Kotryna Kozlovaite: A Life in Fashion, and the Beauty of Finding Her Way Back

For Kotryna Kozlovaite, fashion was never part of the original plan. Growing up in Vilnius, Lithuania, she imagined a future in music and, somewhat unexpectedly for someone who would eventually spend much of her life in front of a camera, she was not particularly drawn to being photographed as a child.

Yet fashion found her early.

Full look: Roberto Cavalli. Photographer: George Livieratos

Kotryna took part in her first photoshoots in Lithuania when she was around ten or twelve years old. By seventeen, she had moved to Milan and entered the industry professionally. Now 31, she has spent almost half her life modeling, a career that has carried her across countries, cultures and creative worlds, and one she has come to regard as one of the defining gifts of her life.

Her trajectory reflects a side of modeling that exists far beyond the finished photograph. Behind the campaigns, travel and seemingly effortless glamour is a profession built on discipline, uncertainty and sacrifice. For Kotryna, succeeding in fashion has required a level of commitment she compares to that of a professional athlete: a career that extends beyond working hours and becomes, in many ways, a way of life.

Full Look Temly 

That dedication has been accompanied by the inevitable lessons of growing up within an industry that can be both exhilarating and demanding. There were periods when her career was not always her first priority and moments when she questioned whether fashion was still where she belonged. Rather than viewing those chapters as mistakes to erase, Kotryna sees them as essential to the woman she has become.

Fashion, after all, gave her considerably more than images.

It opened the world.

Dress: Deme. Earrings: Alexis Bittar. Cuffs: Schiaparelli 

Years spent moving between cities allowed her to experience different cultures and build relationships with people she might otherwise never have encountered. With so much of her adult life lived between countries, the conventional idea of home gradually became less about geography. For many years, the world itself was home.

Today, that perspective is evolving.

After years of airports, hotels and suitcases, Kotryna finds herself increasingly drawn to permanence and balance. Her ambitions remain, but they now coexist with quieter aspirations: creating a home, building a family and finding harmony between the intensity of a global career and a fulfilling personal life.

Dress: Temily. Necklace, bracelet, and earrings: Maison H Jewels

There is something revealing in the simplicity of what she imagines for that future. She has always loved animals, particularly cats, and hopes that one day home will mean a family of her own, motherhood and two cats waiting for her at the end of the day.

Tennis provides another constant. Kotryna began playing as a child and continues to value the sport as an escape from the movement and demands of her professional life. Its combination of discipline, strength and elegance seems particularly fitting for a woman whose career has required much of the same.

Dress: Loewe. Shoes: Alexandre Birman. Earrings: Jennifer Fisher. Cuff: Ippolita.

Fashion Before and After the Digital Revolution

Having entered modeling long before Instagram became an industry force, Kotryna has also had an unusual vantage point from which to observe fashion’s transformation.

She remembers an era before social media became inseparable from a model’s professional identity. Today, digital platforms, and increasingly artificial intelligence, are reshaping how fashion is created, communicated and consumed.

Amid that evolution, Kotryna remains attached to something decidedly less technological: authenticity.

Natural beauty, individuality and genuine human connection are qualities she believes cannot be replaced by an algorithm or rendered irrelevant by a new platform. Trends and technologies may change, but authenticity, in her view, remains timeless.

Perhaps that belief also explains why her relationship with modeling ultimately survived a period away from it.

A few years ago, Kotryna stepped back from the industry, believing that her chapter as a model might have reached its natural conclusion. Distance produced an unexpected realization. Modeling had ceased to be simply something she did for work; after so many formative years, it had become woven into her identity.

Returning therefore did not feel like beginning again. It felt like coming home.

Dress: Bottega Veneta. Earrings and cuffs: Alexis Bittar. Bag: Aspassia Tagliente 

The Beauty of the Journey

At 31, Kotryna looks at her career differently than the teenager who arrived in Milan at seventeen.

Successes matter, but so do disappointments. The countries, people, uncertainty and unexpected turns have all contributed something to a story she would not rewrite.

There is a particular confidence that comes from reaching the point where a life does not need to have unfolded perfectly to feel right. Kotryna’s relationship with fashion embodies that idea.

She has tried to leave it, returned to it and ultimately learned to appreciate it not simply for the career it created, but for the life it allowed her to experience.

The little girl from Vilnius who once dreamed of becoming a singer could hardly have anticipated the world that awaited her.

Nearly two decades after fashion first entered her life, Kotryna’s story is no longer simply about becoming a model. It is about what happens when a profession becomes a journey, one that shapes a woman’s understanding of ambition, home, identity and herself.

And perhaps the most interesting chapter is the one she is entering now: still part of the world that raised her, but increasingly certain about the life she wants to build beyond it.

Credits

Photographer: George Livieratos

Art Director: Elena Borovitska

Model: Kotryna Kozlovaite

Stylist: Arnold Milfort

Make up: Vivian Katsari

Hair: Konstantinos Sakkas