<![CDATA[Jezebel: austria alcantara]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: austria alcantara]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/austriaalcantara http://jezebel.com/tag/austriaalcantara <![CDATA[Black Models Tell Teen Vogue How Hard It Is To Be Black Models]]> Teen Vogue has not one but two black models on the November cover. Inside, Chanel Iman says of Jourdan Dunn: "I could sit here and tell you, 'I love Jourdan! We've always been the best of friends!' But we haven't."

She continues:

"Until recently, we barely even spoke. We went from being superclose in the beginning," she says, "to dead silence if we saw each other backstage at a show." Not even a hello? "If we did say hi, it was hi, and that's it."

Why was there tension between the two ladies?

"It's competition," Jourdan says. "There aren't a lot of us, but instead of sticking together, we're pitted against each other. People will say things in Chanel's ear like, 'Jourdan is taking your spot,' and then they'll say to me, 'Don't trust Chanel.'"

Though Vogue's recent history with models of color has been to (mostly) ignore them, little sister Teen Vogue has been more inclusive: An Asian model appeared in the January 2009 issue; in November 2008, two brown-skinned models had a multi-page fashion spread. (At the time, we called them "black models," but Selina Khan is from the French-speaking Caribbean island Martinique and swears she's not black, but "Indian, mixed with Arabic and Creole, and Vietnamese." As for Austria Alcantara, she's Dominican. The point is: They're models of color and a change from the blonde women who are staples in Vogue publications.)

Even though the ladies on this cover are incredibly successful, they're quick to point out how hard it is to be a black model in the fashion industry. Jourdan says:

"I remember last season I was about to go into a casting, and my agent phoned and said, 'Turn back. They decided they don't want any black models.' I was like, 'They're actually telling you that's the reason? Are you serious?!'"

Part of me wishes she would name the designer, so we'd know who ought to be ashamed of themselves. Since we counted models of color at New York Fashion Week in February, we know it could be any one of several designers: The shows for Alexandre Herchcovitz, Behnaz Sarafpour, Costello Tagliapietra, Erin Fetherston, Halston, Marchesa, Max Azria, Milly, Miss Sixty, Monique Lhuillier, Nicole Miller, Philosophy, Reem Acra, Tibi, TSE, United Bamboo, Vena Cava, VPL and Vivienne Tam had zero black models. Then again, maybe Jourdan was talking about London Fashion Week. Or Paris.

Hopefully, the fact that Teen Vogue has black models on the cover means that diversity is finally becoming a priority for the Vogue brand. After months and months without any black models, Chanel Iman was on the cover of Vogue in May 2007 (under the fold); Liya Kedebe was on the May 2009 cover (but not alone). And Jennifer Hudson, Michelle Obama and LeBron James have landed Vogue covers recently, even if black models have not been so lucky.

Since Jourdan Dunn is pregnant (yes, Teen Vogue put a pregnant teenager on the cover) we can't be sure what kind of magazine spreads she'll book right now (although a maternity-wear shoot would be a great idea!) But Chanel Iman seems optimistic about the future:

"I don't want to be known as the black model. I want to be recognized as Chanel Iman, a personality. Five years from now I see myself still working hard to get where I want to be, because I think big. I think the best. Maybe I think too large."

Double Whammy [Teen Vogue]
Chanel Iman And Jourdan Dunn Teen Vogue Cover Shoot Photos [Teen Vogue]

Related: Chanel Iman And Jourdan Dunn's Greatest Runway Hits [Teen Vogue]
Orange You Glad I Met Selina? [Tia Williams]

Earlier:
Vogue's Not Racist; Three Black Models Prove It!
Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
Analyzing The Absurdist Art In The New Teen Vogue
13 Horrifying Images From The New Teen Vogue
Black Models: Teen Vogue Goes Where Vogue Will Not
How Did New York Fashion Week's 116 Shows Treat Models Of Color?

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5374456&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Oh, God: Pixie Geldof Gets Cover Of Italian Vogue]]>
  • It's too early for this heartbreak. Pixie (Pixie!) Geldof got the March Italian Vogue cover. Have Franca Sozzani and Steven Meisel lost their minds? The cover line is "So young, so cool." So barf. [Telegraph]

