coming of age, a process of maturing and realization. The industry has forced her to become comfortable everywhere, to know a complete flexibility, at ease with last-minute change, and always filled with enough sociable energy to make an impression wherever she goes (and to look good!). The uncertainty of the modeling world, its vastness and the briefness of its interactions, has pushed Coco to dive into the unknown with acceptance and joy, and to learn to create social ties quickly. Traveling and modeling, she has achieved a resilience that is welcoming but assertive: “to accept the things I can't control but also to not take no for an answer.”
Despite her own development, Coco still believes that the modeling industry has a long way to go. Healthy standards and inclusiveness are still distant, she says, and the frequency of eating disorders in young girls is only increasing. Nevertheless, she is hopeful for the future of fashion. The pressure of the work is enormous, but the experience can be dazzling, and the opportunities manifold. Especially for those seeking a career in the creative industries later on.
Coco is also passionate about music. Before her dreams of fashion, she would often play piano for eight hours a day, dance and sing. After modeling, she is interested in perhaps undertaking a subsequent career as a stylist or art director. But her horizons are wide: host, actress, or mother agent—Coco even has a degree in finance and expects real estate work to be in her future. “My path will become clearer as the opportunities present themselves” she says.
Perseverant, tenacious and optimistic, Coco takes hope from the unknown itself, its innumerable possibilities, its infinite horizons. She is afraid of failure and regrets, of what, looking back, her eighty year old self might wish had been different. But “every time I was disappointed because something did not happen as I hoped it would,” Coco says, “something better came along. My mantra is: Rejection is redirection!”
Happiness for Coco is not an ideal, shimmering and far. Though of course she can imagine herself one day in the south of France, working as an art director full-time, her happiness “is accessible here and now. It doesn't have to wait.” Her greatest success is this very presence. A complete happiness, in tune with herself, every day.
Beautiful Paris awaits Coco now, as she moves there full-time and continues to live in the midst of her most far-fetched dreams.
