Paul quickly booked her first runway show in February 2010 for Montreal Fashion Week. Her mother thought she was too young at 15 to take the two-hour train to Montreal alone, and sent her older sister to go with her to the fittings and the show.
Despite her mother’s initial hesitation with modelling, however, she now allows Paul to travel the world so long as she adheres to an agreed upon list of things not to do, including drinking. Paul’s mother even carries all of the magazines featuring her daughter in her purse. “Anytime someone recognizes me, she says yes, and pulls out my Elle Canada cover,” says Paul.
The Elle Canada cover was Paul’s first magazine cover. She says her dream is to be on the cover of every major fashion magazine by the time she is 18. With the momentum of her current career advancement, this dream may soon become a reality.
However, not all has been easy for Paul. The grade 11 student says she struggles balancing career with schoolwork. “I’m not just trying to finish school and get it over with. I actually want to get the grades, so it’s even harder,” she says. To keep up her grades, she often does her work on planes and airports, while everyone else is sleeping.
She also has a big fear of forgetting someone’s name as she has already met a lot of different people all over the world. She came face to face with that fear during LG Fashion Week in October, when a writer came up and started talking to her. “I thought I knew him from somewhere, so I said, ‘It’s so good to see you! How are you? And then he said, ‘You’ve never met me before.’ It was really awkward. I felt terrible.”