Lee Clower for The New York Times  Coco Rocha on the streets of New York. More Photos »  ONE afternoon in late July, traffic stopped in Manhattan so that a small parade of models could cross the street. They entered the Coffee Shop, a restaurant in Union Square, and descended to a dimly lighted subterranean lounge with leather banquettes and Champagne buckets filled with mini cartons of coconut water. The girls, most of them around 16 years old, wore shorts and tank tops along with chunky heels and too much eye makeup.  “These are really the babies, but to me, this is the perfect group,” said Coco Rocha, the 23-year-old model, who was there to give a lesson on modeling and social media. She was wearing slim black pants, black boots and a snug white blazer over an oxford shirt buttoned to the neck. Her red hair was pulled up into a neat topknot.  “Who here has a Tumblr blog?” she asked, addressing an audience of several dozen. Ten hesitant hands sprouted. Ms. Rocha smiled. “O.K., what we’re going to talk about in class today is how important it is to brand yourself.” Ms. Rocha, who used to teach dance to 4-year-olds, stood with one foot planted firmly in front of the other, pumping her right knee in the manner of a cabaret dancer as she spoke. “You cannot be just another pretty face,” she added. “Do you know how many girls there are in New York right now?”  More than just a pretty face, Ms. Rocha is one of the few models who has become known by just her first name. At a moment when the fashion industry has increasingly marginalized models — to anonymous, size 0 waifs, a life span of three seasons (that’s a year and a half in human years), and off the magazine covers in place of celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga — she has emerged as the model’s liberator.  Her message is about reclaiming power in a profession that has been depleted of it. Her medium is the Web, where Ms. Rocha has acquired millions of followers across 13 social media platforms (400,000 on Twitter; 197,000 on Instagram; and 1.6 million on Google Plus, to name a few). Translating this popularity into a calculated, career-prolonging strategy, Ms. Rocha has earned spokeswoman gigs typically reserved for actresses, a secondary role as an advocate for model’s rights, and now, one of the most high-profile jobs of her career. This fall, Ms. Rocha will begin filming episodes of “The Face” on the Oxygen network (imagine “The Voice” for models), appearing alongside Naomi Campbell and Karolina Kurkova as a celebrity coach.  Long gone is the era of the supermodel, but if there was ever a hope for its return, Ms. Rocha just might be it. “Fashion is obviously cyclical and Coco is a testament that we’re getting back to that a little bit,” said Valerie Boster, the bookings editor at Vogue. “For a while we had these anonymous faces that changed every season and designers who maybe didn’t want a model to insert her own personality or label, but Coco is very different. Coco is a brand of her own, which is what accounts for her longevity.”  The Coffee Shop event, sponsored by Tumblr, provided a glimpse into the kind of advice Ms. Rocha will presumably dispense on the show. To harness the rewards of social media, she told the roomful of eager faces, a model must post original content (“I don’t care if it’s about cats, just make it the best cat Tumblr out there”); update every day (“I get tired of posting, too, but we have to think about the future”); and show clients that a model’s online following is worth something (“People pay big bucks for a Kim Kardashian to talk about something, but what about you?”).  When she began taking questions, a young girl with an Australian accent asked how Ms. Rocha was able to make it as a model despite turning down shoots she deemed too provocative. (Ms. Rocha, raised a Jehovah’s Witness, is well known for never posing nude or seminude, which includes lingerie and swimwear.)  “I’m an overzealous poser: One-two-three-four,” said Ms. Rocha, striking a pose a second, a skill that has earned her the title “queen of posing” from Tyra Banks. “I’m known for this, it’s my brand. You go home tonight and you write down, ‘What is my brand? Am I the sexy girl? Am I the sporty girl?’ You are a company and you’re going to brand yourself.”  On the morning that Oxygen announced the show’s celebrity lineup, Ms. Rocha was sitting on the porch of her Westchester home, which stands on a hill and overlooks a wild garden. Ms. Rocha and her husband, the muralist James Conran, recently sold their Gramercy Park condo for a reported $1.51 million; the couple has been renting in Hastings-on-Hudson since March to try on life in the suburbs. “It’s weird to have to drive every time you want to get food,” Ms. Rocha said, “but then again, we found all these cute little chains, like the Cheesecake Factory.”
At 23, Coco Rocha is already beginning to age out of the modeling business. But thatâs fine with her (and her 400,000 Twitter followers).