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The New York Times, February 13, 2013
Model Apartments: Runway to Real Estate
By WILLIAM VAN METER
Trish Goff, now with Douglas Elliman as a real estate agent, in Greenwich Village.
Photo Credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
With her wide-eyed all-American looks, Trish Goff was atypical among the second wave of supermodels of the 1990s. Exotic, heroin chic, angular, grunge — these did not describe Ms. Goff. But her extracurricular activities really set her apart from the pack.
“When I started making money, I immediately began buying property and fixing it up,” she said. “I was always searching for the next neighborhood. The first place I bought when I was 19. I found a huge loft on the Lower East Side, almost 3,500 square feet. I did it up, turned it over and sold it.”
Well before the spate of flip-and-switch home shows, Ms. Goff, now 36, bought that apartment for less than a half-million dollars. It sold for nearly three times that.
Now Ms. Goff is following her muse. After finishing New York University’s accelerated real estate program and getting her license, she has become a broker at Douglas Elliman, where she attracts a hip and upscale clientele, mostly culled from her connections from two decades in fashion.
Late last month, Ms. Goff was in the Greenwich Grill in TriBeCa. With her tan Prada cardigan, white blouse and Comme des Garçons houndstooth skirt (not to mention a symmetrical face and flawless bone structure), Ms. Goff looked like a model starring in a fashion feature as a chic real estate agent. She wore her long hair in a delicate chignon, and there was a vintage Cartier watch around her slim wrist.
“Modeling wasn’t necessarily what I was into,” Ms. Goff said. “It’s something that you’re genetically qualified to do. Occasionally girls would go on to become an editor or something, but they’re few and far between.”
Ms. Goff speaks in a nasally patrician manner, belying her northern Florida upbringing. Her mother was a bartender, and her father was a factory worker. After their split, her parents moved around a lot. Ms. Goff loved trailing her mother to look at houses. She has fond memories of the period.
“There was this new development through the woods,” she said. “On weekends they wouldn’t be working, and they didn’t lock the doors. I would go in and look at all the houses. It was already there, this weird obsession, when I was 7.”
She wanted to be a classical musician and played the saxophone, xylophone, clarinet and bassoon. But after being scouted at 15, she left school and moved to New York. Her rise was swift. She was the face of Chanel, Dior, Versace, Louis Vuitton, YSL and Chloé, among other major labels.
Although she had many hairstyles, one was her signature. “The bubble bowl!” she said, laughing. “Yes, that made my career, and I should be grateful. I was stomping my feet when Garren was giving me that haircut. It’s hard to say to a 17-year-old girl in 1993 that a bowl haircut was cool.”
When she was 19, she had a son, who accompanied her to Fashion Weeks until he was school age. He is now 16 and was recently approached by a modeling agent.
“I was at that agent in a second and said, ‘You do not dare speak to my son, who I am struggling to get through high school and get to university, and tell him he has the chance to make a few thousand dollars a day,’ ” Ms. Goff said, tapping the table hard for effect. “For him to give up anything he might think of doing? He will not!”
She knows well it is a difficult career path. “Modeling will slow down no matter who you are,” she said. In 2009, she moved to London with her husband, and then to a beach-side town in Portugal. The relationship ended, and she returned to Florida to live near her mother.
“I wasn’t me anymore,” Ms. Goff said. “Life pushes you in different directions, and sometimes you need to cut it off. I spent time with my son and myself.” After six months, she returned to New York.
“The light switched on,” she said. “I thought: ‘What am I doing? Why do I have to stay in fashion? With real estate, I can stay connected to all of the relationships I made in fashion. I know what people want. I’ve traveled the whole world. Here you go!’ It was so plain and simple.”
MS. GOFF LEFT THE RESTAURANT to meet the photographer Nathaniel Goldberg, who is looking to buy in the city. Ms. Goff lives in West Chelsea with David Bonnouvrier, the owner of DNA Models, who used to be her agent and has known her since she was a teenager.
Mr. Goldberg is a friend of the couple and has a house next door to them upstate. (Their Labrador retrievers are half brothers.)
