The thing about models is that they are rarely the subjects of long, investigative, detailed magazine profiles, leavened with biographical information about their parents' backgrounds and whatever psychological tells the writer can seize upon during his or her reporting. Models are mostly seen in pictures. They're there to entertain our projections, and that's easiest done mute. It's celebrities who are endlessly, redundantly storied, profiled over and over again until such mundanities as what Leighton likes to eat for lunch and the fact that Angelina has a pilot's license have been entirely too thoroughly plumbed for metaphoric depth. The glimpse-of-fame profile is an essential part of the celebrity-sartorial complex, but the problems with it are manifold. As the celebrity profiles proliferate, the pool of unreported information that might actually be interesting or affecting to a wide audience shrinks. The pool of under-covered celebrities — who are (of course) pretty and (nearly always) white and (duh) thin enough to fit sample sizes in the standard lavish photo shoot — dwindles, too, until we're stuck reading about the Deep Thoughts of reality TV stars and teenagers ad nauseam. And as women's magazines' reliance on Big Cover Stars to anchor their issues grows, the conditions imposed by the army of protective flacks — writer approval, preset no-go topics, limitations on access — become more byzantine. (Hence why Elle spiked even this pretty tame profile of Jennifer Lopez at the request of her reps. Hence why you'll never read about the night Charlize Theron's mom shot and killed her dad while 15-year-old Charlize watched in a women's magazine. You will instead be told that she's really pretty, and much too polite to be thought of as having opinions, or as Vogue puts it, "far be it from her to ruin a perfectly nice luncheon trying to prove that she's a serious person.") Models get talked about as images but don't tend to get covered as people. Celebrities talk all too much, but far be it from them to say anything interesting.

So into this morass of diminishing returns steps Lara Stone, and it is just so weird to read a story that starts off in the standard mawkish key of celebrity profile writing — obligatory meaningless quote from Mario Testino; repetitive physical description along the lines of "naked Venus...austere, Flemish face...Her breasts are so perfect even I found it hard not to stare at them"; entirely too much attention paid to what she is wearing — before switching codes entirely.

What's the longest she has stayed in one place in the past two years, asks Vogue's Vassi Chamberlain, after Stone confesses she has spent seven days at a stretch, max, in her London apartment since moving to the city six months ago.

She answers without hesitating: "Four weeks." Was that on holiday? "No. That was to rehab." ... "I am a complete alcoholic," she says. "It used to be so easy to tell someone, 'Get me a bottle of vodka,' and they'd run and get it."

Okay then! Consider our expectations raised.

In the story — which you cannot read at British Vogue's website, but which people have taken the time to scan here and here — Stone goes on to make various statements which aren't "bold" or "interesting," with all the self-consciousness those imply, so much as they are just affectingly real. She doesn't sound like she's talking from a well-rehearsed script when pressed about controversial industry practices, as can the otherwise clever Lily Cole. Cole recently claimed in the Times of London, "I saw eating problems more at my school than in that industry. I do get that there is an aesthetic — it changes generation by generation. There's always been an ideal, from the Fifties or the Eighties," which is an ingenious dodge of the size-zero question and a very disingenuous thing to say. Stone, who despite her 34"-24"-35" measurements is sometimes considered one of the larger straight-size models, calls herself "fat" and says, "If I could have the discipline to be super-skinny, I would be. I think of dieting, then I eat pizza. I'm a woman, and every woman wants to be skinnier. Unfortunately." Cole, testy: "I think drugs are taken all over the world. And I've never really experienced it." Stone, realistic: "I never really wanted to be that model on drugs, the sort who gives head for a line of coke."

