From: pcg@panix.com (Paul Gallagher)
Subject: Another Cosmopolitan article about becoming a model
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 23:34:36 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC


Title:       It takes more than knockout looks to make a model. 

Author:     Dranov, Paula

It takes more than knockout look To Make A Model

How do those bewitching beauties get discovered? Even if you're not five feet
nine (a good start), you'll savor our spicy specifics about the cover-girl
biz!

Nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning. I am sitting with six pretty girls in the
reception area of Elite Model Management, one of New York's top agencies. On
the walls are row after row of framed magazine covers featuring Elite models,
an impressive roster of beauties that includes superstars Paulina, Carol Alt,
Iman, and Andie MacDowell. The girls on the upholstered waiting-room
banquettes with me are here to see Jan Stewart, director of Elite's New Faces
division. They're all lovely, and clearly, they all have dreams of landing on
those covers--but as I've already learned from talking to the experts, dreams
and looks are not enough.

The outer door opens. A willowy girl with a bouffant hairdo and stiletto heels
breezes in--another candidate for this morning's "open interview," a daily
ritual here at Elite and at most other agencies.

"How tall are you?" asks the receptionist.

"Five seven and a half," replies the newcomer.

"Minimum height here is five eight," says the sharp-eyed receptionist politely
but firmly as she hands the girl a printed sheet of paper. "Try one of these
agencies. They handle petites."

Jan Stewart has agreed to let me sit in on today's round of interviews. "I've
never been able to tell a girl she just won't make it--even when I know she
won't," confesses Stewart as she leads me to her office. What she does tell
them, I soon discover, is that they don't have the particular look Elite is
promoting these days.

The first girl comes in. She's a tall, attractive blond, but she hasn't
brought any pictures. Without them, Stewart can't assess how photogenic she
is, how she relates to the camera, whether she has "the look"--that
indefinable magic that jumps through the camera lens, making us stop and look
at the girl and, more important, at what she's selling. (Rule number one for
aspiring models: Don't approach an agency unless you bring some pictures.
Snapshots or slides will do for a beginner; you don't need an elaborate and
expensive professional portfolio.)

Stewart can usually tell by a glance at a girl and her photos whether she has
potential. "But if I'm not absolutely sure, I'll get someone else to take a
look," she tells me. So far, she hasn't rejected anyone who went on to become
a superstar.

Twice this morning, she leaves the room with photos. Once, it's a special
case, a potential defector from another agency who is dissatisfied with the
progress of her career. Maybe switching to Elite will give her the boost she
needs, the blue-eyed blond tells me while Stewart is out of the room. Later,
Stewart indicates that Elite probably will sign the defector if she is
determined to change agencies.

Stewart is also intrigued by a girl in a black leather coat. She has just
returned to the United States from a six-month modeling stint in Germany. She
has worked on the West Coast also, but this is her first foray into New York.
Stewart thinks she has potential but wants someone else to look at her. An
appointment is arranged for another day.

The other aspirants are handled gently. Stewart compliments each girl on her
photographs or best features--"I can see you have great skin and hair," she
tells one delicate blond--before wrapping up the interview by saying that her
look doesn't meet Elite's current needs. She is so skilled at the rejection
process that some girls don't seem to realize what has happened until she
hands them a list of other agencies and wishes them luck. "Occasionally, a
girl will get angry and tell me I don't know what I'm doing, that she's pretty
and has what it takes," Stewart says. "Thank heaven it doesn't happen often."

What does it take? First, the easy part: Blue-eyed blonds still hold a slight
advantage (because light eyes photograph best, explains Eileen Ford, head of
the Ford Agency and doyenne of the modeling industry), but these days, models
can be dark-eyed brunettes, black, Hispanic, Asian. One top agency, Click,
prefers ethnic beauties. Tall ethnic beauties. Minimum height at most agencies
these days is five eight, but you have a much better shot if you're five nine
or more. "This is a tall business," affirms Ford. "If someone tells you you're
going to be a superstar petite, you have to know that there ain't no such
animal." (Yes, there are petite models, but they never become top models.) The
reason for the emphasis on height is simple: Clothes show to best advantage
when displayed on a long, lean body. Over the years, the height requirement
has been spiraling upward. Dorian Leigh, a modeling superstar of the fifties,
was only five six--impossibly short by today's standards.

"When I started out," recalls Elite president Monique Pillard, "models had no
curves, but they had big shoulders. They wore clothes fantastically and were
very knowledgeable and elegant on the runway." Over the years, the look has
evolved from that ultrasleek sophistication to a more accessible
girl-next-door aura--a golden California-girl ideal--and then broadened to
include a range of dark-eyed and dark-skinned ethnic types. Once unthinkable
on a model, bosoms and curves are in demand today. "Now we see models who
never would have made it years ago," says Pillard, "but through it all, one
look endures. Classic beauties like Suzy Parker, Paulina, and Brooke Shields
will always be with us."