“My white leather Gucci loafers,” Ms. Goff said in a fake accent suggestive of a “Sopranos” extra as she walked swiftly over the cobblestones. “I tried to get away with heels. That doesn’t work.”
Mr. Goldberg explained what he was looking for. “I want a window in the bathroom and light,” he said. “The other requirement is a vent because I cook a lot.”
Mr. Goldberg was once Ms. Goff’s boyfriend “We were together five years, and we moved five times,” he said.
“Now I can stop moving,” she responded. “I can just move everyone else.”
Recently she found a rental for Justinian Kfoury, the owner of Total Management, a photographer and stylist agency. He has known Ms. Goff since the ’90s.
“I wanted a parlor floor with a big fireplace on Washington Square,” Mr. Kfoury said. “We walked in, and it was a Dr. Sloper’s Jacobean apartment from ‘Washington Square.’ She found the most incredible apartment. She’s major.”
Ms. Goff thrives on the intimacy and challenge of finding someone’s dream home. “Can I find this creative person an interesting space in their budget?” she said. “You can. You have to see the person in the space. It’s such a personal thing. It’s their home. It’s not a photo shoot or a fashion show.”
A week later, she was preparing to show her listing, a 19th-century four-story town house with a lower level in the West Village, asking price $5.495 million. The owners are a fashion editor and a photographer.
“It’s not a trendy house,” she said as she walked up the stairs in jeans, a cashmere sweater and Hermès riding boots. “You’re buying something that’s classic.”
Ms. Goff hasn’t officially retired from modeling and would still do fashion work, she said, if something special came along with one of her designer friends. She was planning to attend the Proenza Schouler and Marc Jacobs shows in New York this week.
She has a desk at an Elliman office, but she isn’t chained to it.
“I don’t have a cubicle, so that’s good,” she said. And she has adjusted from her vagabond model lifestyle.
“Now I go to the office and see the same people,” she said. “It’s nice to have stability. It feels more real.”
Model Apartments: Runway to Real Estate
By WILLIAM VAN METER
Trish Goff, now with Douglas Elliman as a real estate agent, in Greenwich Village.
Photo Credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
With her wide-eyed all-American looks, Trish Goff was atypical among the second wave of supermodels of the 1990s. Exotic, heroin chic, angular, grunge — these did not describe Ms. Goff. But her extracurricular activities really set her apart from the pack.
“When I started making money, I immediately began buying property and fixing it up,” she said. “I was always searching for the next neighborhood. The first place I bought when I was 19. I found a huge loft on the Lower East Side, almost 3,500 square feet. I did it up, turned it over and sold it.”
Well before the spate of flip-and-switch home shows, Ms. Goff, now 36, bought that apartment for less than a half-million dollars. It sold for nearly three times that.
Now Ms. Goff is following her muse. After finishing New York University’s accelerated real estate program and getting her license, she has become a broker at Douglas Elliman, where she attracts a hip and upscale clientele, mostly culled from her connections from two decades in fashion.
Late last month, Ms. Goff was in the Greenwich Grill in TriBeCa. With her tan Prada cardigan, white blouse and Comme des Garçons houndstooth skirt (not to mention a symmetrical face and flawless bone structure), Ms. Goff looked like a model starring in a fashion feature as a chic real estate agent. She wore her long hair in a delicate chignon, and there was a vintage Cartier watch around her slim wrist.
“Modeling wasn’t necessarily what I was into,” Ms. Goff said. “It’s something that you’re genetically qualified to do. Occasionally girls would go on to become an editor or something, but they’re few and far between.”
Ms. Goff speaks in a nasally patrician manner, belying her northern Florida upbringing. Her mother was a bartender, and her father was a factory worker. After their split, her parents moved around a lot. Ms. Goff loved trailing her mother to look at houses. She has fond memories of the period.
“There was this new development through the woods,” she said. “On weekends they wouldn’t be working, and they didn’t lock the doors. I would go in and look at all the houses. It was already there, this weird obsession, when I was 7.”
