So You Wanna Be A SuperModel - Part 1

Yes, modeling is glamorous and exciting.  You are worshipped because you are beautiful, you city hop from Milan to Paris to New York.  Designers give you free clothes, your face can be everywhere and everybody wants to be your friend.  Its like being the eternal Prom Queen (or King).

But modeling more than anything is a job and fashion is more than anything, an industry.  Bluntly put, a model is product. She is product that moves other product like jeans, hair spray, make-up, toothpaste. If she fails to move product, she makes no money and garners no fame. It is unwise for any aspiring model to ever confuse the money and the attention as a sign that she is a wonderful person. Agencies don't sign you simply because they find you charming. You are here to make money, for them and eventually for yourself.

RULE NUMBER 1:  THE CLIENT IS GOD.

The bigger the Client, the more god-like. As far as the industry is concerned Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and  Ralph Lauren created the known universe. The better you understand the idea that this is a business and you are a product, the greater your chances of success.  Which brings us to the second issue of The Industry.

The Industry is set up like a pyramid. The higher end of the pyramid is where you find the supermodels who meet a very rarefied ideal of chic.When people aspire to be a model they are invariably thinking about the upper end of the business: The cover of Harpar's Bazaar, exclusive Revlon beauty contracts, Gucci ad campaigns... But only the top 5% of the population of models ever get to that level. It sometimes takes years to crack that in club. For instance, magazine editorials (even for Vogue) pay less than $500.00 but it gives you the chance to hob-nob with hot photographers like Steven Miesel or Mario Testino who as fate would have it: shoot the $10,000 ad campaigns for the larger designers ...like Gucci.

For the most part, the majority of models are just content to get any paying work and that usually means catalogue shoots  which can pay thousands of dollars a day... but it clearly does not have the prestige of being selected by Richard Avedon for a Versace ad campaign.  Fashion definitely has its pecking order. Be prepared to face the possibility of making good money while damaging your potential chicness and thus never becoming a "star model".
 

BONE STRUCTURE IS DESTINY

Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder but the closest objective index of what makes a face striking is bone structure. Piercing eyes, very high cheekbones, a proportionate nose, pouty lips and an angular but symmetrical face will turn a modeling scouts' head twice as fast. If you have such a face, chances are you have been attracting attention for a while now and probably are quite aware of it.

Also, while beauty is subjective,  perfect skin is not. Oversized pores, pimples and blemishes are not forgiven in the line of work.  Make-up artists have been known to be personally offended when a model showed up to work with a zit. The way the boy or girl looks in person is one thing, the way they photograph, entirely another.

Being photogenic is life or death. If you are one of those people who cannot take a bad picture then this is the industry for you. However, the industry is littered with the dead cards of a thousand beauties who just could not work the camera.
Naomi Campbell once confided to us that ever since she was 16 she has been practicing her poses in the mirror to explore what her best angles and positions are. She has even become sensitive to the angle at which light strikes her face. She claims  she can feel bad lighting. It's one of the secrets of her success.