  • Maria Sharapova for Cole Haan is now a reality. The new campaign looks pretty good, and for fall, Sharapova herself will create a line of shoes and bags for the brand. Assuming, that is, that we've started buying celebrity fashion lines again by fall. [Sassybella]
  • Alexander Wang has designed a limited-edition run of condoms called Proper Attire. They're for sale in Thompson hotels, and all the proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood. Wang, whose fall/winter show is, appropriately, on Valentine's Day, said of the collaboration: "I used a spare design that felt sexy, modern and empowering; after all, women should always come first!" Yes. [The Cut]
  • Prada, meanwhile is concentrating on objects that are intimate in a different way: The next edition of its LG phone launched last week. "You carry it with you and it tells something about you," said Prada's director of licensing. I'd go through the specs, but if you're buying a Prada phone, you probably don't care about any technical point of difference so much as you do about it being a Prada phone. [Business Week]
  • The Paris show schedule was just released. At Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquière is changing his venue, and there's no mention of the troubles at Nina Ricci — Olivier Theyskens is on the calendar. (Allegedly, creative director Theyskens is to be replaced at Nina Ricci before the end of his contract by Marc Jacobs' second-in-command at Louis Vuitton, Peter Copping.) [WWD]
  • Manish Arora, a London-based, Indian-born designer who showed last season in Paris (you remember — it was the show both Madeline and Austria booked in Paris) has a Q&A where he discusses his use of color, the influence of his homeland on his designs, and his upcoming projects. Which include a deal with Swatch. [Style.com]
  • And Fashionista has a sit-down with Elise Overland. Her fall collection is all about food — sushi, to be exact. "It's very sexual, almost macabre," says Overland, "the way they show all the sushi and how the fish is all cut up, up close. If you look at like it like a small human, kind of." That was not a pleasant image this early in the morning, but, carry on I suppose. [Fashionista]
  • New York talked to Jason Wu at his little soiree the other night. Unsurprisingly, still riding the post-inaugural boost, he was upbeat. "You know, you have to give someone a legitimate reason to purchase something," he said, of the current economic climate. "And that can only help the market." [The Cut]
  • Which fits right in with Women's Wear Daily's view that young designers should find the brave new economy "invigorating." [WWD]
  • The WaPo's Robin Givhan is more sobering. Read her thoughtful and considered expectations for fall/winter 09. "The conversation is focused on survival," Givhan writes. "There's palpable anxiety about the economy and how the fashion industry — the part dominated by razzle-dazzle dresses, hand-stitched embroidery and Italian cashmere — will weather the storm. And there's confusion over what sort of tone the industry should strike as it muddles through the worst of it. Magazine editors are running through their list of synonyms for budget and bargain while trying to maintain the fairy dust of glamour and élan. Big retailers have been discounting everything but the light fixtures." [Washington Post]
  • L'Oreal has stopped shipping supplies of its cosmetics — including brands like Lancôme — to a leading Russian retailer. The store L'Etoile has been late on its payments due to the credit crunch. [WSJ]
  • A tipster tells Racked.com that Gucci has disbanded its in-house architecture firm, which would normally be responsible for store interiors, and set designs at shows. So, that could be true. Or not. [Racked]
  • More news on the potential bankruptcy of the IT Holdings SpA division that owns luxury labels Gianfranco Ferre and Malo, and ready-to-wear licenses from Versace Sport and Just Cavalli, among others. The group hit trouble because of the credit squeeze and falling demand for luxury products (duh), which cause it to run out of money to operate those licenses. The company says it hopes to restructure and come out of bankruptcy. [WSJ]
  • A pressure group called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 well-known brand-name lipsticks over a year ago to find that 61% had lead levels of 0.01 - 0.65 parts per million, and a third had lead levels that exceeded the FDA's safe lead limit for candy. Twelve months on, the FDA still has not released the results of their own, independent lead tests. Lead is a neurotoxin and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to it. [UPI]
  • The 18 million items L.L. Bean ships annually will now go via UPS. FedEx lost its contract with the brand after 12 years as their exclusive shipping agent. [The Street]
  • JC Penney is advertising its most "fashion-forward" lines this spring, instead of its basics. Which lines might those be? Kimora Lee Simmons' and Charlotte Ronson's, for example. [WSJ]
  • There's a cool-sounding exhibit called "Vreelandesque" up in Rome about Diana Vreeland's connection to Italian fashion. The co-curator says of the magazine spreads from the 40s to the 60s, "What you see nowadays on fashion magazines implicitly references these photo shoots, this is why 'Vreelandesque' should also be conceived as a reflection on yesterday and today's fashion, as the past is of fundamental importance to rethink what is fashionable nowadays." [Dazed Digital]
  • Mandy Moore's new album was kind of a co-creation with Coach. She had company president and creative director Reed Krakoff style her cover shoot, and she played a private concert in Tokyo to open a new store there. Moore just closed her fashion line, Mblem, but says "I love the fashion world. I'm fascinated by it. I'm humbled by it." [WWD]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5150489&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Charlotte Ronson For JC Penney Greets You Like An Old Trend]]> Charlotte Ronson's diffusion line for JC Penney is now available, and the clothes are hideous. Why does a designer of Ronson's caliber need to make a bunch of white shirts and recycled trends? Oh: money.













