Those million-dollar lips
Esther Canadas' pout is launching a thousand contracts

Hilary Alexander
The Daily Telegraph

Chris Laurens, Daily Telegraph / "I've heard the rumours," says Spanish model Esther Canadas. "Even my dad asked me what collagen was."

Spanish model Esther Canadas' face may be her fortune, but it is her lips that have made her a superstar. Not since the days of Brigitte Bardot has a mouth been so instantly recognizable.

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, those full-blown, bee-stung lips became embedded in the minds of thousands of adolescent boys, as Esther "kissed" Giorgio Armani's newest perfume, "she," into life on television and movie screens.

In London, her unmistakable lips loom large on the back of buses as she smooches with her fellow model and fiance, Mark Vanderloo, in the Donna Karan DKNY advertising campaign.

The pair look ready to become the faces of the year. Esther has just finished filming her first movie role; she and Mark are planning to marry in the spring and their lucrative DKNY contract has been extended until 2000.

Esther has been scorching down the international catwalks for three years, pouting into the camera lenses of hundreds of photographers -- in spite of one fashion critic's rather unkind suggestion that her lips had been blown up with a bicycle pump. Are they for real?

Esther snorts indignantly at the question. Well, she would, wouldn't she?

"Of course, I've heard the rumours," she says. "Even my dad asked me what collagen was. But I've had nothing done. I was born this way. I take after my grandmother."

She grew up in the seaside town of Alicante, where her father runs a bookstore, and started modelling part-time when she was 15 and still at school.

Then, four years ago, when she appeared in an international modelling competition in South Africa, she was spotted by Gabriella Palmano, co-owner of London's Take Two agency. He signed her up on the spot.

"She stood out a mile," he recalls. "She was very beautiful, a natural showgirl."

But Esther's big break came last year when Donna Karan named her as the "face" of DKNY, saying: "She has a face to light up the page."

On her first photo shoot for the designer, Esther fell in love with her co-star, the Dutch model Vanderloo. The pair have been inseparable ever since and became engaged last March.

"He gave me a beautiful diamond ring. In Spain, you're supposed to give your fiance a watch, but I had already given him one for Christmas, so we went away for a weekend in Paris instead."

Just before Christmas, Esther completed filming her role as the mystery love interest in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, which stars Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.

"It's a very small part. My scenes were finished in New York in seven days. Then I had to go straight into shooting the next DKNY campaign.

"I wanted to try a film for the experience. But I don't plan to go crazy and jump right into it."

For now, however, Esther's thoughts are on her impending nuptials. She and Mark plan to marry after the autumn/winter 1999 catwalk season, which starts in New York next month and finishes in Paris in March. Naturally, Donna Karan is designing Esther's dress.

The couple are decorating a new apartment near Park Avenue in Manhattan, which they will share with Esther's three Tonkinese kittens, Macho, Nina and Jefe.

Children are on the agenda, but not in the immediate future. "I want seven kids, Mark wants five -- so maybe we'll stop at six."