Stone isn't interested in running interference for an industry that treated her with standard disinterest for the better part of a decade before she, at the improbable age of 23, started to enjoy breakout success. As a teenager in Paris, she lived in an Elite model apartment with up to seven other girls. She was not a sensation. "We did 15 castings a day, visiting the same people over and over again. They'd make bitchy comments about us in French, thinking we didn't understand." (Sounds...familiar.) Stone also worked in Japan, where her agency measured her weekly, instructed her never to smile, and contracted her to do up to three shoots a day. Models who got pimples were sent back. Not that Stone is dewy-eyed about model solidarity: she pushed a girl who wouldn't get out of her way at the Jaeger show this season. "I kept saying, 'Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,' because I had to get to the catwalk, but she just kept posing. So I pushed her. It was only a few stairs." It's not easy to imagine Kate Bosworth confessing to something so human.

"Men don't like me," reports Stone. For all her much-vaunted "curves", she says, "I haven't been on a date in six months." She last dated an investment banker in New York; the end of the relationship coincided with her stint in rehab and her move to London. "I've just started a club with a girlfriend," she reports, "called the We Hate Men But We Can't Be Gay Club."

I Hate Women's Magazine Profiles But Can't Stop Reading Them.

Ones like this are pretty all right, though.

British Vogue [Official Site]
Stone Age [The Fashion Spot]
Charlize Theron At Home On The Range [Vogue]
Time Out: Lily Cole [Times of London]
Behind The Glow [Daily Beast]

Earlier:French Vogue All Lara Stone, All The Time
The 5 Great Lies of Women's Magazines

• This rather banal anecdote about Michael Kors being mistaken for Marc Jacobs is enlivened by an adorable photo of the two from when Jacobs was pale and long-haired and still had those clear-framed glasses that are so totally hot. [FWD]

• Kors designed the dress for his mother's second wedding. "Who in their right mind would actually listen to their five-year-old? Though the marriage didn't last, the pictures are timeless." When pressed on his status as a top or a bottom, Kors replied, "Well, I love eveningwear and I love sportswear." [VF]
• Karlie Kloss — who just turned 17 and celebrated at Disney World — booked the fall Alexander McQueen campaign. She looks ethereal and a little frightening — perfect for McQueen's aesthetic. [Fashionologie]
• Eva Mendes does what Eva Mendes does best for Calvin Klein, with Jamie Dornan. [Sun]
• An object lesson in what happens when you refuse a reporter's questions at a press event: they get snippy! Kanye West was described as "skittish" and "visibly withdrawn" as he "avoided all questions" at an event for Casio G Shock. Even though the rapper didn't clam up entirely — he praised Amber Rose, and said she'd just done her first modeling shoot — the interaction motivated WWD to note, "When he later took to the stage, 90 minutes behind schedule, West interrupted his set with a spontaneous, free-style rant against the press, with such lines as 'I'm sorry I broke your arm/I meant to break your camera' and 'I could kill a man/I am a man/Don't forget I could kill a man' regarding his fury at the invasive nature of today's media. As he stirred the audience into a frenzy, the bevy of invited reporters and photographers at the event (marketed by Casio as a press conference accompanied by a concert), were left to fidget uncomfortably with their press passes." [WWD]
• Kanye didn't mention it, but Elle's Joe Zee pointed out that the rapper recently styled a shoot for the magazine. Could Amber possibly have been the model? [FWD]
• Fifteen-year-old Christine Staub, the eldest daughter of Danielle Staub from the Real Housewives of New Jersey, has been signed by the modeling agency IMG. [Fashionista]
• Christian Siriano is looking forward to the advent of marriage equality so that he can marry his long-time partner, photographer Brad Walsh. "Maybe we'll buy a farm or something," explains the Project Runway designer. "I want to raise alpaca or something. You know, make my own alpaca coating." [E!]
• Sarah Jessica Parker is suing a Long Island perfume distributor for allegedly selling bottles of her "Lovely" fragrance without the quality-assurance marks. Her company is accusing the distributor of selling counterfeit or stolen product. [P6]
• Padma Lakshmi had Steven Meisel shoot the fall ads for her jewelry line, and the results are lovely, if a little overly Photoshopped. [WWD]
• Banana Republic's fall campaign is modeled by — wait for it! — actors and actresses. Krysten Ritter, who used to be a working model but would almost certainly never have booked such a gig before becoming an actress, must have had a tremendous case of déjà vu. Joining her in the shots are Lauren Ambrose, Chris Messina, Scott Speedman, Florence Faivre, Nicole Fiscella and Juan Diego Botto. [WWD]
• Residents of SoHo are reportedly unhappy with the new Hollister store downtown. One building is even flying a "Go Home Hollister" banner off a balcony. [Curbed]
• Retail rents are falling all through Manhattan, but the most drastic drop is along the Manhattan shopping corridor of Madison Avenue. With many prominent brands moving out of their former flagships on the Avenue, rents there have sunk from $1,100/sq. ft. to around $500/sq. ft. [Crain's]
• Company earnings for K Swiss fell 62% in the first six months of this year, off the back of a 29% decline in sales, and the company reported a net loss of $11.5 million. [WWD]

