One icy Sunday afternoon in January, 17-year-old Molly Bair"s father drove her to the local indoor tennis courts in suburban Philadelphia to hit a few balls with a high school friend. That night, she would be on a train to New York for a photo shoot; and a week later, on a plane to Paris for the haute couture catwalks. The unlikely itinerary sums up Bair"s budding fashion career: a whirlwind trip from the mundane life of an American teenager to the rarefied heights of international style and back again accompanied by no small amount of adolescent bewilderment. "I would never think that a girl who spent most of her childhood with a unibrow, glasses and a Yoda shirt would be in Vogue Italia," Bair told CNN from her parent"s home, where she still resides when she"s not working. At 6 feet 1 inch tall, Bair is hard to miss with her gangly stature alone. Add the high cheekbones, intense eyes, symmetrical face and prominent ears, and it"s a design for constant queries about her lineage from passersby.