By Emma Reynolds. Just three years ago, Zahia Dehar was thrown into the spotlight as the underage escort at the centre of a scandal involving France's star footballers.
Now the Algerian beauty has become a fashion muse to top designers including Karl Lagerfield, regularly treading the catwalk in high-profile shows and making front covers of glossy magazines. Smitten Chanel designer Lagerfeld described her as the idealised vision of a French courtesan and even photographed her debut look book himself.
Ooh la la: Ballerinas open a toy box at the Zahia Couture Show to allow the courtesan-turned-catwalk queen to walk on to the runway. It is an incredible shape. Trading on her notoriety as a sex symbol, Miss Dehar reinvented herself as a lingerie designer, showing her first collection on the Paris catwalks in January of this year.
The blonde former escort showcased her second collection of lingerie at Paris Couture Week in July, and models much of the skimpiest underwear herself. She has her own website and French sculptor David LaChapelle is exhibiting a metal mould of her body.
Although the charges against Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema, 22, and Lyon's Sidney Govou, 30, have never been proven, the three men may never live down the disgrace of their alleged indiscretion. For Miss Dehar, on the other hand, the shocking story has lifted her from underage call girl working at a French brothel to international stardom. She moved to France from Algeria when she was 10 and grew up on a crime-ridden housing estate in the Paris suburbs with her mother and two brothers.