• New lows in celebrity sartorial publicity: Dior would like everyone to know that Madonna was wearing its sunglasses when she visited the victims of her stage collapse in Marseille, which killed two workers and left eight injured. [WWD]

• A Tracey Emin etching of Kate Moss is among artworks for sale via raffle - tickets are just £1 - to benefit Mothers4Children. [Telegraph]
• For some reason, Levi's decided to give its Fall '09 lookbook a jailbird theme. Since, at least before orange jumpsuits, denim was the fabric of life in the big house, the lookbook features models styled for mug shots, and photographed through bars. (The bars appear to actually be...a fire escape.) File under Annals of Idiocy, subsection Stupid High-Concept Lookbooks. [HighSnobiety]
• Levi's has also just acquired its own footwear and accessories licensee for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, DC Co. The company wants to strengthen its presence in those markets. [WWD]
• An American Apparel store in Silver Spring, Maryland had its window broken, allegedly because the window display featured the company's "Legalize Gay" gay rights t-shirts. A threatening telephone call was also received by another area store after the attack. The company took down its window displays - "We just don't want a broken window," explained the Silver Spring store manager, Kassandra Powell - but released a statement affirming its support of gay rights, and its intention to continue running "Legalize Gay" ads in Washington, D.C., area media and providing its t-shirts to local activist groups. [The Sexist]
• Angie Everhart is eight days away from giving birth as a single parent. Her worst pregnancy cravings were for egg salad. [People]
• Jerry Hall's advice for modeling (and life?): "Be nice to everyone, even if you don't want to. Just be nice and gracious. And don't show your bum." [WWD]
• That's one way to multi-task: Alexandra Richards had a hotel minion perform a pedicure while she deejayed. "Stuff that you can't do while getting a pedicure" seems like as good a definition of "actual professional labor" as any; this anecdote therefore proves beyond all doubt that deejaying ain't a real job. (But doing pedicures sure is.) [P6]
• Bar Refaeli's new campaign for Rampage is predictably hot. [People]
• Gloria Vanderbilt told model Kiera Chaplin, Charlie and Oona Chaplin's granddaughter, that she was the spitting image of her gran. "Oona and I were often mistaken for being sisters," explained the newly minted erotic novelist. [P6]
• Top model Du Juan is being sued by the Chinese agency New Silk Road for allegedly violating her contract with them when she signed with international powerhouse agency IMG in 2005. New Silk Road wants a portion of Du's IMG earnings, and an approximately $439,000 fine. [China Daily]
• Erin Wasson is joining Swiss skateboard company Doodah's line of naked supermodel boards. Isabeli Fontana, Lara Stone, Toni Garrn, and Edita Vilkeviciute are already featured on individual skateboards, wearing shoes they could not actually skateboard in. [The Cut]
• Naomi Campbell is featured in a similar state of undress for a new D&G perfume campaign. Which motivated the Sun to write the pun, "breast assets." [Sun]
• French fashion house Cacharel is re-launching itself at Paris Fashion Week this September. [WWD]
• Scott Schuman's book, The Sartorialist, is rolling off the presses now, even though the official release date is not until August 12. The cover features stylist Julie Ragolia. [The Sartorialist]
• American Eagle's "Artist" jean, which was a best-seller until it was discontinued last year, has been brought back after a redesign. The new cut is intended to be more flattering to a lady's rear. The jeans will retail at $39.50; the two kinds that have "destroyed details" cost $10 more. [WWD]
• American Vogue's Sarah Mower writes that fashion this fall is going to be a grown-up affair - that clothes will no longer worship at the feet of youth. The girl in the photo illustrating this story looks to be about 14. [Telegraph]
• Steve Madden, which produces watches through a licensee, allegedly found fakes for sale on eBay. Imagine! But when they asked the site to remove the items, eBay didn't comply, so the company is suing. [Reuters]
• Stylist Patricia Field designed an Ugly Betty-inspired Diet Coke bottle. It's pink. Will people seriously buy anything? [Fashionista]
• Charlotte Russe announced a 4.9% drop in third-quarter profits, to $6.3 million. [WWD]
• Avon has announced it will be laying off 1,200 people, or 2.8% of its workforce, over the next four years. [AP]
• Escada's bond exchange, which needed an 80% acceptance rate from bondholders in order to save the company from bankruptcy, has only met with approval from 37% of the company's creditors. So it has extended the exchange period until August 5, and implemented an exchange of stock to raise additional cash. [WWD]
• 1.4 million pairs of children's shoes are being recalled. The shoes, shaped like racecars, have wheels which can detach and pose a choking risk. Buster Brown & Co.'s eight different styles of shoes were sold at retailers including JC Penney, Famous Footwear, Meijer, Sears, Target, and Wal-Mart, and can be returned for a full refund. [WWD]

