WEST VILLAGE — She's gone from fashion house to townhouse.
A stunning brunette who spent years sashaying down the runway in Prada and Chanel has traded in her stilettos for a second career in sales — hawking high-end Manhattan real estate.
Former supermodel Trish Goff, whose face graced fashion mags such as Vogue, ditched a life of flashing cameras and jetsetting around the globe to become an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman’s West Village office.
“I love having a desk,” said Goff, a 36-year-old native of Florida and a long-time New Yorker who lives in Chelsea. “I spent my entire career since I was a teenager going to different locations for work.”
Goff started modeling in the city at 15 and was soon appearing on the cover of Vogue magazines across Europe throughout the late 1990s, according to New York magazine.
She has walked down runways wearing the biggest names in fashion: Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui and Calvin Klein. And over the last decade, she appeared in ad campaigns for the Gap and Macy's, and was also the face of Christian Dior and Ann Taylor.
After a brief hiatus, Goff returned to the catwalk to close out designer Alexander Wang's fall show before deciding to switch gears.
While considering possibilities for a new career, Goff realized real estate could be an option during strolls with her boyfriend along 10th Avenue.
A beautiful townhouse that had always caught her attention was sold a week after going on the market, she said.
“That was the moment,” she said. “That was when it dawned on me I should be a real estate agent."
Goff, who has a teenage son, Nyima, reached out to a former modeling manager who also made the transition to being an agent there. She was then put in touch with the West Village office’s sales director, Max Dobens, who she credits with convincing her to join the firm.
Since starting in July, Goff has focused on Manhattan’s downtown and Tribeca and Chelsea, and she's even debating whether to venture into Brooklyn.
Goff said the skills she learned during her modeling career can be applied to real estate.
“Being able to walk in a room with people you don’t know and be comfortable — I’m very used to that,” she said. “There’s an ability to work with different cultures. There are not that many places I haven’t been.”
And she said that her contacts from the fashion world are helping her build a client base.
“Since I started, people from my contacts in fashion, they’re so excited,” Goff said. “They have all the questions they want to ask and they finally know someone who’s in the industry.”
Being an agent is far from Goff’s first brush with real estate: she's been purchasing homes in the city since she was a teen.
She bought her first home in the Lower East Side in 1997 when she was around 19, she said. Three years later, she renovated the space and sold it. Her most recent purchase was in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Garden in 2006.
“After having an agent for 20 years, I’m now the agent,” Goff said. “It’s great experience.”