The agencies also want youth. A physically mature thirteen-year-old will do,
but the preferred age is sixteen to twenty. Once she passes twenty, a girl is
generally considered too old to start. (The most famous exception to this
rule: actress Isabella Rosellini, who didn't begin to model until she was
twenty-eight.)

Click president Frances Grill contends that the principal problem for older
girls is one of attitude--they usually have a fixed idea of how they want to
look. A girl over twenty "has already plucked her eyebrows," sighs Grill, and
isn't as easy to mold into a model as a younger girl.

Elite's Monique Pillard traces the trend toward very young models to the
success of Brooke Shields, a fashion megastar at fourteen. All the agencies
maintain that the pressure to recruit very young girls comes from magazine
fashion editors, who are always asking for someone "fresh and new." Although
Eileen Ford challenges the notion that today's models must be very young--"You
don't see fourteen-year-olds modeling clothes by Bill Blass and Oscar de la
Renta"--the reality is that a girl must start young to get all the mileage she
can out of a modeling career. It takes a year or two to build a book of
professional photographs to launch herself. After that, she may have only four
to eight good working years ahead of her.

"At twenty-four, some girls look eighteen and tell people that's how old they
are," says Hunter Reno, a top Elite model who just turned twenty-one. The
deception is sometimes necessary, she says, because "once you hit twenty-four,
the clients start looking for wrinkles. You're still so young, but they
classify you as an old woman."

Frances Grill maintains that "most girls leave modeling--for marriage or
college, usually--before modeling leaves them," but it is true that when a
model begins to look less like a girl and more like a woman, her career may
suffer. Older models (in their mid- to late twenties and beyond) are still
spectacularly beautiful, but they exude assurance and elegance, not the
freshness and vulnerability of the youngsters they must compete with.

Even so, a modeling career can go on indefinitely--witness Lauren Hutton, who,
at forty-six, is still in demand. Elite recently established a new division
for its older models. "We can't put models who make money for themselves and
the agency out to pasture," says Monique Pillard. Wilhelmina, another top
agency, is also known for nurturing its experienced models. The Ford Agency
represents Hutton and Carmen, a beautiful model in her fifties whose career is
still in high gear, but it doesn't have a special division for older women.

Although they know it when they see it, not even the pros can readily define
what makes a model. Ford, who travels the world in search of girls who meet
her exacting standards, hesitates when asked. Finally, she replies, "Any
pretty girl can be a model, but not any pretty girl can be a star" (such as
Ford luminaries Christie Brinkley, Renee Simonsen, and Cheryl Tiegs). A star
radiates energy, says Ford. "None of those girls is passive looking. There's a
fire inside them when they're in front of the camera."

Even more important than a girl's looks is how she photographs. "Some models
are not extraordinarily beautiful, but they come alive in front of the
camera," says Pillard. "Sometimes, girls come in without photographs. They
look plain, and when you do see pictures of them, you can't believe it is the
same girl. I've also seen very beautiful girls who don't make it because they
don't photograph well."

Becoming a model is a long shot even for a tall, pretty girl, but
nevertheless, there is no shortage of aspirants. The agency pros are besieged
daily by girls, their parents, and family friends. Girls with connections--an
introduction from someone who knows someone--may get preferential treatment.
They may be seen outside the formal structure of the daily open-interview
process, but that's as far as connections can take them--no girl will be
signed unless an agency truly believes she can make money as a model.

However they approach the agencies, most girls never get past the first
interview. In the more than forty years that the Ford Agency has been in
business, less than 5 percent of the aspiring models who come for open
interviews have been "tested"--photographed by a pro to see if the magic is
there. Although it is a smaller, newer agency, chances are even slimmer at
Click. Frances Grill says that in the ten years she has been in business, not
one girl has been discovered via an open interview. And, to Grill's knowledge,
only one girl rejected by Click has gone on to a career in modeling.

Despite their low yield, open interviews remain an industry fixture. It is not
hard to understand why. Carol Alt just walked in the door at Elite. She had
already been to Wilhelmina, where former president Bill Weinberg recognized
her potential. "I knew she was going to be a star," he recalls. Why did Alt
choose Elite? "She told me it was because we were the nearest to the subway,"
says Pillard, laughing.

Lauren Hutton had been rejected by every agency in New York before she
presented herself to Eileen Ford, who says she knew immediately that Lauren
would be a star. Like other top models, Hutton exuded a quality Ford likens to
"molten lava bubbling inside"--which more than compensated for the gap between
her front teeth and that now-famous lazy eye.