• Posh and Becks are in an underwear ad, together! David seems to be deep in thought, perhaps pondering the wisdom of letting Armani give him hair that belongs on a Lego newscaster. Narrate Victoria's inner monologue in the comments! [Telegraph]

• Keira Knightley is still the face of Coco Mademoiselle. She gives great sexyface in the new ad. [Sassybella]
• Two designers you have never heard of are looking forward to seeing Brüno when it opens on July 10. [AP]
• Kanye's Louis Vuitton's sneakers — which came into stores very suddenly yesterday, with no pre-announced release date to build the excitement — have already sold out. How come? Sneakerheads, Louis Vuitton nerds, and Kanye fans have been on a waiting list for the kicks since January. If you want some of the $840-$1,140 shoes, the Louis Vuitton store will put your name on a "wish list" in case more become available. But don't hold your breath. [The Cut]
• Diane von Furstenberg is accused of polluting the Meatpacking District with her signature scent. Allegedly, the perfume emanating from her W. 14th St. headquarters' ventilation system is overpowering; one passerby called the perfume "putrid, awful . . . something you'd find on a 60-year-old matron." And a receptionist at a nearby eye clinic said patients had complained. [P6]
• Real Housewife Kelly Bensimon has a jewelry line, produced with Mouawad, the same company that does Nicole Richie's House of Harlow 1960. Of her character on her popular reality show, she says, "I think that because I'm so down-to-earth they're like, 'Okay we have to pump her up a little bit because otherwise people are not going to believe'...If they want me to be some kind of crazy socialite, I'm not a socialite. I'm a working girl, a single mom." As for the jewelry, which is priced at $32-$336 and is based on pavé geometric designs, Bensimon explains her inspiration thus: "I love Navajo and I love the idea of taking Pocahontas out of the kayak and putting her into the disco." Also, there are snakes in the form of bracelets and rings, which may or may not have something to do with Milton. [W]
• Los Angeles designers really, really wish their fashion week — limping on since the departure of sponsors IMG, Mercedes-Benz, and Smashbox Studios — could join the Big Four. But all the best L.A. designers — Band of Outsiders, Rodarte, Trina Turk, Monique Lhuillier — seem to show in New York. [WSJ]
• Ending the tide of good news for London Fashion week is the withdrawal of Aquascutum. The iconic English label has been put up for sale by its parent company, Japan-based Renown, after a buy-out bid by Aquascutum management was rejected. [WWD]
• Donatella Versace attended an event at the Whitney where children with chronic or life-threatening illnesses drew pictures for her. The sketches chosen by Versace will be featured on limited-edition Versace tote bags, to be sold for $200-$250 via Gilt Groupe this fall. No word on how much the kids will make from their intellectual property. [Style.com]
• This is just too weird. Ed Hardy CEO Hubert Guez owns Michael Jackson's Holmby Hills house and grounds. Jackson was renting the 7-bedroom, 13-bathroom French chateau-style manse for $100,000 a month. Now, maker of tacky Ed Hardy t-shirts Christian Audigier is moving in. [TMZ]