(Click on any image to view gallery)





While there are plenty of things that are "wearable" in the I Heart Ronson capsule collection's 15 pieces, the spectacle of Ronson designing such innovations as a white racerback tank top, a white button-down shirt, not to mention five-pocket jeans, calls into question the entire idea of designers doing lines for mass-market retailers — the point is supposed to be that the designers bring something new and perhaps the slightest bit daring to the local mall. These clothes look to me like things JC Penney has already sold in various forms for years. Only put on models with frosted eyeshadow and accessorized from the Grab Bag Of Slightly Out-Of-Date trends. But don't take my word for it: click through the slideshow for strawberry necklaces, studded belts, and a glimpse of Austria from Model.Live, trying to pose through the maelstrom of poor taste.

I Heart Ronson [JC Penney

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5146380&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live' Ends, Models Pledge To Go On]]> 'Model.Live', the oddly punctuated series put together by Vogue and IMG to fill the void of industry-related reality television not bearing the fierce imprimatur of Nighttime Tyra, didn't serve up its finale webisode as expected today. Instead, the three models featured — Madeline Kragh, Austria Alcantara, and Cato Van Ee — uploaded goodbye videos to Bebo. They thank the sponsors for the opportunity of having cameras track their daily moves and expose their missed flights and longed-for but unbooked jobs to the internet's scrutiny. (Cato also vows to soldier on with the tough business of becoming a supermodel.) Austria's vid is the most interesting; unusually, she manages to look excited when talking about her future and the next ready-to-wear season. She says Paris is her favorite city, and if you look closely, you can see she's wearing tiny Eiffel tower earrings. Clip above, and more after the jump.

It's interesting that in this off-the-cuff video, where she speaks with apparently minimal editing, Austria appears her most alert and engaged. I often got the sense during this series that Austria might be the girl whom the constant presence of cameras irritated the most; sure, Madeline was the only one to ever actually tell anyone to stop filming, but her natural showmanship always shone through, and Cato's blithe confidence never let her appear less than secure. (On screen, Cato moves with the un-self-awareness of someone who couldn't even conceive of a reason why anyone would dislike her.) But Austria, I thought, sometimes seemed a little weirded out by this whole starring in a show of herself thing. Seeing her perky and smiling and happy instead of sullen and withdrawn—wasn't Paris where she missed more than half her castings and sank to the pavement in a dejected moment?—makes me wonder just how much Sad Austria was a character created by editing, and therefore what IMG and Vogue's interest was in making their youngest and most vulnerable new model appear close to the edge. She always did look magisterial on the runway.

The girls explain that they're not sure if the series will return to follow them, or others from IMG's development board. The next show season, of course, begins in New York next February.

Earlier:
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "You Really Have To Give Up Stuff"
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "I Feel Like My Confidence, More And More. This Is My Place."
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Shows Don't Even Pay. At All. Zero. Zip."
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Don't Change, Just Improve"
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Everybody's So Sorry, And They Love Me, But Everybody Wants Cato."
Vogue's Model.Live: "Maybe The Clients Call You, Maybe They Don't. It's Just Like A Guy."
Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related:

Austria's Goodbye Video
Madeline's Goodbye Video
Cato's Goodbye Video
Vogue.tv's 'Model.Live' Channel
'Model.Live' on Bebo

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5079383&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live': "I Feel Like My Confidence, More And More. This Is My Place."]]> Where do the models go after fashion week? Model.Live, the never-ending web documentary, stays with its subjects to the bitter end. Austria, the beautiful Dominican who was 14 (until she signed with IMG!) has had a tough show season. The overt racism of the industry, her comically unhelpful mother agent/chaperone, Socrates McKinney, and the relentless travel schedule left her looking worn out and strangely sad at castings that rarely led to jobs. At home in Santo Domingo for its fashion week, Austria is aglow with happiness. Until she remembers she has to go back to New York and get to work again. Clip above, and recap, after the jump.


Austria books 12 shows at Dominican Moda. For a small fashion week, that's a blockbuster act, and the irony is that a girl who's worked internationally, like Austria, can because of that patina skip to the top of the local payscale. To be sure, it's a fish/pond question—nobody, least of all Austria herself, is under any illusion that opening and closing shows for designers whose profile on the world circuit is nil will do much for her career—but it's nice to think that in addition to getting to eat her mother's cooking, our girl is probably making more money this week than she did in a month of nonstop hustling to book shows that pay models like her only in clothes.

