The Dreams Of Apollonia

All of us have fantasies; few of us get to realize them, especially in front of a camera. One of the troubles with being a model--and Apollonia Van Ravenstein is at the top of that profession--is that you spend all your working hours acting out other people's fantasies. Apollonia hasn't complained about that, you understand; professionalism oozes from her pores. "Apollonia has a greater range of emotion than any other model in the business," opines Ara Gallant, photographer of fashion's haut monde. "She has an actress' sense of what a photograph is about." It seemed to us a shame that such talent should be visible only in fashion magazines, so we asked Apollonia to confess a few of her own fantasies and have Ara photograph her for us in situations in which she had always wanted to find herself. These dreams of Apollonia are fairly recent ones. When she was a youngster in the Netherlands, she fully expected to live out her life as a French teacher. But at the age of 17, she went to Paris and started modeling. Five years ago, she went to New York and joined the top-rated Zoli agency, which, though it has made her a big name professionally, has never given her the chance to play Fay Wray to Ken Norton's King Kong. "In this age of machines, I love romance," says Apollonia of this project. As for us, it's easy to see we've gone ape over Apollonia.