• Now that it has a designer in London-based (but New York-relocating) Marios Schwab, Halston can do things like sign multi-million-dollar distribution deals for its wares. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Kate Gosselin's clothing project with Healthtex is on hold. [Radaronline]
• Uniqlo's same-store sales rose 6.4% in June. [WWD]
• Polo Ralph Lauren has extended its deal to dress the U.S. Olympic team through the winter games next year and the summer games of 2012. [WSJ]
• To mark its 120th anniversary, the house of Lanvin is releasing a line of limited-edition commemorative items, including hand-painted porcelain figurines of its mother-daughter logo. There'll also be notebooks, music boxes, paper weights, and embroidered t-shirts. No word on prices yet. [WWD]
• LVMH bought a large stake in the organic, sustainably-produced clothing company Edun, so PPR is sponsoring — to the tune of 10 million Euros — a film about the environment. [WSJ]
• A pink wireless mouse with gold accents, made by Juicy Couture, costs $55 at Neiman Marcus. Is it terrible that we would have expected it to be more of a rip-off? [FWD]
• Just released is a new issue of WWWWD, the fashion periodical that feels so real it's got to be fake. This edition is all about men, so expect jokes on bromance, Kris Van Assche, Ed Westwick, and a nice rip on Olivier Zahm for good measure. [WWWWD]

You've noticed: Lindy, Christy, Claudia, Naomi, Cindy, et. al., are back and booking up all the glossy paper stock available. And there's been a renewed focus in the online and print media on identifying the current crop of models as individuals. Even if sometimes that noble sentiment backfires.

Maybe it's a reaction to the anonymized sameishness of much of the fashion imagery of the early oughts; maybe it's an inevitable response to the tedium of featureless plasticine airbrushing. Whatever the reason, it's hard not to notice the interest: the Met Costume Institute gala this year is themed "The Model As Muse," privileging an unusually model-centric understanding of fashion's workings. There was Sara Ziff's documentary, Picture Me. A little more light-hearted is Modelinia, a recent web start-up dedicated to the idea that people want to read (and Maybelline advertising can be sold around) content about models — everyday models who aren't bold-faced names, models who book the Dior makeup test, not the Dior show — and that those readers care enough to wonder what we do in our off hours and if we have any tips on where to buy good vintage clothes. (Eating, drinking, and reading, and the Hell's Kitchen Salvation Army, as though that's any great secret, thanks for asking.) And then there's ModelFeed, a group-blogging platform out of Australia that boasts a bevvy of (predominantly) Aussie model contributors; who knows how that site plans to monetize itself, but for now, its only too happy to lend its bandwidth to former band geek Sarah Stephens' old school photos, and Kieta van Ewyk's many practical uses for rain boots on the family farm.