This episode also mentions some of the economic issues that encourage models like Austria to put up with the industry's caprices and demands at an age when others are pondering high school class offerings. Shortly after finishing her show season, Austria books a campaign (the client isn't named) in New York City. Socrates McKinney, ever diplomatic, lets slip that her pay rate for the day was $9,000. In the Dominican Republic, unemployment hovers around 15%, and 42% of the population lives below the poverty line. To even have the chance to earn more than the average annual income of an adult in your country in a single day is not something one can easily turn down. Even if, given her recent expenses and consequent debt—rent at agency apartments, that car service she used in London, her composite cards, plane tickets, food, assorted MetroCards and cartes oranges, photo tests and portfolio pictures, etc—I'm sure that Austria's payment for this job went entirely to IMG.

I, and most other girls of first-world birth, generally model because it's the most interesting of our present options. It's sobering to remember that there are plenty of girls who model because they have few other options at all.

Earlier:
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Shows Don't Even Pay. At All. Zero. Zip."
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Don't Change, Just Improve"
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Everybody's So Sorry, And They Love Me, But Everybody Wants Cato."
Vogue's Model.Live: "Maybe The Clients Call You, Maybe They Don't. It's Just Like A Guy."
Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 12 [Vogue.tv]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5068239&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Don't Change, Just Improve."]]> The new Model.Live is sort of a wrap-up of the show season that has just passed — and upon watching it, I realized this entire series has contained no surprises. We've witnessed the ascent of Cato Van Ee, which was foretold in her Prada/Miu Miu exclusive of six months ago. We've seen Madeline Kragh, who works successfully in secondary markets like Australia, sputter in the upper echelons like thousands of others (put yours truly in that group, too). We've seen Austria Alcantara, who looks so young and acts so shy, passed over for work on that basis, plus the equally predictable basis of her skin color. So, what, then, is there left to say at the not-quite-end of it all? Cato seizes an opportunity to make fun of herself and a scout/manager talking head spouts some mystical gibberish in the clip above and recap after the jump.



The ready-to-wear fashion season takes four weeks. Model.Live was slated to air for eight. This episode is the tenth — and it closes with a reminder to tune in next week, which makes me wonder just how long the show about the shows plans to linger, and whether something that might have been a good idea in a short format has now overstayed its welcome.

It's not really a question of finding the series' length disproportionate to its drama, since it's been clear from the start that wringing drama out of the fashion grind is not IMG's goal. (That might "embarrass" someone.)

Failing understandably to find in the calendar blip of a single show season a ready-made narrative with any surprising arc, and choosing not to overlay a fake narrative (except to occasionally and half-heartedly rig the proceedings for sponsorship reasons), it's tough to engage with the material. Model.Live is animated mainly by a strong sense of what it's not: every shot seems to telegraph a sense of sober reflection and purpose that would be fine if it weren't wholly incongruous with the frothiness of fashion in general, and the draining whirligig activity of shows in particular. Merely not giving in to the temptations of overshare-y cast commentary and hokey Hills-style narrative manipulations isn't enough to justify a series if its content isn't fresh and interesting on its own. Model.Live has about it more than a whiff of genre hauteur, like a Pulitzer winner writing pulp, and that unwillingness to actually dirty the knuckles is crippling.

Earlier:
Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Everybody's So Sorry, And They Love Me, But Everybody Wants Cato."
Vogue's Model.Live: "Maybe The Clients Call You, Maybe They Don't. It's Just Like A Guy."
Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 10 [Vogue.tv]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5061584&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Everybody's So Sorry, And They Love Me, But Everybody Wants Cato."]]> This week on Model.Live, Cato, Austria, and Madeline reach Paris. And in the City of Lights, things go topsy-turvy. (Except for Cato. Cato still books everything. And gets reunited with Simon. Awww.) Austria gets a belated lecture on castings etiquette from her booker (the scene captures the essence of the peculiar mix of by-golly-just-be-confident boosterism and I-can't-believe-I-have-to-tell-you-this undermining that every booker seems to revel in). Madeline? Has this season's first genuine, extended, Why Do I Do This, Again? rant. Clip of her freak-out above and recap of the full episode after the jump.



Madeline, you'll remember, struck out with the casting agents in Milan, and earlier failed to even reach British soil after misunderstanding her visa requirements. She sets out confidently in Paris, a city whose client base she knows from several previous stints working there, but although plenty of casting agents and designers act interested in her, greet her warmly, and try their clothes on her, she gets to the offices of IMG Paris to find that nobody's actually planning on booking her for any shows. Not even Fatima Lopes, a designer she's walked for before, who makes our girl try on seven different outfits at the casting.

