Israeli model Sofia Mechetner, 14, opened the show for Christian Dior at Paris Fashion Week.

But her appearance on the catwalk was a far cry from her day-to-day routine in the depressed neighbourhood of Holon, outside Tel Aviv, where her mother, an immigrant from the Former Soviet Union, tries to keep the family fed by working three jobs.

Sofia, who is 5”10 and blonde, decided to approach a modelling agency a few months ago, after being repeatedly asked if she was a model. Robert Ben-Shushan, founder of the Roberto agency in Tel Aviv which signed her, says that she struck him as resembling a “young Claudia Schiffer.”

He sent her to Paris to meet an exclusive agency, which backed out of a photo shoot with her after deciding she was too young. So Mechetner decided to see the sites of Paris, and found herself in a Dior shop, at the same time as the company’s creative director Raf Simons happened to be visiting. Showing Israeli chutzpah she requested a selfie, then gave him her phone number, and within hours Dior had made contact. Sofia’s picture is now on the front page of Dior’s website.

Talking about her life in a documentary about her life aired on Israel’s Channel 2, she said: “Mum is not at home, she’s at work, cleaning… I get home, prepare food, sweep the floors, fold laundry.” She is in charge of her siblings in the afternoon, before settling in to a mattress on the floor to go to sleep, and is probably the only model in the business who lacks a mirror in her bedroom, naming it as one of the items she would like.

Now she hopes to use her money from her contract — estimated at £170,000 — to move her family to a larger home “with a nice kitchen and a clean bathroom.”