Enter Elsa Hosk's empire: From supermodel to supermogul

There’s a very important date approaching in Elsa Hosk’s diary. The venue is secured, the theme is finalised and the surprise guest of honour is confirmed. Every detail needs to be perfect, from the guest list to the catering and centrepiece – and the countdown is on. Hosk has orchestrated and helmed major launches before, but this may be the most significant event yet.

The occasion? The fourth birthday party of her daughter Tuulikki Joan Daly. “Tuuli has a long list of demands,” she says, explaining with a mock-serious tone how she has been diligently taking directions from her pint-sized VIP: bouncy castles, a Bluey-themed cake and a human-sized Peppa Pig. “I’m giving her what she wants,” Hosk laughs. “There’s nothing better than seeing your kid loving life.”

It’s been exactly three years since the statuesque Swede last graced the cover of this magazine – then embodying a Mother Earth mood, captured in a nirvanic, natural state of undress with boyfriend Tom Daly and baby Tuuli, just 12 months old at the time. In the years that have passed, much has changed, with 36-year-old Hosk quietly and steadily building what can only be described as an empire.

“I’m a really hard worker, it’s not a problem for me,” Hosk states from New York, a few days before her latest Vogue Scandinavia photoshoot (and Tuuli’s big birthday bash). With her tousled blonde bob, crystal blue eyes and cable-knit jumper, there’s a friendly ease to her that comes across even via video link. She has perched her phone upright in front of her for our call, reaching forward every few moments to politely swat away the relentless notifications from her screen without once breaking focus.

It’s the midst of fashion week when we speak. Some years ago, Hosk would have been in the eye of a storm of fittings, castings and backstage manoeuverings. Now, she takes her seat as front row royalty, claiming her crown later that day at the Calvin Klein autumn/winter ’25 event, looking a total smokeshow while barely revealing an inch of skin, as only she could. Amongst it all, she still found time earlier to enjoy the dusting of snow that flittered across the Big Apple. “Ever since I moved to LA, I live for the snow, you know? Being Swedish and everything...” she smiles.

Sitting on agency books since she was a young teenager and blowing up internationally when she earned her Victoria’s Secret wings, Hosk has more than solidified her place in the industry. But her end-game was always the same: to start something of her own. “Had I not been a model, I probably would have launched something a lot sooner,” she says. It may have delayed her entrepreneurship by a few years, but Hosk’s access to top brands and designers as a model proved in- valuable in terms of the insights it granted her. “I’ve been so lucky to wear an incredible amount of clothes as a model, both good and bad,” she says. “Simply being able to feel the materials and speak to design teams, I learned so much.” Enter Hosk’s second baby, Helsa, in 2022–a nod to both her name and the Swedish word for ‘health’. Since its launch, Hosk has described the brand simply as “a love letter to Scandinavia”.

Hosk’s ethereal beauty and purposeful sense of style are fodder for aesthetic-obsessed internet folk, her content fuelling endless Pinterest pins and Instagram double-taps. It’s hard to imagine Hosk would ever be considered on the sidelines of trends rather than setting them, but according to her, that’s what defined her youth. “When I was 12, I made my mum teach me how to sew so I could show up to school in these crazy outfits that I had seen in Vogue,” she says. “She taught me how to make complicated things like jackets and pants with zippers. Then I would wear them to school and my friends would be like, ‘Um... what is that?’” she laughs.

Beyond her own DIY outfits, Hosk’s innate talents shone when she selected sewing over woodwork, from the pathways in the Swedish school curriculum. “I remember in sewing class, other kids would be making one piece of clothing and I was busy making an entire collection,” she says. “My teacher was so encouraging. She could see that I was creating without using patterns, it was just from my imagination.”

While her schoolmates may not have understood her ahead-of-the-curve vision, Hosk’s first moment of validation came during a shopping trip with her mum. “One time, I wore pants that I had made while we were visiting vintage shops in Södermalm – because as well as making things from scratch, we would often buy pieces and remake them at home,” she says. “A stylist stopped me and asked where my pants were from. It was so exciting. But I was too nervous to say I made them myself, so I lied and made something else up.”

Hosk never went to design school per se, but she grew up in an environment steeped in creativity – something she absorbed instinctively. “My whole family are artists. My grandparents were hobby artists from Finland, making things from wood, knitting, everything. My aunt was also an established artist – everyone had this strong need to express themselves through art,” she says.

Hosk also lacks official business qualifications. However, it’s a topic on which she can turn to her partner, Daly, who she describes as “so, so smart” and “a huge inspiration” in the way he manages his own LA-based brand of running gear, District Vision. In her words, they are yin and yang in their business styles. “He has a skill set that I don’t have, and I think I have a skill set that he doesn’t have,” she explains, going on to define Daly as cerebral and herself as intuitive. “He is soaking up information from his mentors, his brain is turning, he’s applying what he’s learned from others to the next step,” she says. “I’m the opposite. I’m such a loner. I rely on my gut feelings and I don’t ask for help, ever.”

Clearly, she’s doing something right; Helsa’s products, more often than not, hit sold-out status. Plus, there will be a major drop this spring that marks a move into a new category via a collaboration with Italian shoemaker Giaborghini. “I have tried to do shoes before but it is so difficult,” she says. “If you're not in Italy, it's really hard to make shoes. So this was the perfect stepping stone for me.” The shoes are in rotation on our shoot day, where Hosk reminds those present of her chameleon-like powers on set, whirling through different personas with impressive pace and precision: a seductive siren, wearing little more than a high-shine Prada A-line skirt and pointed heeled mules, designed together with Gioborghini’s Barbara Borghini. Then, a whimsical, coiffed doll in a bow-trimmed Acne Studios mini dress. Hosk’s ultimate transformation, however, is for the cover look: a slicked, singlet-clad greaser poised atop a 1970s De Tomaso Pantera sportscar, the Gucci look completed by croc-effect leather loafers from the collaborative collection. “Every shoe is like a different personality, you know?” Hosk says.

Hosk is on a powerful trajectory from model to mogul, but she’s not immune to the ever-present guilt that working parents carry across all walks of life. “You always feel guilty. As a mother, as a woman, it’s a dilemma,” she says. “You're supposed to be at home like you don’t have a job, and then be at work like you don’t have kids.” In an effort to balance it all, she finally hired an assistant at the end of last year – something she now realises she should have done a decade ago. “I probably would have been a lot more sane,” she adds wryly.

Hosk isn’t building an empire for the sake of it. For her, fashion is more than a means to success – it’s a way to shapeshift, to adapt to the roles she plays as a woman, a mother, a fashion icon at the top. "I put clothes on in the morning like armour, because I want to feel a certain way, to reflect the characters that I have on rotation in my own life," she says, in subtle acknowledgement of her chameleonic nature. Hosk will continue to run her empire from the US for now, but Scandinavia remains her North Star. “My dream is a home in the Stockholm archipelago," she shares. “I work hard because I want my daughter, Tuuli, to grow up surrounded by that kind of beauty and peace."

But first things first: pulling off the dream party in just a few days. The only thing left to do is arrange Tuuli’s tiny outfit. While the toddler is often seen wearing sweetly curated looks on Hosk’s Instagram, she doesn’t always look as fashionable as mum in real life. “All she wants to wear are the things her grandparents buy her,” Hosk chuckles. “But I don’t care. I just want her to be happy.