There are books, and then there are cultural fever dreams. ICYMI, the internet has been rediscovering Modelland, Tyra Banks’s 2011 dystopian young adult novel, and every new detail somehow sounds more unbelievable than the last. What starts as a story about a modeling school quickly spirals into a universe filled with magical supermodels, dark secrets, and mysterious kidnappings. (Yes, really.) But the Modelland lore goes way deeper than the book.
If you haven’t read Modelland, it’s kind of like The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter meets America’s Next Top Model. Or, as Banks herself put it in a 2011 interview with Howard Stern: “America’s Next Top Model with some magic.” The story follows Tookie De La Crème, a 15-year-old girl with one green eye, one brown eye, and a forehead that “goes on and on and on and on.” Tookie isn’t considered conventionally beautiful in her world. In fact, she’s often treated like an outsider. Then everything changes.
On Discovery Day, she’s selected to attend the legendary boarding school Modelland, where students train to become Intoxibellas—the most famous and celebrated models in the world. Alongside her friends Dylan, a plus-size girl; Shiraz, who stands at just 4’6″; and Piper, an albino girl, Tookie must survive the trials of Modelland while uncovering the dark secrets hidden beneath its glamorous surface. It’s giving runway dystopia. It’s giving “running on runways to running for your life.” And somehow, that’s only the beginning.
After publishing Modelland in 2011, Banks continued expanding the world she created. Over the next decade, Modelland evolved into what can only be described as a full-blown Tyra Banks universe: a book, a song, an ice cream company, and eventually, an immersive attraction. And after the book resurfaced on social media, internet users are falling down the Modelland rabbit hole.
First, there was the song, which Banks uploaded to YouTube in October 2011. I’m just going to leave this here.
Then, in 2021, Banks opened SMiZE & DREAM, her ice cream company. The brand officially opened its flagship location in Santa Monica, California, on July 2, 2021. In 2024, SMiZE & DREAM expanded with a pop-up shop in Washington, D.C.’s Woodley Park neighborhood, marking the brand’s first permanent U.S. storefront after earlier ventures that included a mobile ice cream truck in Dubai and pre-packaged pints sold in Los Angeles.
Banks also opened a SMiZE & DREAM ice cream store in Australia that sold what she called “hot ice cream” — essentially warm, melted ice cream that customers could pour into a cup and sip, which somehow feels exactly like something that would exist inside the world of Modelland. Fans have also pointed out similarities between imagery associated with Tookie De La Crème and branding used in SMiZE & DREAM, creating the impression that Tookie never really disappeared.
But that’s not the end of Tookie and Modelland. In 2022, Banks opened an IRL ModelLand, an interactive experience at Santa Monica Place in California. Marketed as “a multi-sensorial experience,” guests were invited to “find your light, werk your angles, and eat yummy ice cream.” Visitors paid admission, received ice cream samples, explored immersive experiences, posed in smizing booths where Banks virtually directed selfies, collected merchandise featuring iconic Banks quotes, and followed guides who taught them how to find their light.
Whether you think Modelland is brilliant, bizarre, or both, there’s something impressive about a woman refusing to be boxed into a single title. Model, host, producer, entrepreneur, author, and arguably one of the most ambitious creative directors of her generation, Banks has spent her career transforming ideas into experiences. Maybe supermodels do have superpowers after all. Or maybe Tyra Banks just understood the power of world-building long before the rest of us caught up.