Catwalk queen: Vilma Sjöberg on going from suburban teen to supermodel

While Vilma Sjöberg has plenty of experience on the catwalk, she doesn’t have much experience with cats. Still, she was happy to share her debut Vogue Scandinavia cover with Cleo, a stunning Ragdoll with limited modelling experience. “She was so cute and fluffy,” says Sjöberg. “But she was a bit stressed out.” When Cleo’s owner, a fashion intern at the magazine, held the cat, she was poised and serene. “Oh, that looks perfect, just like that,” photographer Camilla Åkrans would say. But as soon as the feline was handed over to Sjöberg... “I was a bit unsure of how to hold her,” she says, demonstrating by contorting her arms in awkward positions. “I have scratches.” Regardless, we got the shot, with Sjöberg stunning in a glittering mint green Gucci shift dress.

It’s hardly Sjöberg’s first rodeo; the 22-year-old Swedish model was signed to local agency Mikas when she was just nine years old (“My parents got advised to send in photos”) and made her international debut at 18 with a Saint Laurent exclusive (she “didn’t really understand” what a big deal it was). This past season, she walked 20 shows, including Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen (creative director Sarah Burton’s emotional final collection), Hermès, Jil Sander and Max Mara (the resort show, in her native Stockholm). Several of the looks Sjöberg wore for this story – a cream ruffled frock from Stella McCartney, for instance – were the very looks she wore down the runway. In a landscape increasingly dominated by Instagram models and stunt casting, she is a true model’s model, with the ability to bend to the whim of a brand’s vision whilst still maintaining a signature, striking aesthetic.

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“The first time I went to Paris was for the Saint Laurent casting,” she says. “I had no idea what to expect.” It’s the day after our cover shoot and Sjöberg is sitting on a worn leather couch in an Espresso House in central Stockholm, sipping a Rooibos tea, her signature white blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail to reveal cheekbones that can only be described as insane. Draped on the couch beside her is a vintage khaki green Dior trench. A cosy brown cashmere turtleneck hides the cat scratches.

For autumn/winter 2019, Saint Laurent was looking for a girl reminiscent of Betty Catroux, the legendary muse to Yves Saint Laurent himself. Sjöberg fit the type – blonde, angular – but first they had to see her walk. “I was so shy,” she says, of that make-or-break casting. She met the casting director. She walked. Then she headed back to her Parisian agency. “They started ringing this little bell,” says Sjöberg. “I thought, ‘Oh no, it’s a fire’.” But no one at the agency was alarmed. Instead, everyone started cheering and congratulating a confused Sjöberg. “Apparently that’s what they do when someone books something good,” she says.

Sjöberg had a pleasant Swedish upbringing in the Stockholm suburb of Rönninge. Her mother was a teacher, her dad an engineer. The only person in her family with an interest in fashion is her eight-year-old sister, who thinks modelling is “so cool” (she also has two brothers – one older, one younger). Growing up, school was mostly about fitting in and wearing the right clothes – Odd Molly, bootcut jeans, a Michael Kors bag. “I wasn’t very eccentric,” she says.

Signing to an agency didn’t really impact her day-to-day. “I was always a bit of an odd kid. I was tall and very blonde and a bit weird, so the boys were like...” she says, making a ‘no thank you’ face. “When I got signed, I thought, ‘Oh my god, everyone is going to love me because I’m a model’. But they were like, ‘Cool, but have you seen my Tamagotchi?’” Back then, her dream was to appear on a BikBok billboard.

A few years later – midway through her second year of gymnasium – Sjöberg found herself backstage at Saint Laurent about to walk the runway for the very first time. Because she was underage, she needed a chaperone. “I was so nervous, I wanted my mum there,” she says. Ultimately, someone from the agency came along and her mum, who had travelled with her to Paris, watched remotely on a phone. “I think she was more nervous than I was,” Sjöberg says. “My agent, who watched the show with her, was like, ‘I think you need a drink’.”

