This was one of my favorite articles of 2012 because it combined two of my favorite things: Candice Swanepoel, the impossibly sexy and sweet stunner from South Africa, and the fine folks at 10 magazine. I’ve been a fan of 10 since I was still at university, when they took a chance on a young writer who would beg for stories and free drinks, and give me my first commissions. (Love you, Antony!) So when they asked if I wanted to interview Candice for the cover of their Brazilian issue, I said yes in a New York minute. It was a good chat too: Candice is a Brazilian convert, and she likes to talk about beaches, Bahia, boys and beers. Now that’s my kind of girl. Read our entire interview below.

DEREK BLASBERG: “It’s the Brazilian issue, Candice, so let’s start there. When was the first time you went to this place you love so much?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “I was 17 years old, and my first memories were the freedom, the energy in the people and in the culture. I went with my boyfriend. We had started dating a few months before, and he had come with me to South Africa to meet my parents, and then we went to Brazil to meet his family. They have a good idea of what life is about.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “You preferred that to New York?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “In New York, we base people on what they do, how much money they have. No one knows anything about the fashion industry in Brazil. They don’t care what you do. They just want the beach and the sun and the fun. I feel the freest and the happiest there. There, I can just be the normal Candice.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “What part of Brazil do you like?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “The north. Bahia. It’s the African part of Brazil, which reminds me a bit of home. I was very sexual at a young age, and in a conservative place like South Africa it was difficult to be in tune with that side of myself. But Brazil brings out the real me. There’s a raw sexual energy there that’s intoxicating.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “I’m sure they like you down there.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “They do, but I made an effort to learn the language and embrace the culture. I didn’t want to be a tourist.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “I was happy to talk to you today because, conveniently, I’m going to Brazil next week. Give me Candice’s tips for not being a tourist.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Rent a car and go on a road trip. Lose yourself. There are so many little beach towns. Stay in a bed and breakfast. Have an adventure. Meet new people and let them take you to this place, and then meet more people and go to that place. Be a gypsy.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “When did you first come to New York? Why did you move here?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “The first time was when I was 17. But a little while later, when I was working in Paris, I was about to give up modelling and move back home. Victoria’s Secret had asked to see me, so my agent told me that I should come to New York, meet them, and if they signed me up I’d move. And if they didn’t sign me, I was going to go back to South Africa.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Back to the dairy farm?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Yes, Derek. I grew up on a dairy farm. I did! Dairy and beef and forest and plantations. I don’t think my parents would have ever imagined I would go so far off the rails. In the beginning they were the ones who encouraged me to keep modelling because there weren’t many opportunities in South Africa for young people. But if I was ever homesick and wanted to come home, my mom was always strong and said I should stick it out.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “That’s sweet and so supportive. I would think most parents would want their little girl back.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “They were very unselfish in that way. They probably didn’t think I was going to meet a Brazilian beach boy and want to move there, though.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Have your parents been to Brazil?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Not yet, but I’m taking them to Carnival next year. So they’re going to really see what that country can do.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Do they still live in South Africa?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Yeah, but they sold the farm. Because of the political and safety issues, they had to let it go. They sold it while I was away, which is one of the reasons I was happy to find a new place to be a savage. Now they live near Cape Town and they’re tour guides. I don’t go home that often.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Candice! They must miss you.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “I know. I’m terrible. You’re making me feel guilty. But we don’t get a lot of time off, and South Africa is so far away. They’ve come to visit me. I need to go there more often, but in a way it hurts. What I had on the farm I could never find anywhere else, ever again.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “When I think of a farm girl, I think of animals running around and you wearing overalls with pigtails in your hair, milking cows.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Yes, it’s all that, but mixed with the Zulu culture. It’s hard to explain that time in South Africa, with the apartheid and the way that the culture changed, the way that our home changed. We had a huge farm. I went out with my dad to milk the cows, and my cousins would come for the holidays and it was, in a way, the perfect childhood. It seems like another life when I think about it. When I try to explain it I can never do it justice. It’s one reason I don’t like to talk about it, because it’s something that I can’t describe.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “But you can find that in Brazil now?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “In a way, yes, I can tap into that freedom and innocence.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “I want to believe everything you’re saying, but all of my Brazilian friends are crazy.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “That’s because those are New York Brazilians, babes. If you go to the simple places, it’s the purest people that you meet. It’s not vicious or jealous or anything like that.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “What’s a day in the life of Candice like? What’s the perfect Brazilian day?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “I wake up pretty early. I’m more inspired there than anywhere else, so I want to enjoy the day. The traditional breakfast is bread with cheese and ham and fresh fruit and juices and coffee. We go straight to the beach, and spend the whole day there. Meet friends, have a beer, get a tan. I have Dutch blood, and Dutch South Africans can get really dark. But I always have sunscreen on my face. I do! After the beach, go home take a shower, feel your tan skin and you’re all clean, have lunch. Maybe you have sex. Then you have a snooze because you’re so exhausted from it all. Wake up, see friends and family, have a BBQ. And then you go to bed early.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Sounds like paradise.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “It’s simple: eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired. Life was a little easier back in time, and it still is in Brazil. In Bahia, they don’t know what Twitter is. I want to be a savage. I want to live my life naked, with all my little naked kids naked in the garden.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Like a place that time forgot?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Exactly. I live in the moment there. I recharge there, feel like a normal person again. My boyfriend’s mom lives in this small town, and time goes so slowly there. I don’t want to be an old woman who lives in New York and the days fly by but you’re not doing anything. I want to feel like I’m enjoying my life.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever find my Brazil, my escape. Can I go with you next time?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Yes, of course. But you have to learn Portuguese – otherwise, they’ll treat you like a gringo. You’ll be taken advantage of.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Do you speak Portuguese?”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Yes.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “Okay, now I understand. That’s why you’re on the cover of the Brazilian issue – you had to work to be a Brazilian.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “It’s true. Other girls were lucky enough just to be born there. But I had to work for it. I had to learn the language, learn the land, and find the Brazilian boyfriend.”

