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BY SHEA CONNELL

When she’s not sitting in a biology lecture, putting in 20-plus hours as a research assistant at the Medical University of South Carolina or serving as Zeta Tau Alpha’s executive secretary, Lydia Davidson can be found sitting in a chair at CosBar, getting her makeup done for a Friday afternoon magazine photo shoot.
     Davidson is a rock star. Not literally, but she is in the spotlight. She lives a Hannah Montanaesque double life as unassuming college student/in-demand fashion model. Watching her do her thing in Rapport’s designer duds, it is clear she is in her natural habitat. She works the camera, wearing a hot-pink pantsuit accented by a beautiful pair of multicolored, snake-print Jimmy Choos.
     “It’s definitely something I enjoy doing,” she says. “I love dressing up, and I like acting and being in character and being in the moment. It allows me to meet different people and try new things.”
     As for the negative pressure often associated with the modeling industry, Davidson says Charleston’s community is no different, but it doesn’t faze her. She knows what’s she good at, and she works it 110 percent every time.
     “I’ve done a lot,” she says. “I work mainly with Rapport, but I’ve done things with everyone from Tommy Bahama, Calypso, the stores you see up and down King Street. A lot of bridal, like Modern Trousseau. I’ve done a few makeup things, even here at CosBar.”
     Despite being just five-foot-eight, Davidson has made a name for herself as a great walker and even better editorial model, although she says she will not actively pursue modeling after graduation.
     “A big part of being a model, a good one, or maybe even an effective one, is having a hype about yourself and advertising yourself and making people interested,” she explains. “You want people curious. And I am not into advertising what I am doing.”
     After graduation in May, Davidson plans to move to Columbia with her best friend and hopes to go back to school to pursue a medical career. “Modeling is not a career choice, but it is something I really enjoy doing now, while I can,” she says.
     The Tout Talent model will spend the rest of the day in front of the camera as the face of Rapport’s spring collection. Come Monday, Lydia Davidson, college student, will reappear, sitting through biology lectures, spending time in an MUSC research lab, going to chapter meetings. No one will know of her whereabouts the previous Friday. That is, until her they see her face on the cover of Charleston Living magazine.