Dream of being a top model? Fancy a stint in Kate Moss`s designer stilettos? Well, Stacey Hannant knows how it feels. Not that you`ll have heard of her, or even know her face. Yet you`ll probably have seen one part of her countless times. And that part really does make her one of this country`s top models...
It`s her lips. Stacey`s kisser has appeared on TV and in magazines and newspapers all over the world, advertising slimming products, lipstick and mobile phones.
Yet, for years, the 20-year-old from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, didn`t realise there was a gold mine perching on her face. `I hated my mouth when I was at school,` she tells love it!. When I was about 14, boys at my school called me `rubber-dinghy lips` and it really upset me.
`My mum, Joanne, comforted me and said that people pay thousands of pounds for lips like mine. I didn`t believe her at the time, though.`
Sure enough, as Stacey got through her awkward teenage years, she grew into her pout and splashed out on lipgloss and lipstick to highlight it.
At 18, she left home for uni in Lincoln to study sports science. A pretty blonde with a size-8 figure, she`d often been told that she should try modelling, but she presumed that she wasn`t tall enough at 5ft 3in.
But she asked a friend to take some pictures of her and sent them off to modelling agencies.
She was signed up and did some catalogue and lingerie work. `My agent kept suggesting that I try glamour modelling as well, but I wasn`t comfortable with that, she admits.
The shoot was for Nail Rock, a nail-wrap company,
and the image of Stacey`s lips appeared on the packaging of their products, which are sold in Topshop.
And the jobs have flooded in ever since. The weirdest one Stacey`s done was spending the day popping sweets into her mouth for a Weight Watchers photo shoot with the world-famous photographer, Rankin.
`It was a brilliant day and I was relieved I just had to eat sweets,` she says. The next day the models had to hold raw fish in their mouths.`
Stacey still does some catalogue and lingerie work, but her specialist lip jobs have raked in the cash. She was paid £1,500 a day for the Weight Watchers advert, which was shown in France.
`My mum thinks it`s hilarious that I`m making a living from the lips I complained about as a teenager,` she says. `She did tell me, all those years ago, that people would pay thousands for my lips - and now they are!`.