If those last two of the above betray, at least in theory, allegiance to the idea that models merit acknowledgment as agents, and not just as subjects — that the young women who are seen and not heard deserve a shot at a voice, and the Internet is the perfect venue to provide it — then they also, unfortunately, have a whiff of artificiality about them. We don't actually know anything more about Stephens for having seen her band picture or for knowing that she gets lonely sometimes in Paris; despite the tagline "Not Made Up", this is some mediated content. (The girls' agencies are in on the ModelFeed action.) Modelinia occasionally veers into night-time Tyra territory. (If cinema truth at 24 frames a second, what is web video? Inanity at broadband speed?) There's something a little corporate, a little astroturf-y, about it all.

Not so models' independent, personal blogs, of which there are too many to list. Quality does vary; some of my tribe are simply out-and-out crazypants, and plenty are very keen on making the gig-to-gig life lived in tiny apartments split five ways sound extraordinarily glamorous indeed. (It is not.) More frequently, especially with bigger-name models, personal blogs wither to little more than vehicles for self-promotion. (It's hard to take too much of Sessilee Lopez's oddly flat blog, which might as well be titled, The Various High Heights Of My Fabulous Career Being Fabulous, So Far.) But for every Shannon Stewart ("The Lord Jesus just allowed me to get an agency in Miami, Paris, Munich (Germany), and I am in the process of getting one in Hambourg [sic] !!! Praise the LORD!! haha") there's an Elyse Sewell, making her mark behind the scenes with wit and verve. Below, my picks of five of the "model blogs" that are actually worth taking a look at.

Elyse Sewell

Photo of Elyse Sewell from her blog

Actually, there's no better place to start when considering model blogs and model bloggers than Sewell. Probably the most successful contestant to ever survive the Tyra Banks modeling school, this New Mexico native and one-time would-be medical student has been regaling a dedicated crowd of LiveJournalers with her travels throughout (mainly) Asia since 2004. Her creative neologisms ("streetmeatsketeer", "'conversatation': a conversation destined for eventual incomprehension by virtue of one or both parties' incomplete grasp of the language in use") sparkle, and her vivid descriptions — a bulimic roommate's mess is "a giant speech bubble of drying emesis" — make her blog a must-read. Sewell does a terrific job of writing in such a way that she acknowledges her audience without seeming to pander or overly adjust her content. It's as close to an unvarnished look at the Asian modeling market as one could hope for.

Cameron Russell

Photo of Cameron Russell from her blog

American Cameron Russell — who recently revealed her agency told her to sleep with a photographer when she was 16 — keeps things lively at her blog, Funny and Interesting. Although she generally only obliquely references her work (for clients including French Vogue, Yves Saint Laurent, and Calvin Klein), Russell, a Columbia undergraduate studying economics who does things like run the Boston marathon in her spare time, writes compellingly about everything from pareildolia to grifter nuns on the Acela. There's also sprinklings of fiction and interviews with people working on unusual projects.

Sophie Ward

Photo of Sophie Ward from her blog

If Russell's blog, while unmistakably animated by her personality, is outwardly focused, Sophie Ward's is at the other end of the scale: obviously personal, and esoteric to the point of self-involvement. Yet, due in no small part to her writing skill, it often holds interest. Ward, the older sister of fellow model Gemma (yes, that Gemma), has a sideline career as a writer and editor for the small imprint Paper Castle Press, and maintains her blog, Big Long Open Gash on its site. Ward, who is, like her better-known sister, represented internationally by the powerhouse IMG agency, has shot with Italian Vogue and walked for Armani Privé couture. Ward posts excerpts of what she's reading — about Buddhism, Dadaism, Pablo Neruda — and, although I can't bear to read when she puts up things like edited love letters, feeling too much the voyeuristic creep, I keep coming back in hope of spying acerbic observations like "I have many friends in the fashion industry (oh god, did I just write that?) and they are all lovely acquaintances when you get them for 3 seconds or less, or on a day when they have been eating." (Ward tweaks her posts like a maniac, and perhaps thought better of that particular gem. But I think she's at her best when she's mean, so thank goodness for Google's cache and my Apple Shift 4.)