It is entirely true what Madeline says: not being booked by a given client, or any clients, always says more about them than it does about you. Clients' preferences change from season to season, and are always so subjective that they sometimes seem capriciously random. But knowing this doesn't always make it easier to be constantly hearing, "We love you, you're perfect, you're just not right for us right now." There's nothing you can change in that situation: you just suffer from some apparent innate wrongness that no amount of pavement-pounding can fix. You go from being on top of the world — Vivienne Westwood loved me! — to crashing down — neither she nor Issey Miyake books Mad — and it all happens without any discernable reason or logic.

Speaking of pavement-pounding, we get another rare glimpse of my favorite real model-reality Actual True Thing this episode: public transportation usage. Austria, demoted from her London car service privileges, rides the 1 train, alone — how and why she's ditched her cloying mother agent, Sokrates McKinney, and her wannabe-model mom, is unexplained. She is given 12 castings, aims to reach a more reasonable 8, but finds herself struggling to see just five casting agents at the end of one day.

The agency's conclusion is that, shucks, the girl may just be too young to profit from these "opportunities." Cato even weighs in, opining that modeling is a pretty intense full-time job, and that she herself wouldn't have been capable of doing it at 16. (Which is funny-but-not because a. Cato was doing it at 16 — she just had parents who kept her from over-committing to the biz at that early stage and b. Austria, as I simply cannot forget, was said in at least one print venue in her native Dominican Republic to be not even close to age 16 earlier this year).

I've been advocating a little fashion time-out for Austria since, well, this series began. The girl is beautiful, but she needs, and deserves, a chance to grow up a little before she makes the hundreds of thousands that I still think will be her eventual due selling makeup and overpriced handbags. She can get to all that after, you know, finishing high school. Or at least after actually turning 16.

Paris fashion week is in reality almost over, but strangely, Model.Live will return next week to show us Paris Part II, and, presumably, How It All Ends. I know I'll be on the edge of my seat. And probably rubbing my feet and plotting ways to meet Madeline and buy her a well-deserved beer.

Earlier:
Vogue's Model.Live: "Maybe The Clients Call You, Maybe They Don't. It's Just Like A Guy."
Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 9 [Vogue.tv]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5058446&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Maybe The Clients Call You, Maybe They Don't. It's Just Like A Guy."]]> Fashion week — which really should be called fashion month, or fashion six weeks, or fashion long-enough-to-get-blisters-and-your-period — finally hit the Continent, and Vogue's Model.Live was there to bring you the highlights as experienced by three young models named Madeline, Cato, and Austria. And at last the series seems to be settling into a groove. After the jump, a recap of all the riveting modeling action, plus a clip above, which includes Cato's almost touchingly un-self-aware utterance of the line, "If I don't get it this time, you know, I already did Prada once."


It is hard to break into the show circuit. Designers are so given to rotating their regular crop of supes among themselves that they will make audiences wait for the top girls to rush over from the previous show rather than settle for a newbie. The big catwalks are awash with the Catherine McNeils and Lily Donaldsons of this world, meaning that thousands of hopefuls — who have already run the gauntlet of getting agency representation, building their books up to competitive standard, and developing a runway body by any means necessary — are competing for just a couple of spots in the shows people notice. Most new (Austria) and newish (Madeline) models need to get lucky to even book one of the tiny, overlooked shows that crowd the penumbra of the main fashion week calendars.

And then there's Cato Van Ee. I really want to like Cato. She seems intelligent. She has cool parents — parents who wisely got their daughter to finish high school despite the interruption of covers for L'Officiel and Dutch Elle and, oh yeah, that Prada/Miu Miu show exclusive. Maybe I've just been having a blah time with the clients since leaving my beloved New York, or maybe it's just the general fatigue of so many time zones and jets and trams and buses and tiny models apartments. Maybe I am an incorrigible grump. But I recognize a sort of Patrician smugness in Cato's face when she collapses in gales of ohmaigawds when her booker tells her the news that, yes, she has booked Prada for a second season, and that makes me want to kick her in the shins.

Especially when she does her "Wooo! Prada + Cato, best team ever!" hand jive in the back seat of her private car.

Things aren't going so well for Madeline and Austria. Austria looks sullen and exhausted at her castings — something which I can confirm was not simply due to editing. In person, Austria looks so much like a little girl, albeit a tall one, it's anybody's guess why IMG is pushing the child whose age was given as 14 in February so hard right now — with a few more years education and maturity, she could be, well, a humbler but no less successful Cato. Madeline glows and her body is phenomenal, but Milan just isn't much of a market for unknown girls with short hair.

So Madeline and Austria cut out for Paris castings early, while Cato walks Prada, Just Cavalli, Dolce And Gabbana, Allessandro Dell'Acqua, and probably 23 other well-regarded shows in her unperspiring, non-acneic spare time.

Bitch.

Next week: the light at the end of the tunnel... Paris.