She wanted to be a classical musician and played the saxophone, xylophone, clarinet and bassoon. But after being scouted at 15, she left school and moved to New York. Her rise was swift. She was the face of Chanel, Dior, Versace, Louis Vuitton, YSL and Chloé, among other major labels.
Although she had many hairstyles, one was her signature. “The bubble bowl!” she said, laughing. “Yes, that made my career, and I should be grateful. I was stomping my feet when Garren was giving me that haircut. It’s hard to say to a 17-year-old girl in 1993 that a bowl haircut was cool.”
When she was 19, she had a son, who accompanied her to Fashion Weeks until he was school age. He is now 16 and was recently approached by a modeling agent.
“I was at that agent in a second and said, ‘You do not dare speak to my son, who I am struggling to get through high school and get to university, and tell him he has the chance to make a few thousand dollars a day,’ ” Ms. Goff said, tapping the table hard for effect. “For him to give up anything he might think of doing? He will not!”
She knows well it is a difficult career path. “Modeling will slow down no matter who you are,” she said. In 2009, she moved to London with her husband, and then to a beach-side town in Portugal. The relationship ended, and she returned to Florida to live near her mother.
“I wasn’t me anymore,” Ms. Goff said. “Life pushes you in different directions, and sometimes you need to cut it off. I spent time with my son and myself.” After six months, she returned to New York.
“The light switched on,” she said. “I thought: ‘What am I doing? Why do I have to stay in fashion? With real estate, I can stay connected to all of the relationships I made in fashion. I know what people want. I’ve traveled the whole world. Here you go!’ It was so plain and simple.”
MS. GOFF LEFT THE RESTAURANT to meet the photographer Nathaniel Goldberg, who is looking to buy in the city. Ms. Goff lives in West Chelsea with David Bonnouvrier, the owner of DNA Models, who used to be her agent and has known her since she was a teenager.
Mr. Goldberg is a friend of the couple and has a house next door to them upstate. (Their Labrador retrievers are half brothers.)
“My white leather Gucci loafers,” Ms. Goff said in a fake accent suggestive of a “Sopranos” extra as she walked swiftly over the cobblestones. “I tried to get away with heels. That doesn’t work.”
Mr. Goldberg explained what he was looking for. “I want a window in the bathroom and light,” he said. “The other requirement is a vent because I cook a lot.”
Mr. Goldberg was once Ms. Goff’s boyfriend “We were together five years, and we moved five times,” he said.
“Now I can stop moving,” she responded. “I can just move everyone else.”
Recently she found a rental for Justinian Kfoury, the owner of Total Management, a photographer and stylist agency. He has known Ms. Goff since the ’90s.
“I wanted a parlor floor with a big fireplace on Washington Square,” Mr. Kfoury said. “We walked in, and it was a Dr. Sloper’s Jacobean apartment from ‘Washington Square.’ She found the most incredible apartment. She’s major.”
Ms. Goff thrives on the intimacy and challenge of finding someone’s dream home. “Can I find this creative person an interesting space in their budget?” she said. “You can. You have to see the person in the space. It’s such a personal thing. It’s their home. It’s not a photo shoot or a fashion show.”
A week later, she was preparing to show her listing, a 19th-century four-story town house with a lower level in the West Village, asking price $5.495 million. The owners are a fashion editor and a photographer.
“It’s not a trendy house,” she said as she walked up the stairs in jeans, a cashmere sweater and Hermès riding boots. “You’re buying something that’s classic.”
Ms. Goff hasn’t officially retired from modeling and would still do fashion work, she said, if something special came along with one of her designer friends. She was planning to attend the Proenza Schouler and Marc Jacobs shows in New York this week.
She has a desk at an Elliman office, but she isn’t chained to it.
“I don’t have a cubicle, so that’s good,” she said. And she has adjusted from her vagabond model lifestyle.
“Now I go to the office and see the same people,” she said. “It’s nice to have stability. It feels more real.”
Oh, and mostly Shana Zadrick...