Coco Rocha

Photo of Coco Rocha playing soccer from her blog

For something completely different: Coco Rocha. The Canadian supermodel — who last year dyed her hair red at the request of none other than Steven Meisel — maintains a blog at the corner of professional and cheery. It shouldn't be interesting, but Rocha is humble and the for-the-fans-ness of the enterprise somehow doesn't taint it. And occasionally she uploads a really funny video, maybe with her equally awesome friend Behati Prinsloo. I think what people object to, or at least what I object to, in a personal blog that feels impersonal, is the betrayal of the author's promise: it seems ungenerous to offer a glimpse behind the curtains, and then to deliver instead triple-exclamation-pointed Seinfeldian platitudes about shoes or tiny airplane seats. Rocha, although extremely measured in what she shares of herself, manages to remain highly likable.



Daul Kim

Photo of Daul Kim from her blog

Probably the weirdest model blog of all — and, just maybe, my favorite — is Daul Kim's. The Koren supermodel's I Like To Fork Myself is an ongoing notation of her working, social, and intellectual life, all delivered in conversational run-ons that clamber down the page, piling one weird and striking observation on top of the next. It's a style that, intentionally or not, perhaps most perfectly mimics the actual whorl of life as a busy working model. This week, at home in Korea, Kim shot for Numéro for two days straight, with wrap times of 4 a.m. and midnight, had her wisdom teeth pulled on the third day, and then worked again until the afternoon. Then she went to London, worked, and DJ'd a party. Now she is, apparently, en route to Paris and Berlin for more work. That she finds the time to make Absolutely Fabulous jokes and share her impressions of Milan Kundera ("im reading his books now days/and i like him alot./and ppl were like 'REALLY? U LIKE MILAN KUNDERA?'/like as if its EW... is it????/i dont get it/i love his style of writing, very analytical and psychological/very reasonable, erotic, interesting, kind of grotesque, kind of stereotyping.../but very very... true/i really like studying human behavior and how certain people's mind work/it is kind of like.. little things when you see how someone behaves/very slight things/where u can tell/'oh he/she has unresolved issues with his mother'/'oh that person , sexual deviant!'/'oh that person probably goes home and revises their conversation/e.g. im going to say this when i introduce myself at dinner today'") at all is impressive; all the more so that the unfolding record of her frazzled mind is so consistently interesting. Girl is whip-smart and funny.

Elyse Sewell's LiveJournal
Funny And Interesting (Cameron Russell's blog)
Big Long Open Gash (Sophie Ward's blog)
Oh So Coco (Coco Rocha's blog)
I Like To Fork Myself (Daul Kim's blog)

• Women, gird your loins: Lady GaGa wants you to share her personal, pants-optional, control-top-hose-and-neon-and-sunglasses-at-night style of dress. Because in the future, everyone will have a clothing line. [Sassybella]