DEREK BLASBERG: “You had to make yourself a Brazilian.”

CANDICE SWANEPOEL: “Know why I learned Portuguese? I wasn’t going to have my boyfriend and his friends talk about girls around me. Oh no, honey, that’s not happening. Nothing gets past me now.”

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SHOWstudio continues to celebrate the inextricable link between music and fashion by inviting fashion’s great and good to compile their own ‘greatest hits’ playlists. ‘Fashion Mix’ throws down a stylish gauntlet to designers, models, journalists and photographers to select their own favourite tracks to share, with a new selection posted onto the site each week.

Listen to model and Victoria’s Secret Angel Candice Swanepoel’s selection of favorite music tracks for her ‘Fashion Mix’.

Track List

1. Hurricane – MS MR
2. California Love – 2Pac
3. 212 (feat. Lazy Jay) – Azealia Banks
4. Stand Back – Fleetwood Mac
5. Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now – C+C Music Factory
6. U Can’t Touch This – U Can’t Touch This
7. Thong Song – Sisqó
8. Dance With You – Live
9. Cocaine – Eric Clapton
10. Million Voices – Otto Knows

It’s bikini season somewhere.. right? Candice and fellow angel, Erin Heatherton are on location in St. Barth’s shooting Victoria’s Secret’s latest swim collection for 2013. Check out our 300+ high quality photos from yesterday’s shoot, other recently released behind the scenes of her work with Victoria’s Secret and her latest catalog photos from VictoriasSecret.com.

GALLERY LINKS:
Candids > Behind The Scenes > 2012 > Dec 13 — Victoria’s Secret Swim 2013 Shoot in St. Barths [HQ]
Candids > Behind The Scenes > 2012 > VS Holiday Commercial Shoot
Candids > Behind The Scenes > 2012 > VS Beauty: Bombshell Holiday Collection
Candids > Behind The Scenes > 2012 > VS Beauty: Holiday Campaign
Victoria’s Secret > Beauty
Victoria’s Secret > Lingerie
Victoria’s Secret > Swim
Victoria’s Secret > VSX Sexy Sport

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show broadcasted its taped event on Tuesday night, Dec. 4. The sexiest show of the night included glimpses of the Victoria’s Secret Angels in their lingerie, guest performances and a behind-the-scenes look at the backstage madness. It also included some exclusive interviews with some of the models, including Candice Swanepoel.