Earlier: Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 8

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5055228&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's 'Model.Live': Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent]]> Another week, another fashion extravaganza to rush headlong into. London, the littlest fashion week, is in full swing as I type this, and Austria and Cato are here to show us how walking more than a dozen shows in six days is done. (Blister Band-Aids, your own eye makeup remover, and a big bottle of cheap conditioner plus the richest overpriced salon hair mask you can find — for combing out and repair, respectively.) Madeline? Never makes it onto British soil. Dum dum dum! Clip above, and recap after the jump.

Madeline — whose hipsterish, short-haired look struck me as likely to suit the client imagination better in London than perhaps any other stop on the fashion circuit, fails to get her work visa papers stamped in advance of her trip. So British immigration puts our favorite Hoosier on a plane back to New York. Her booker looks at her like she's an idiot for forgetting the notarization of her visa — and it is a rookie error. But doesn't Madeline also pay IMG to keep her up to speed on such details of duck order? It strikes me as almost as much their fuck-up as her own, since I'm guessing, like every model I know, that Madeline relies on her agencies for all her immigration arrangements. Her booker should have been reminding her about the visa stamp daily. He should have put that shit on the girl's chart. If there's even a chance it was your bad or incomplete advice that put her in that position, it's passive aggressive in the extreme to go all philosophical-shrug on a girl who's still too young to drink and who, having just done a trans-Atlantic round trip and missed her chance to even be in the London shows, is no doubt feeling entirely bad enough. Weaksauce, IMG.


But London proves difficult even for those who make it off the plane. Austria and Socrates McKinney, her Santo Domingo mother agent, have a hard time navigating their way to castings — even with a driver. (Now wise to the trap of agency debt, I can barely look at a driver without seeing dollar signs spinning like on a slot machine. That luxury must be costing the poor teen a fortune — far more than she could make back in a month of shows. And he's not even getting her to her castings.)


In one scene, Socrates makes Austria take over his call with IMG London and write down her own new casting information because, he says as she wearily takes the ball point, writing gives him headaches. Oh, mother agents! They all work so hard for their lifelong, exclusive, worldwide, multi-agency kickbacks.


Cato reconnects with the man who is possibly the world's most influential casting director, Russell Marsh, who determines the lineups for clients that include Prada and Miu Miu. (Cato got last season's much-sought show exclusives for those.) (Marsh was accused earlier this year of accepting bribes from both IMG and the agency Women to cast their girls in Prada: strangely enough, Model.Live doesn't mention this particular scuttlebutt.) Marsh likes Cato, London likes Cato, Cato walks ten shows.


Austria does three. Including one where a harried fast-talking show director insists on calling all the models by their runway order numbers — as in, Number 3, Number 4, get over here now — because "It's just the easiest way." Austria's sad, perfectly still face in the chair as the makeup and hair artists tug and turn her this way and that speaks volumes. She looks magisterial on the runway, though, so I can't help but suspect the girl is enjoying herself a little bit. At least that's what I hope.


Previously:

Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark

Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins

Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent

Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind

Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom

Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 7

Model.Live on Bebo

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5052179&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark]]> The latest episode of Model.Live could not have been a greater disappointment. After teasing us with promises of uncensored, unguarded behind-the-scenes dish, Vogue's reality series finally reaches New York Fashion Week — and dissolves into a simpering collection of jump-cuts and runway footage and generically exciting music. If there was ever a time I'd be willing to tolerate jaunty, more or less harmless fashion boosterism, now would be it; but I'm unhappy to be left contemplating empty-headed B-roll of the city that looks spliced from Project Runway and not much else of substance.

Austria is heading to London with her mother agent, the amazingly named and arguably patronizing Socrates McKnney, instead of her visa-less mother — a ritual of teenaged (non-Western) model abandonment that seems to cheer her bookers at IMG, since the maybe-15-year-old seems to "allow" her mom to be "a comfort zone" and it might be good for the tyke to stand on her own two feet. Madeline books (a respectable but not earth-shattering) seven shows and tries to contemplate the bright side in a meeting with her agents. Cato is last glimpsed, in a fake-reality fake-cliffhanger that might as well be lifted from that wonky first season of The Hills, supposedly trying to hail a cab to take her to the airport for her flight to London. Apparently the entire documentary film team with her can't offer her transport, and nor can the many yellow cabs that pass behind her on the adjacent street. Her single biggest piece of luggage? A large paper bag from a certain mall store show sponsor.


