My 2011 Rookie of the Year: Kenza Fourati

I’m just starting to get into the 2011 pics online, but the first thing I have to report is that I’m kind of smitten with Kenza Fourati.She’s just so unusual for SI. She looks like a girl who catches your eye in the corner of a coffee shop. She’s in a bulky, black turtleneck and she’s reading a book in a foreign language. You get the feeling she doesn’t quite buy that she could possibly be all that alluring, which of course makes her even more alluring.

If she and Brooklyn Decker were both at a party, you’d spend the whole party staring at Brooklyn but then go home and be unable to get Kenza out of your mind.

I described her as this year’s Laetitia Casta, and I still see it. (Kenza’s biography on SI.com points out that while she grew up in Tunisia, she was actually born in France. [Tunisia, for that matter, used to be French too.])

But as I looked through Kenza’s pics, I saw a lot of Petra Nemcova. Some of that may be the bangs, but there’s also a certain sweetness that she gives off.
Laetitia Casta…
…plus Petra Nemcova…
…equals Kenza Fourati.