Model Misconceptions

Fashion month is in full swing around the globe and I can’t help but think back to those both dreadful and also amazing weeks that happen four times a year.  To the world, it’s a life of glamour, private planes, luxurious resorts, fabulous spas, expensive dinners and exclusive parties.  People imagine money being thrown at girls just for showing up to do petty work walking in glamorous clothes for famous designers and girls being fed champagne and strawberries while getting foot massages.  While some of that glitz and glamour is real, there’s a lot more to it.  I thought I’d set the record straight.

Being a model (or a designer, hair and makeup artist, editor and buyer for that matter) during fashion months is amazing and adrenaline filled but, there’s plenty that the press doesn’t fill you in on.  Let’s start with the finances of it.  The average model is faced at the beginning of each season with gambling away their hard earned money.   If they choose to do a season of shows, they first have to foot the bill for a whirlwind trip around the globe; and then hope that when they show up, the product they’re selling (themselves) will be the hot commodity of the season and that the benefits of that, will show up in their bank account.  This bill will include flights to London, Paris and Milan (if you hopefully live in NY).  Also of course, hotels, food for the month and a driver.  Public transportation, although cheaper, is difficult to navigate in an unknown city and particularly impossible, especially if you are expected to be in ten places every hour on the hour.  As a model is.  

Now, let’s not forget about the model’s image.  What kind of car you arrive in, your personal wardrobe, what hotel you’re staying in and what class you fly in help to define the sort of model you are and what parties you’ll run into at night coming home.  These are the small differences that affect what people you have the potential to see at these parties and what hypothetical difference that might make in your career, or more imminently important, in that show season. So, you’re paying for all of these expenses that you can hopefully (but frequently not) afford. 

Now, you hope your presence in each of these cities will be appreciated, that you’ll be paid handsomely and that you’ll get glowing reviews rather than bad ones, which will give your career a nice positive boost.  What, might you ask, is worse than paying for all of these things and not being booked for enough shows to cover your costs?  I’ll tell you.  It’s the backlash that girls face for simply not getting booked enough.  It’s like a blinking neon sign over your head that you’re totally last season. Career suicide, so gamble carefully.  

Now on to the judgement at castings.  I am a big fan of fashion and I hate the bad wrap it gets for the behavior of a select few but, those few certainly exist and certainly have major impacts on girls and their mental health.   The amount of times that I’d walk into a casting greeted by hugs, kisses and compliments only to hear whispers about the girl who walked out just before you. “Do you see how fat she’s gotten?”,  “Her skin is dreadful”,  “Her proportions are just not right.”, “I think she’s anorexic.”, “She looked too tired.”.  If that famous girl is getting judged for her looks, weight and career, you can be sure you are as well.   They just wait until you’ve left the room, which I guess is nice.  

After paying enough to buy a car to be at the shows where every inch of them is being judged, girls work morning, noon and night to make it through the month.  They are up early for castings, 2nd castings, fittings and shows.  They arrive three hours or more before each show to have time for hair and makeup to do their thing, literally running from job to job or to appointments with no time to eat or sleep.  The expectation is to be at all the best parties, dinners, late night hotel parties and everything cool that happens in between.  Obviously the girls need to do all of this with clear skin, perfect hair and great attitudes because duh, that’s what they’re paid for. To be magic, I mean, models.  

People ask me all the time about someone they love being a model and my instant answer is, don’t do it.  I have always been very fortunate with most of my experiences in fashion and have made incredible lifelong friends from the industry but, I’m one of the lucky few.  I’ve heard the tears and have seen the impact it can leave on the lives of girls who are not so lucky.  The stress, the pain.  Models are so often looked at as shiny empty boxes.  Pretty on the outside but nothing on the inside.  While you scroll through IG or read Vogue.com this month and look longingly at these girls, remember this.  Most of the girls I met over the years are insanely hard working, self motivated and very brave.  Many of these girls come from nothing and take a big gamble and a huge leap of faith with their lives in fashion.  So frequently, I learned of stories of girls who worked hard to send money to their families at home, in an effort to improve the lives of those they love.  They work long hours, travel nonstop, give up on other dreams like college and “normal” careers and have to face a very adult world at times in very questionable ways, at a very young age.  Sure, these girls we idolize out there on the catwalk are living a theoretically great life.   I just wanted to remind you that it’s not all rainbows and butterflies.  These models are gorgeous on the outside and inside, mentally and socially intelligent, insanely hard working and they’re out there on their own, fighting for their place on the runway .  They’re fighting for it. It’s not being handed to them.