Candice is the blue-eyed and blonde haired beauty from Victoria’s Secret. She turns heads with her bright eyes and pouty lips. Swanepoel even turned the executives of Victoria’s Secret. In the fashion show, they described the first moment they saw her:

“She walked in and it was like, ‘Who was this beautiful girl?”

Candice started out at Victoria’s Secret as a fit model. This means that Swanepoel would try on the lingerie to see if it would fit properly on the Victoria’s Secret models. Little did the executives know that Candice was the perfect model for the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. One of the executives said:

“I never experienced a model who looked good in everything. So, we put her in the show. It was obvious from the start that she was going to be the most famous.”

Swanepoel did go on to become one of the most famous Victoria’s Secret models. Other recognizable names in the sexy lingerie brand include Adriana Lima and Miranda Kerr. Swanepoel went on to model for top fashion magazines, including Italian Vogue.

Candice was born in South Africa. This beauty didn’t realize that someday she would become a supermodel. Swanepoel recalled the moment she arrived in New York:

“I was always interested in fashion and beauty. I was fifteen when I was scouted in a flea market. Two years later, I arrived in New York. I was in awe because it was like another planet.”

Candice Swanepoel expressed her luck on the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, saying:

“It’s been amazing how this crazy career has been created. I feel that it’s been given to me. I wouldn’t be anywhere without Victoria’s Secret.”

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While more than 30 women walk the Victoria’s Secret runway each year, the brand highlights a few “Angels” whom it grooms to be superstar ambassadors.

The brand’s current favorites are Alessandra Ambrosio, Miranda Kerr and, of course, Adriana Lima. They replaced former icons like Tyra Banks, Gisele Bundchen, and Heidi Klum.

During its annual Fashion Show, Victoria’s Secret made it very clear whom its grooming to be the next superstar: 24-year-old Candice Swanepoel.

Ambrosio and Lima are now 31 and Kerr is 29. While they’re still young and beautiful by most standards, that’s practically retiring age for a model.

Swanepoel was the only model to get her own segment on the hour-long CBS special. The piece went into her childhood in South Africa, and how she was discovered (she first acted as a stand-in for the other Victoria’s Secret models.)

“Candice has become a superstar,” a creative director raved to the camera. She does have more accolades than many other Victoria’s Secret models, with Vogue, Elle, and GQ covers under her belt.

But some don’t see Swanepoel as an appropriate role model. A photo of her looking frighteningly thin went viral last year after someone posted it to Reddit with the caption “makes me want to puke.”

Regardless, the segment highlighting Swanepoel during the most important marketing event of the year shows that Victoria’s Secret is serious about making her a major face of the brand.

Don’t be surprised if Swanepoel ends up modeling the million-dollar Fantasy Bra next year.

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In this original, sensuous volume, top international photographer Russell James profiles supermodel Candice Swanepoel in one of the world’s most exceptional private homes. These fine-art nudes whisk us into a fantasy world of female allure–all against a backdrop of stunning interiors. In this intimate setting–far from the media whirlwind–the doe-eyed, curvaceous farmgirl from South Africa reveals the depths of her vivid magnetism. Through this provocative photoshoot, James captures the many moods of a contemporary icon. Perhaps destined to become an all-time classic of erotic celebrity photography, this sultry title is a tantalizing tribute to one of the most beautiful women of our age.

 Yesterday adding things to my Amazon wishlist I came across this book called, “Around The House With Candice Swanepoel” by Russell James. With 130+ pages of our beautiful angel it’s definitely a must have!  The book is set to be released March 2013, but you can pre-order yourself a copy now for a discount price and ummm… while you’re at it get me one too? Hehehehehe!