The Gap

There’s a list, not written down anywhere, of women whose appearance makes me want to lie down and stare at the ceiling for a while. Kate Upton made it early. Emily Ratajkowski made it. And now, via Purple’s autumn/winter issue shot by Sandy Kim, Ashley Smith has made it—the gap in her front teeth being the detail that tips everything past conventionally beautiful into something more interesting and specific.

The photographs are good: loose, intimate, the kind of images that look like they cost nothing to make and actually require a certain precision to get right. Smith at 22 has the quality of someone who photographs like a real person rather than a professional surface. That’s harder to fake than it looks.

Also: those red shoes. I want those red shoes.