True to self: model Jessica Gomes on skincare, style and success

Photographed by Jake Terrey, styled by Philippa Moroney, Vogue Australia, April 2019.

It’s awkward to talk about someone else’s beauty, but when faced with Jessica Gomes, it’s hard not to. And her good looks are what has kept her modelling for two decades. In person, pared back and natural, her beauty is especially apparent. Now 34, Gomes is also more at ease with herself, which also helps. “I feel like I know who I am now,” she says, today dressed in vintage Levi’s, which make an appearance in this Vogue shoot. “I know what I like and I know what looks good on me.”

Gomes as her authentic self is typically dressed in jeans, T-shirt and flats – currently Balenciaga boots or sneakers, Spring Court sneakers, or her most recent purchase, Chanel Velcro sandals. “I’m a size 40 but they only had a size 41 left at the Sydney David Jones” – the department store she has been an ambassador for since 2013.

“I look better natural. I feel so uncomfortable in a dress. I look at photos of dresses and think: ‘I want to look pretty and girlie’, but it’s just not me.”

As her sisters tell her, she always had her own distinct sense of style. Recently she found photographs of herself as a teenager wearing Doc Martens, short denim skirts and chokers. “I had forgotten, so I was like: ‘Wow, I really did kind of have that style when I was a kid.’” Her 20s were when she experimented. “As a model, people want to see you. But I was getting bored and wanted to rebel and wear a dress, or a colour, or a top with interesting detail … something a bit different. But now I’m back to where I was originally, what I really like, what is authentic to me. And honestly, I look and feel better in jeans and a T-shirt.”

Like her personal style, her beauty routine is also straightforward. “I’m pretty easygoing and laidback, and I don’t like to look intimidating – I don’t want people to notice my make-up. I like a nude lip, nothing too severe.”

One of her sisters is a beautician, and had Gomes not become a model, she would have followed in her footsteps. “I would have loved to have my own salon. I was always interested in beauty – I did my high school work experience placement in a beauty salon.” It’s a passion that led to the model launching her own beauty line, Equal Beauty, which is stocked at David Jones, at Los Angeles’s cult beauty destination Violet Grey, and by various beauticians in Western Australia.

Although she’s back in Australia for a few weeks, Gomes is now based in Los Angeles and her home, a cottage in Beverly Hills, is filled with art. “I like to have a neutral base, but the art in my house is colourful. I feel accomplished when I buy art, too – it’s grown up!” she says. “But do we ever grow up?” she asks, mentioning her latest read, Michelle Obama’s Becoming. “She [Michelle] talks about how we don’t ever get to a place where we feel grown up. To me, being grown up is getting married, buying a house, having kids – then I’d really feel grown up,” she says, laughing.

Art in her LA home ranges from pieces by Australian collage artist Dina Broadhurst to a treasured hand-woven tapestry she bought in Guilin, China, while on location for a Sports Illustrated shoot. “Next door to the hotel was a guy making tapestries, and I would see his progress on this every day,” she recalls.

It is only recently that she has had a rediscovered appreciation for Perth, the city where she grew up. “Now, at this time of my life, I have to say I really love Los Angeles and I really love Perth. I would never have thought that’s what I would say about Perth, but it really is so special – it’s so Aussie and salt of the earth. I realised how much I loved Perth over this past summer holiday.”

Gomes’s parents and siblings live in Perth – her father is Portuguese, her mother Singaporean Chinese, giving the model her otherworldly beauty.

Her mother enrolled her into modelling classes as an adolescent after she struggled with a change of school. The activity allowed her to meet other children her age. “We would learn parades and it was a fun hobby, but then suddenly I started to work as well, so I’ve been modelling for a really long time … since I was 10. It’s always been a part of my life.

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It’s a career that has taken her around the world. Living in LA for the past seven years has influenced her style. Denim, the LA uniform, dominates her wardrobe. “It’s definitely made my style more relaxed.” She owns 50 pairs of jeans, at an approximate estimate, and this is after she culled more than 100 items – over half of wardrobe – by selling them on TheRealReal. “It was very cleansing,” she says.

She’ll be wearing those jeans with her new handbag, the Dior Saddle. “With the monogram pattern … it’s a bit different but in the blue denim colour – it’s almost a neutral colour,” she says. “For me, I feel best when I’m comfortable and effortless. When I’m in jeans, a T-shirt and a blazer – I feel like I can move and I just feel me.”

This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia’s April 2019 issue.