Liane

Words: Cisco Corea Photos: Peter Collie

An intoxicating mix of ethnicities and international modeling experience makes this month’s Passenger Seat occupant someone to be very jealous of.

When Liane first came to our offices we knew straight away there was something different about her. We could see the slight Asian influence from her almond eyes, we could see the European influence from her 5’10” figure, but that was as far as our guess work could take us.

“I was born in Germany,” she explained (with a strong, sexy accent), “my father is German, but my mum is from Taiwan.” We weren’t too far off, then! So how did she end up all the way on the other side of the world sitting in our office? Well, as much as we would like to think it was just for us, it was actually for her international studies; “I’m finishing up my psychology degree at Uni, which should be all done by the beginning of next year,” she says in that cool accent of hers.

And modeling is just a side thing? “Well, yeah – I love it. It’s something I enjoy for the experience of meeting different people. Seeing different cultures when you get to travel and, hopefully, getting great shots at the end if you work hard enough.” And we’re glad she isn’t afraid of hard work as Liane didn’t get an easy gig with us. Shooting for this issue of ASM began nice and early on a miserable winter Sunday morning in Sydney that just got colder and colder as the day progressed. Unfortunately for Liane we kept asking her to get into less and less clothing as the day turned into night and the temperature dropped further down the thermometer.

We can say she was a true professional, never complaining or putting on a sour face. She smiled all the way through working the camera regardless of the conditions. But, we guess that’s the result of seven years in the modeling circuit at an international level. “I started my modeling career in Düsseldorf for a new fashion designer at the time. I went on to do lots of shows, photo shoots for C&A (they’re like Myers here), photoshoots for Canon and advertising campaigns for Siemens BenQ, which are a mobile company. I also worked at the Cologne Fair, which is a massive event in Germany. Did some editorial work for various European magazines and of course the catwalk shows during fashion week in Düsseldorf.” Ok, well how about a quick rattle through of all the places where we could have spotted you across Europe? “Hmm, let’s see. I can remember working in Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg and Berlin, oh and Majorca too.” Ah yes, we’re definitely jealous now; she has seen more of the world than our whole office combined.

Being from Germany we just had to ask, ever traveled down the Autobahn, and if so, how fast? “Over 200km/h,” she says with big eyes, “all on my own too!” Nice, tell us more. “Well I love cars and I got the chance to do a traineeship for my degree back in Germany with DaimlerChrysler. Their headquarters are in Stuttgart and they have a testing track and all sorts of cars that I could go out a test drive. I took the ML500, the G400, and the S500 for a drive at the Autobahn and I drove them fast,” she adds cheekily. “Around 220km/h, but you could hardly tell that’s how smooth the ride felt. But one of the best test cars was CLS55 AMG which was worth around 100,000 Euros back then: that was very cool.”

Ok Liane, say no more, now we’re really, really jealous.