Hunter Reno was only thirteen years old and five nine (she's now five eleven
plus) when her mother brought her to New York to see if she was model
material. Encouraged by a positive response to some photos mailed to a small
agency, Hunter and her mother made the rounds. At their second stop, they met
Eileen Ford, who set up a test. A week later, Reno had her first job.

Since so few girls who come in have what it takes, the agencies are always
searching--everywhere--for new models. Grill has found girls on the street and
on the bus. Some have been introduced by photographers or magazine editors,
who are quick to spot modeling potential. Pillard once found a model at a
suburban McDonald's en route to her weekend home.

"I kept staring at this beautiful girl," she recalls, "but I was afraid to
approach her." Finally, at her husband's urging, Pillard gave the girl her
business card and told her, "I would like to see how you photograph." A week
later, a successful test was arranged.

Model Claudia Mason was discovered by another Elite executive while browsing
with a friend at a New York record store. She was fourteen at the time but
already five eleven. Mason, now eighteen, has been modeling ever since,
juggling bookings and classes at New York's Professional Children's School.
After high school, she plans to model full-time for a few years before going
on to college.

Away from home base, the Ford Agency scours the globe in its annual Supermodel
of the World search. Elite conducts the worldwide Look of the Year contest.
And agency pros are always judging beauty contests or officiating at small,
local model hunts. Pillard recalls an event in Pennsylvania where she saw 650
girls in one afternoon and didn't find any with modeling potential. She did
sign a girl that day, though: Elaine Irwin, now a top Elite model, who wasn't
in the "hunt" but was waiting for a friend who did take part.

The agencies also find models through scouts stationed around the world, but
this system has given rise to some sticky problems. How is a girl to know that
the person who approaches her is on the level and has a legitimate affiliation
with an agency?

"Naturally, bright and careful kids will check any offer, any approach," says
Bill Weinberg. How? Call the agency or magazine the scout mentions, Weinberg
suggests. If no one can vouch for the person, stay away! "Girls will be
surprised at how willing and anxious we are to help in those cases," says
Weinberg. "I take those calls myself," adds Eileen Ford, who promptly notifies
local legal authorities whenever she hears of a scout falsely claiming a Ford
affiliation.

Launching a modeling career can present other hazards as well. In 1988, 60
Minutes ran an expose of the risks young girls face when they go to Europe to
develop their portfolios, an often-necessary first step to a successful
career. (There are more fashion and beauty magazines and, as a result, more
work for beginners in Europe than in the U.S.) Correspondent Diane Sawyer
interviewed a number of girls who claimed that men who run some of the
agencies in Paris demand sex in return for modeling assignments. One of the
men named by Sawyer heads an agency that handled the careers of young Ford
models as well as others not affiliated with Ford. Sawyer noted that the Ford
Agency has a well-deserved reputation for protecting its girls and
acknowledged that Ford models had no complaints about the Frenchman. Other
young models claimed, though, that they were frequent targets. "If you don't
go to bed with him, you don't work," one girl told Sawyer.

On the air, Eileen Ford professed surprise when confronted with the charges
but told COSMO that she considered the 60 Minutes report "very superficial."
The dangers girls face are "much worse" than those Sawyer documented,
according to Ford, but she wouldn't specify what they are. "A mother who sends
her fifteen-year-old to Paris or Milan is going to get exactly what she
deserves," says Ford. "What do they think is going to happen? They don't open
their eyes to reality. Unless a girl comes into this business with very strong
moral convictions, she's very likely to get into trouble."

Tammy Hopkins, a top Wilhelmina model, says she wasn't approached by the male
predators because her mother came along when she went to Milan to build up her
protfolio. She was aware of what was going on, though. "You could see it
around the hotels, all the playboys driving up in the evenings."

Bill Weinberg contends that other shocks await young girls who go to Europe.
"A churchgoing kid from Ohio who lands in Italy may get pretty upset the first
time a photographer tells her to take off her shirt for a picture," he says.
The girls who suffer most, he adds, are those who "don't want to be a problem,
so they go against what they've been taught or what they believe." For that
reason, he cautions girls against going to Europe unprotected by a reputable
agency to familiarize them with the territory and serve as a buffer.

Back in New York, the trajectory of a model's career is determined by the
editorial exposure she gets on magazine fashion pages. Editorial work offers
the most prestige but pays much less--between one hundred and two hundred
dollars an hour--than advertising and catalogs jobs. A top model can earn $350
an hour modeling for catalogs, and much more if she lands an important
advertising job. Superstars can make millions: Paulina recently signed a
multimillion-dollar exclusive contract with Estee Lauder, and Isabella
Rosellini's three-year contract with Lancome reportedly brought her about two
million dollars.