Walking second in a broad-shouldered white statement coat and unforgiving heels, her hair swooped across her forehead just like Catroux’s, Sjöberg absolutely smashed it. Plus, she got to wear sunglasses, her favourite runway accessory. “Then you can peek at people,” she says. Namely, the A-list celebs who line the front row. Her most memorable runway encounter, however, came not by sight but by smell, when she caught a potent whiff of weed while strutting past a famous rapper.

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Once her Saint Laurent exclusivity was up (she also starred in the Juergen Teller-shot campaign alongside Danish model Freja Beha Erichsen), Sjöberg was off to the races. “That first season was very intense, because then you have to go to all the castings,” she says. “Only Saint Laurent knew me – everyone else had to see me for the first time.” She booked Stella McCartney, Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Alexander McQueen, also returning to the runway for Saint Laurent, for the much-Instagrammed show set against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. The biggest misconception about being a runway model, she tells me, is that it’s glamorous. “I don’t know how many times I’ve washed my hair in a sink,” she says. When she needs to kill time backstage, she either reads (she’s partial to a Scandi noir) or knits. The other models have always been kind, especially when she was a newbie. Sometimes she’ll chat in her native language to her fellow Swedes. The one she encounters most often is fellow Vogue Scandinavia cover star Malaika Holmén.

Despite the backstage camaraderie, modelling can be a tricky landscape, even for one as successful as Sjöberg. “It’s very competitive, and it’s so easy to compare yourself with others,” she says. “You’re friends with all the models, but you’re still competitors. It’s a bit of a weird dynamic.” If she could give a piece of advice to her younger self, signing her very first contract with Mikas, it would be that old cliche: be yourself. “If one brand doesn’t like you, maybe they’re searching for a brunette,” she says. “You can’t compare yourself to others because you all have different qualities.” She’s been in situations before where she and a friend have had the same option for the same job. “You’re happy for them if they get it,” she says. Remarkably, she means it.

These days, Sjöberg is settled in the boys department. She and her boyfriend Filip Alexander, a photographer and sometimes-model, have been together for two years. “It would be nice if it was some romantic story – like we met on a job or something,” she says. “But actually we met on Tinder.” In fact, our Vogue Scandinavia shoot marks the first time they’ve ever worked together, aside from the intimate photographs Alexander snaps of Sjöberg at home or on vacation. Sometimes he’ll accompany her to fashion week and stand outside amongst the street photographers, waiting for her to get off work.

The couple have recently started a new chapter. In August they moved to New York, settling into an apartment on the Upper West Side. “Something is always happening,” Sjöberg says of Manhattan. “It’s very different from Stockholm in that way.” She’s already landed the ultimate New York gig; in November she appeared in the Rag & Bone holiday campaign.

When Sjöberg isn’t ping-ponging from city to city for catwalks and campaigns, she finds solace in a new outlet: painting. “I’ve always liked painting, even as a child,” she says. “But I’ve gotten more serious about it since I started modelling. It’s kind of a recharge – almost like meditating.” Her works evoke the Swedish landscapes that surrounded her adolescence, often bathed in a dusky blue. “My family is very outdoorsy,” she says. “As a kid on holiday, we were always up in the mountains or in the forest in the north of Sweden.” Recently she’s been dabbling in ceramics, too. Though she’s still “finding her way”, it’s something she hopes to pursue more formally – finding a gallery and collectors. For now, she showcases her work on a dedicated Instagram account.

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Speaking of being outdoorsy, there was one challenge on our cover shoot greater than a feisty feline: the weather. In the ultimate test of her Swedishness, Sjöberg was tasked with crossing a busy Stockholm street in a damp snowfall wearing a sheer red Jacquemus gown, its train billowing behind her. She was freezing cold, but looking at the image you’d never know it. For Sjöberg, it was just another day at the office but for passersby, it was something remarkable. In her hometown, the very place where her peers didn’t bat an eye at her modelling contract, she now commands attention. “I saw a group of kids walking home from school,” she says. “And they were like, ‘Oh my god, did you see that?!’”