EW: Everyone else was in the South of France, she was at coding class.

KK: Actually. I was looking for something new to learn. I was at a point in my career where I was a little bit burnt out on traveling and on being whatever everyone else wanted me to be. The great thing about being a model is that you get to be a muse, you get to take on all these different characters, but I felt like I was being so many different things for so many different people, I wasn't investing time in myself or in my education. Not to say that what I was doing wasn't valuable or meaningful, but I wasn't filling my own cup. That was the biggest drive for me to want to learn something new and challenging — to prove to myself that I could. I didn't go into this coding class with the intention of doing anything with it. Certainly not starting Kode with Klossy. More for the purpose of learning something hard, and proving to myself that I could figure it out. That was three years ago. You all, my Kode With Klossy girls, are why I'm so inspired and motivated to keep growing Kode with Klossy. I realized that there's so much potential with code, and not enough opportunity for girls to have access to this learning. That was this real a-ha moment that I had, thinking that someone should be pushing girls in this direction and opening their eyes to all of the creative ways that it can be applied. Tech and creative industries are very much aligned.

EW: Over the last 10 years, every industry has been disrupted by technology in a major way. How have you seen the fashion industry specifically start embracing technology in new ways?

KK: You also can speak to this very much so as an editor. Over the last 10 years — since my first Teen Vogue editorial — the digital components of all these industries have been transformed. At runway shows, it was no longer just the photographers who were allowed with a camera backstage, but all of a sudden, I had a phone in my hand and a social media account. I was like, wait a minute, I can take a better picture of myself than anyone else here can take, post it, and own it.

EW: I remember seeing you backstage when I was a beauty editor, and Karlie was one of the first models who was full-on hyperlapse shooting during the process of getting her makeup done. Then I'd see it on vogue.com and I'd be like wow, that's so smart — why didn't Teen Vogue get her to do that?

KK: I can be the canvas that somebody else can project their own ideas onto, but I can also have my own ideas and put them out to the world on my own platform and accounts. That was a real shift for me as a model to realize that I can control my own narrative. I think it's amazing how the entire industry has completely had to rewrite the rules, to relearn how to exist in this new world that we live in, because everything has changed. Shopping. Communicating. Getting inspired.

EW: When I started at Teen Vogue less than five years ago, our website consisted of one person. And now the team is 25 people. digital editorial director Phill Picardi is 26 years old. What's been so incredible to watch in this digital boom over the last four and a half years, especially at Teen Vogue, is that it creates opportunities for young people to be the boss. Phill was 24 when he came on board as digital editorial director. The reality is, if someone's coming in and saying “I've been doing social media for 30 years,” you probably shouldn't hire them. It's just not true. The people who are experts at these things are young, and that means there's more opportunities for you to be the experts and to inform the rest of the organization, and that's power. That didn't exist before. You had to wait 20 years before you have a job like Phill has today.