Overall, a girl's money-making potential is determined by how adaptable her
looks are. For advertisements and some catalog jobs, she needs what is known
in the business as a commercial look. Bill Weinberg describes it as a fresh,
"bubble gum, toothpaste" look. Fashion editors want another dimension: some
sophistication, perhaps, or a less accessible type of beauty. Weinberg makes
the point that an exotic or aloof-looking model who is ideal for
ultrahigh-fashion work might have difficulty crossing over to the commercial
pretty-secretary look. If she can't, her modeling--and money-making--potential
is limited.

Although agency bookers arrange a girl's schedule, models themselves bear a
hefty share of the responsibility for building and maintaining their
clientele. "You have to try to sell yourself and control your own career,"
says Gunilla Lindblad, a Swedish blond beauty whose career has spanned more
than twenty years and who remains a big money-maker. Hunter Reno drops in on
current and former clients "to say hello to my friends" and to remind them
that she's still around. "People forget," she says. "There are so many girls
in the business, so many big blonds."

A girl's career also depends on how well she does her job. "If you want them
to call you back, you have to be professional," says Tammy Hopkins. "You must
be on time, and if you fight with your boyfriend, you don't bring it to the
studio. Your clients don't want to hear about it. You are theirs for the day.
They're paying top dollar, and they want you to be `on,' no matter how you
feel."

You have to take care of yourself too, "or it shows," says Hopkins, who is
twenty-four. "The camera is five inches in front of your face, so if you
didn't sleep all night, you'll show it." She goes to bed at ten most nights
and is up at six. Hunter Reno also makes it a policy not to go out during the
week so she'll look fresh for the camera.

On the job, models have to shed their inhibitions. "I used to feel shy doing
certain moves, like twirling so the dress moves," says Tammy Hopkins, "but
every year, I get more and more comfortable. I'm becoming a better model." For
catalog work, models must know how to pose to make a dress look its best--so
that cuffs or detail on the sleeve are visible, for example.

It doesn't sound like heavy duty, but the work can be tiring and,
occasionally, unpleasant. "I have less and less patience," says Gunilla
Lindblad. Sometimes a designer, hairstylist, makeup artist, and editor
surround her, retouching this and that as a photographic session progresses.
"Sometimes, I just want to shake them all off," she admits.

Claudia Mason once found herself standing waist deep in an insect-infested
lily pond to model a shirt. "How I felt doesn't project," she admits, glancing
at the published photo, but she didn't enjoy the bugs or the muck oozing
around her ankles. It is also no fun to spend the day surrounded by wind
machines whipping your clothes and hair and making your eyes sting and water.

All in all, however, modeling does offer hefty rewards: plenty of money,
travel (it is a career that takes you everywhere), luxurious hotels and great
restaurants (at the client's expense), the chance to meet the famous and
glamorous people involved in the fashion business. "It can be a very spoiling
life," says Reno.

They acknowledge their good fortune, but every model I spoke to asked me to
set the record straight on one particular point. They don't get to keep the
clothes.

Oh, well, you can't have everything.

Could You Be a Model?

Okay, you're the right height (five eight or taller) and the right age
(between sixteen and twenty). What other attributes do you need to be a model?
Here's a checklist: * Measurements of 34-24-34 (some leeway is allowed). *
Long legs. * A toned body (but not too well-conditioned, a runner's
overdeveloped calves aren't suited to modeling). * A long neck ("There is no
such thing as a model with a short neck," says Eileen Ford). * High
cheekbones. * Delicate features. * A good mouth (full lips are a strong
selling point these days). * A thin, straight nose. * Good bone structure. * A
flawless complexion. (This can be achieved if your skin is basically healthy.
Frances Grill of Click puts girls with less-than-perfect skin on a month-long
regimen of ten glasses of bottled water per day. "Not eight or nine. Ten full
glasses," Grill insists. No dairy products, no chocolate, no junk food, no
candy, no red meat). * A face that commands attention. * Slender hands. (There
are a few hand models in the business, but they come from the ranks of working
models; agencies aren't interested in girls with only one marketable feature.)
* All of the above plus eagerness, energy, a bubbly personality.

PHOTO : First step to a shot at a cover: close scrutiny (Tall and slim?
Photogenic? Got a special

PHOTO : look?) by agency experts.

PHOTO : Worldwide contests, like Ford's, turn up future stars.

PHOTO : Eileen, daughter Lacey, standing, manage glamorous roster that
includes supermodel Hunter

PHOTO : Reno (above).

PHOTO : Iman on the runway, modeling Christian Dior for the fashion press.

PHOTO : Paulina in Saint Barts, posing for Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Newsgroups: alt.supermodels