Paloma Elsesser has built a career that defies easy categorization — a model whose influence extends well beyond the runway into conversations about body politics, mental health, and the beauty industry’s slow reckoning with representation. In a recent appearance on The Business of Beauty’s podcast, Elsesser spoke with executive editor Priya Rao about staying true to herself amid the pressures of tokenism and why, after a decade helping build other people’s brands, she is finally thinking about building one of her own.
The podcast appearance arrives as Elsesser’s profile continues to rise outside modelling. Her voice on body care and wellness carries weight precisely because she has been public about her own struggles — with body image, with industry rejection, with the exhaustion of being a symbol rather than a person.
Elsesser’s reflection on tokenism cut to the heart of fashion’s ongoing diversity problem: being the first or the only in a room carries a burden that goes beyond representation. The industry, she suggested, has become adept at surface-level inclusion while remaining structurally resistant to the deeper changes that would make those firsts unnecessary.
For the beauty industry, Elsesser’s move toward entrepreneurship represents both an opportunity and a challenge: an opportunity to back a founder with genuine cultural credibility, and a challenge to prove that it can support a brand built on principles that the industry itself has not yet fully embraced.
The conversation traced Elsesser’s trajectory from a boundary-breaking cover model to an entrepreneur in formation, touching on the specific rituals of body care that ground her practice. She described how her relationship with skincare and grooming shifted from survival — navigating an industry that had no template for her body type — to a genuine interest in the therapeutic potential of daily routines.
