Shopping bag.

It wasn’t Edie, Marilyn, Chloë, or Brigitte who coined the term. No, unlikely enough, it was Rudyard Kipling, Edwardian novelist and imperialist prude, who first wrote about the “It Girl”, as a signifier of ineffable feminine chic, in 1904: “Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory once they walk down the street.”Klara Kristin, the Copenhagen-born singer/actor/model, has it. This is something that Nicholas Ghesquiere, Hedi Slimane, Harley Weir, and Gaspar Noé all know. From opening for Isabel Marant, to starring in a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video, and recording her debut LP, Lullaby & Drum Machine, she is hip, cool, now. Speaking to Semaine, Klara herself can’t put her finger on how things came to be this way: “It is hard to tell why I do it, because I have been like this since I remember. I just can’t stop myself.”

In an age where we dignify many movements by way of a Danish aesthetic, Klara Kristin’s shape-shifting and soft-spoken talents have made her the poster girl for a distinct brand of Scandi chic. But Paris is her adopted home: “My life changed dramatically when I discovered Paris the city. Coming from a small city like Copenhagen, Paris fascinated me, it made me start dreaming. Later on, I had some crazy coincidences that were so unreal and made me discover how wild this world is when I step out of my comfort zone.” Comfort zones are, of course, subjective spots: Klara’s one, which involves the unsimulated sex scenes of Gaspar Noé’s love, the film’s poster with three, salivating tongues interlocked, is presumably beyond most. Finding succour instead amid her commute, Klara stops to write her songs on the 380 to New York: “I love writing on the train or go on a car-ride and just think while landscapes pass by. Also, it is essential for me to go on a walk every day to have a moment of wonder.”

I am fond of an Hermès campaign from a few seasons ago, whose slogan was ‘beauty is a gesture’. Usually, the word salad of perfume slogans and beauty ads conjures up a perfect vapour of nothingness. But this felt like something. It came to mind when I was looking at Klara Kristin’s modelling portfolio, listening to her album, watching her music videos, and watching her film, Love, in research for this profile. Sometimes she has a roguish grin, others an impish smile.