At ELLE, the fashion team loves working with the world’s most established models – Coco Rocha, Chanel Iman and Marloes Horst have all graced our pages in recent issues – but every now and again a new face comes along that makes us go all, ‘Stop the press! Who is that?’

Right now, our fashion ladies are in Sweden (it’s a hard life, but someone’s got to etc. etc.) shooting a major story for our January 2013 issue, starring 16-year-old model Marieke van de Braak. It’s not like it’s one of her first jobs. It IS her first job.

Fashion director Anne-Marie Curtis (aka @AMCELLE) says: ‘Usually I know the girls I’m booking already but when I saw images of Marieke I had to see her. There was something about her face that was just totally mesmerising. Strong but classically beautiful as well, in a Dutch old masters kind of way.’

That’s possibly because Marieke is indeed of Dutch parentage, though born and brought up in Leicester. She was spotted last August and signed immediately to Profile Model Management. She cites Claudia Schiffer as an inspiration for the mightily sensible reason that she ‘finished all her studies before modelling’.

New she might be, but word from AMC is that she’s already a pro. ‘I explained what we need her to project: a strong, womanly, YSL-inspired character. I don't really think I needed to be honest because on set she just got it immediately. Looking through the first shot we knew we had our girl.’

ELLE’s got form with new talent – guess who was first to put Naomi Campbell on their cover – so remember: you saw Marieke here first.