Previously:

Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins

Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent

Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind

Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom

Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 6

Model.Live on Bebo

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5049033&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion Week Hustle Begins]]> It's fashion week, so Madeline, Cato and Austria are busy hoofing it down runways — and doing all the castings, fittings, and journeying around town that leads to them. (For that matter, so am I! Seventeen appointments yesterday left me zombified on the couch, too tired to do anything for dinner but munch on a big bowl of cereal. I didn't even have the wherewithal to follow the storyline of whatever dumb MTV reality show my Brazilian roommate seemed to find entrancing.) But: the modelfolk persevere! This week's episode of Model.Live is a taste of the pre-show week whirl. In the clip above, everybody lines up, waits, walks, and repeats — and Madeline, who mislays her book and freaks out at casting #30, pronounces the series' very first "Just stop filming for a minute!" in urgent tones.


I've been there. (Literally: I did my thing at most of the castings in this episode.) But then, I did it on public transportation. And until someone is reduced to eating breakfast food from a box at 11:30 p.m. I won't feel that my modeling experience has been faithfully rendered.


On a different note, I have to wonder if this series has found, or will find, a significant audience. I think it's fascinating — but that's because this is my job, I'm naturally sensitive to how it's portrayed in other media, and I would watch almost anything modeling-related just out of pure curiosity. (Most models are this way: basically every English-speaking girl I know has a secret ANTM addiction, which we generally process by talking, together, about how ridiculous and tragic the series is. It's much the way I imagine architects are with Ayn Rand.) But if the greatest intrigue this vastly more realistic show can serve up is "Will Madeline find her lost book?" (and even then, it seemingly drops the question for lack of interest), then perhaps the reality is that my job just isn't necessarily interesting to watch. In fact it's almost as repetitive to see the same string of introductions, abortive small-talk, Polaroid posing, and demonstration walking on my laptop as it is to live through. It occurs to me that the process of getting a modeling gig just isn't that dynamic, that it doesn't scream "online reality-documentary with unprecedented sponsorship backing deals and $31,000/minute production values!" Can Model.Live continue just by fanning the flames of native teen girl model worship? (Sample from Cato's Bebo page comments: "I want to be a model when i am older, how do you get your thighs so thin?") I suppose we'll find out.


Because, possibly to its credit, Model.Live is certainly not doing anything much to trick out the storyline. The models themselves seem fairly vanilla; in the full episode, Cato shares her castings philosophy ("You might think it goes good, but it goes bad, or you think it goes bad but it goes good, you never know") and Austria passive-aggressively quizzes her about real estate. (Austria: "You have your own apartment? You buy one?" Cato: "No, renting." Pause. "It's not...that...expensive." Austria: "Oh." Glance with raised eyebrow. "Okay.") It's the kind of subtle/banal moment I'd sooner expect from a David Mamet play than an online series brought to me by Express.com.


Speaking of which, in the middle of this episode, for no reason I can discern, Madeline and Austria go to an Express store. (Shop for fast fashion, why, that's just what I would do in the middle of a 20-appointment day!) There is a montage where they each try on a lot of outfits. Because at castings, as in life, you only get one chance to make a first impression.


I would say something pithy here about how Model.Live's first impression on me is fading, but...that probably doesn't make sense, and I'm beat. Excuse me, I believe I need to go subject my hair to some flat-ironing and assorted sprayings and gunkings. I have appointments to keep.


Previously:

Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent

Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind

Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom

Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 5

Model.Live on Bebo

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5046014&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent]]> Vogue sneaked up the third installment of its modeling "documentary", "Model.Live" over the long weekend. Austria, who may be as young as 15, explains how she got into the industry — via the Ford Supermodel of the World competition, her participation in which ironically attracted IMG's attention instead of Ford's — and why she is leaving her family and friends in the Dominican Republic for two months to try her luck on the international show circuit. Tears are shed, a large cake is consumed, and there's a raucous going away shindig with dancing. But one of the weirder moments — and probably the show's best example yet of the way some modeling business interests talk about their young charges — happens when Austria's Santo Domingo agent, Socrates McKinney, explains just what drew his eye to Austria. Clip of McKinney, and Austria's would-be model mom, above, and more after the jump.



Where exactly McKinney locates Austria's "curves" I'm not sure. And it always rubs me the wrong way when I hear an agent talking about how "strange" a model is. Seeing as our bodies pay their bills, and as Austria in particular has a killer runway figure, a face that could launch a thousand campaigns, and a smile that could sell a ton of CoverGirl, it seems disingenuous and a touch gift-horseish for an agent who stands to make a significant cut of that future wealth to go on about what a simply wonderful genetic freak Austria is, with "the height" and "the hair" and that inexplicable "something in the eyes."


