These 5 Models Are Revolutionizing the Freckle Movement Across All Skin Tones

In any other species, spotted markings are an undercover guise, a way for leopards, speckled frogs, and monarch butterflies to blend into the landscape. But for five rising models living in the wilds of Paris, Tokyo, and New York, freckles command attention. In an era that prizes individuality above all else, who can resist a pointillistic decoration that is not only unique to the wearer but to the given moment? Freckles catch the spotlight as much as they evolve with it, fading and intensifying with the ebb and flow of the sun.

Linking people according to a signature feature has a way of amplifying the differences—in this case, a patchwork of mother tongues, skin tones, and origin stories. But there’s richness in the shared experiences, whether with coming-of-age hang-ups or the fashion world’s embrace. It was just a year ago that Carissa Pinkston, now 19, made her runway debut in Marc Jacobs’s Spring 2018 show, dressed in a mushroom-brown headscarf and a persimmon plaid coat. For Pinkston—born to an African-American pastor and her “first lady of the church” mom in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—her uncharacteristically light skin and smattering of freckles made her an anomaly growing up, an outsider to both black and white peer groups in school. It wasn’t until she moved to New York and made friends with the model Aleece Wilson that she found her footing. “I really do feel like she is my long-lost sister because of the whole freckle thing,” says Pinkston, who dyes her dark hair a twinning shade of auburn—a doppelgänger effect that earned them both an onstage cameo during Rihanna’s Grammy performance this year. “We relate to each other.” After Wilson walked the newcomer into the modeling agency Elite, “they wanted to sign me on the spot,” Pinkston explains. From casting calls to the concrete sidewalks, there’s a refreshing acceptance of idiosyncratic looks. “Not fitting in helped me to fit in here.”

Havana Rose Liu is one part of the city’s micromosaic. A 20-year-old Brooklyn native and a senior at New York University, she stands out with her honey-colored hair, lightly dotted skin, and finely drawn eyes—an inherited collection of features from her Chinese dad and white mom. “When I was a kid, I was called ‘interesting’ a lot,” recalls Liu. “I never really knew about that as a synonym for beauty, so I didn’t take it for one.” Raised bilingual in an open-minded milieu, she still found herself caught between beauty standards. “In American culture, I was not tan enough; in Chinese culture, I was not pale enough,” Liu says. “The freckles just existed somewhere in the middle.”

Accepting them led Liu to embrace other blurred lines, from a pansexual identity to her self-directed major at the intersection of art, activism, and wellness practices. (The multiplicity of the female experience also informs her side project, Tiny Breast—a line of handmade ceramic pendants, with a portion of proceeds benefiting women’s organizations.) As with other emerging models, posting selfies often brings job inquiries via DM, but Liu gets messages from other women as well, ”saying, ‘I really identify with your look. I grew up mixed race,’ “ she explains. Her Instagram handle, @babywhiterice—a former DJ name from a college radio gig—nods to the two poles of her heritage. “And ‘baby’ is just fun, so why not?”

Kokie Childers, a 21-year-old senior at St. John’s University in Queens also discovered a newfound audience on Instagram, after getting scouted two years ago for an Afropunk photo portfolio featuring freckled people of color. She owes her cloud of tightly coiled hair and caramel skin to her mother from Suriname and Guyana; her late father—a Californian of European lineage, with red hair in the family—gave her the freckles. “Little kids used to stare at me and whisper, ‘What’s on her face?’ ” recalls Childers, “but I feel like the downsides and the positive sides all play into one.” But even as she embraces her freckles (“I don’t even own foundation and concealer, to be honest”), she has become careful about the sun’s damaging UV rays. “I used to think that because I was black, I didn’t need sunscreen. I’ve realized how important it is to wear SPF.”

Serena Motola, a 19-year-old model and actress living in Tokyo, underscores that caution about sun exposure, even if she relishes seaside vacations. Half-Japanese, half-American (her father is of Italian descent), she weathered the grade-school misgivings about her freckles. “But after I started modeling, I accepted them as part of my uniqueness,” she explains. (Coupled with her heavy bangs, they also lend a kind of adolescent charm to her character in Yuka Eda’s new film, Girls’ Encounter.) Still, Motola insists, “I don’t think casting directors choose me because of that.”

It’s a defiance that anyone with a statement feature would rightfully echo. Still, Parisian model Maeva Giani Marshall, 23, estimates that she has told the saga of her freckles some 5,000 times—in part because the cause is as dramatic as the effect. In short, after a series of medical complications over the past two years, ranging from a debilitating type of stroke to kidney problems, she wound up on medication that made her ultrasensitive to the sun, resulting in a band of hyperpigmentation. “It’s a raw memory for me,” Marshall says, remembering the disconcerting shift in the mirror and the barbed Instagram comments. “When it’s people rubbing my face to see if it’s makeup, that’s when I get really annoyed.”

But the reaction is far and away positive, and Marshall’s striking complexion helped land her on the Zadig & Voltaire runway in February (along with Jacquemus and Jil Sander); an Adidas campaign alongside Kendall Jenner followed next. That bare speckled canvas also happens to be the right foil to night-out party makeup: glossy lid, full-volume mascara, red lipstick when she feels like it. “I want to be someone who will spread positivity,” even in the face of challenges, the model says. “I have freckles, I have a story, but I don’t want it to make me—because I’ve already made myself.”