Discovered in 1994 when she was only 15, curvy Laëtitia Casta, who has posed for a number of major magazines and ad campaigns, is probably most famous to men around the globe for her work in Victoria's Secret catalogs.

Why do they especially like her? In simplest, most honest terms, she has a big rack, which is something of a novelty in the fashion industry. Take that away from her, and there's not too much to distinguish her from any other human clothes hanger.

With the chest, though, she becomes more than the sum of her ample parts, for suddenly the world becomes willing and even anxious to take stock of her other, less tangible assets that it would otherwise have ignored. And in fact it's these other assets -- not her chest -- that more deeply separate Laëtitia from the rest of her cookie-cutter kind; after all, Tyra Banks has a pretty good-sized rack now as well.

But where women like Tyra, Claudia, Kate, Stephanie, and the rest all have a forbiddingly jaded, manufactured, and sometimes even Frankensteinish look to them (what with all the nips, tucks, lifts, injections, and vomiting between meals), Laëtitia's demeanor of playful innocence and naturally voluptuous curves seem refreshingly unspoiled and down-to-earth. Most people would never imagine they could ever actually meet a runway model in real life; Laëtitia, on the other hand, might be someone in their third period class.

She's the mythical "girl nextdoor" once championed by Playboy, the beautiful woman whose approachability gives hope to drooling guys nextdoor the world over. Sure, the "clothes by Vogue, body by Penthouse" thing she has going already sets her apart from most models, but with all the silicon competition out there, it's her seeming "still one of us" availability that in the end raises her up into a category of her own, and will probably be her more enduring legacy to the industry.