Seeing models as "strange" is just so utterly convenient to the narrative that sees us as carefree fashion sprites who spring, fully-formed at 5'11" and 34"-24"-34" (or smaller!), from unremarkable surroundings, eager and unquestioning and destined to do the industry's bidding. It's a narrative that renders invisible the constant struggle that staying in this industry really is — at least for 99% of models (it's a struggle I personally find rewarding — or as Sen Dog put it so eloquently, it's a fun job, but it's still a job). It's the narrative that motivates people like the accountant at my Barcelona agency to jokingly tell me that she finds it odd that my kind, after coming and "enjoying my beautiful city's sunshine, our men, our cuisine, and taking beautiful pictures," actually expect some kind of monetary compensation for our troubles and occasionally inquire as to how that all is going. (I know, the gall, right?) It's the narrative that simultaneously disqualifies what we do from being "work" and implies we're unfit for anything else. Since we're so "strange" and all.


Austria, who as I pointed out earlier was reported to be 14 this February, celebrates a "Sweet 16"-cum-going away party in the full show, which, like all of the "Model.Live" webisodes, you can watch at Vogue.tv. With effective management, Austria could be a big star without entirely losing her teenage years in a blur of makeup brushes, stolen naps on airport lounge seats, and constant low-grade peckishness. Having one's mother by one's side at her age is generally a good thing; having one's mother by one's side to say things like "I always wanted her to be a model because I wanted to be one myself," gives me slight pause.


Earlier: Vogue's "Model.Live": Castings Can Really Be A Grind

Vogue's "Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems of Parental Wisdom

Points for Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring


Related:

Model.Live [Vogue.tv]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5044809&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Is Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring]]> American Vogue’s online reality series, Model.Live, unveiled its first episode today, and I’m sad to report that it’s not the irretrievably tacky, so-bad-it’s-good, corporate-sponsored suckfest I was hoping it would be. (Hoping? I am a mean-spirited person.) The series — which, at $3 million (or around $31,000 a minute) is some of the most expensive online television yet produced — follows three models as they navigate the discombobulating month-long global merry-go-round that is the fashion weeks of New York City, London, Milan, and Paris.

The most well-known model featured is 19-year-old Cato Van Ee of the Netherlands, who is the veteran of a Prada/Miu Miu double exclusive (an "exclusive" is industryspeak for when a major house puts a new model on lockdown for its show alone, and a high-profile exclusive reliably precedes a major blow-up: see Kloss, Karlie, who was exclusive for Gucci and Calvin Klein the season before she walked 64 shows in three cities). 20-year-old Arizona native Madeline Kragh has spent a year working mainly in Sydney and Athens, but her New York presence is apparently nil when the series kicks off. Austria Alcántara, a shy-seeming 16-year-old Dominican and an alleged high school senior — whose age, curiously enough, was reported as 14 this February — rounds out the cast.

The first episode introduces the three…characters? Subjects? Everyone at Vogue is insisting on maintaining a distinction between ‘reality show’ and ‘documentary’, which I personally find kind of precious. Especially given the sky-high production values and manipulative piano tinkling that bookends every scene.

The main action happens when the girls’ representatives at the agency IMG meet for a strategy session more than a month ahead of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week — an agency-as-benevolent-parental-surrogate set piece that would probably irritate me more (the managers talk about the girls in all kinds of borderline condescending ways, as if they were pets) if it weren’t so very dull. Meanwhile, the well spoken and composed Cato talks with some regret about seeing all her high school friends go on to university while she pursues a career that may well prove all-too-ephemeral. Austria is clearly being set up as the quiet girl fashion will deliver from her shell.

But my favorite — and the girl who seems most likely to bring a little levity to the self-serious production — is Barbizon survivor Madeline. She has an affective sort of goofiness about her on camera, and her gawky nervousness lends the proceedings authenticity. Also, she puts her foot in her mouth in the most charming way possible. “When I was in university, I was going to school,” she muses at one point, before averring, “I became my own person, my own model...I don’t want to be like another model."

Since the show season documented is this past Spring’s, information about what happens to the girls’ careers over the four fashion weeks is readily available online — a disconnect the Internet series, for all its tie-ins with Bebo.com and sponsor Express.com, strangely refuses to acknowledge. (I won’t give any spoilers, but it looks like someone has visa issues, and Austria’s age may stand in the way of a highly desirable gig. Who knew, in this age of 12-year-olds walking for Marc by Marc Jacobs, that there was such a thing as a model who is too young!)

Model.Live seems harmless enough, and possibly even realistic, if a little sanitized and unnecessarily heavy-handed (the point about modeling often being lonely and isolating is made with voice-over from a manager talking about the “independence” the career demands while B roll of Cato looking lonely on a street corner and wafting down a river in some kind of gondola plays. Really). Ditch the sad piano theme and it could even be fun to watch; in any case it’s nice to see something about the industry that doesn’t have the primetime television stain of ANTM antics.

Related: Model.Live [Vogue.tv]

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