• Back in the realm of actual designers, Prabal Gurung (the other guy who used to design for Bill Blass) is presenting a self-funded 20-look collection at New York fashion week. He intends to grow the label slowly as a foil against the recession. “Controlled distribution is my mantra," says Gurung. "I’m in no rush to be the next big thing." Let's hope we can somehow see Peter Som at fashion week as well. [WSJ]
• Don't mind the layoffs, we're Forbes! In the midst of the recession, the financial magazine has some sunny news: the rich will still shop. Also, a Saudi prince spent $13,000 on sunglasses this one time. So clearly all is well. [Forbes]
• Or, at least it's well if you're Polo: profit was much higher than expected last quarter, the company reported this morning. The company earned $1.05 per share, after analysts had expected only 86 cents. [Reuters]
• Freida Pinto is this award season's "it" girl, if you can strike that mustard Lacroix sack from her record, that is. [WWD]
• The owner of a store called Forever Leather plies his wares on late-night television, only in this ad, he starts ranting about Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal, and the economy. "Tell you what, if I ran the state of New York, there'd be jobs in New York, and people would be happy, instead of strugglin', and pissin' and moanin' about how bad things are all the time. Why dontcha do something?" Then he pulls out a cardboard cut-out of the senator and says, "Thanks for nothin', Hillary Clinton." You basically have to watch it. [AdAge]
• The hardest-working legal team in the Western hemisphere just got a new leader: American Apparel has announced that Glenn A. Weinman, former vice president general counsel and secretary for Guess, will take the same position at the California-based company, which as we all know continues to face numerous sexual-harassment lawsuits. Weinman's baptism by fire begins on February 17. [WWD]
• California Select, American Apparel's only vintage store, has closed down. (California Select, you might remember, is what the girls from Chictopia wear in their very special American Apparel ads.) The company's expansion was the fastest in US retail history, so it's no surprise there should be some blowback. [WWD]
• Isaac Mizrahi's first collection for Liz Claiborne is fully online, with prices and videos of Isaac getting excited about the clothes. [Liz Claiborne]
• This video claims to offer news of the "highly speculative" LVMH Coach buy-out, but I can't stop thinking about the shockingly ugly portmanteau "handbagorexia" and what, if anything, it might mean. [The Street]
• Now that fashion week has entered its last year at the tents, WWD has a look back at the 16 years the event called Bryant Park home. [WWD]
• The Target micro-site for McQ Alexander McQueen for Target has launched — just 28 days before the clothes hit stores on March 4. You can only see three of the looks, though, so if you're curious about the collection we covered it when the lookbook leaked. [Target]
• Michelle Obama had her hair done by a guy named Rahni on inauguration day. Rahni would like very much to tell you what that was like. Next up: the woman who did the first lady's nails. [The Cut]
• Simon Doonan says: "Keeping your best clothes for parties is the same as leaving the plastic on your lampshades. There are limitations, though; nobody wants an invasive medical procedure performed by a doctor in a Cavalli sequined unitard." Which is precisely why I'm writing this news roundup in a purple silk sheath dress, green vintage crocodile pumps, and an old Hermès scarf, cigarette holder in hand, while my ocelot, Mr. Snugglepuss, purrs on the divan to my right. It just feels so much better this way. [Times of London]
• Betsey Johnson may be cutting costs by holding a presentation instead of a runway show, but her invitations are in no way third-rate. How cute, a pot holder! [Fashionista]
• Meanwhile, Erin Fetherson has gone high-tech, forgoing paper invitations for a special Flash-animated website for RSVPs. [Style.com]
• Fresh after opening her first Paris store, Stella McCartney is expanding into the Middle East, and will have six stores in the region by the middle of this year. [WWD]
• More potentially terrible fashion news: a Badgley Mischka employee was reportedly overheard talking about a "massive fight" the lover/designers had and how it might lead to a split. After recently discounting their line, at that. The story was denied by the company's representative. [New York Daily News]
• Are you a megamogul looking for a famous face to shill for your products more effectively than average? Market research brings you all the necessary appeal/awareness rankings for celebrities in need of endorsement contracts. [WWD]

• Vivienne Westwood's campaign with Pamela Anderson (and Viv's hot, much-younger husband) was shot on election day last year. The ladies talk about their friendship, which is based on sending each other books. [Times of London]

• The first season of Erin Wasson's much-anticipated line for RVCA is late. [Racked]
• Fresh from accusing Dolce & Gabbana from copying a menswear design he hadn't even then shown, Giorgio Armani has snide words for Rome's fashion week. (The Italian capital has a small couture week, which is separate from the bigger ready-to-wear week in Milan.) Rome fashion week responds, basically, that Armani should eat it. [Reuters]
• Meanwhile, Italian designers didn't necessarily enhance their fashion-forward quotient by showing an inordinate amount of Obamawear. Did nobody think giant screenprints of the man's face on caftans might be slightly too literal an interpretation of "hope"? [Reuters]
• The industry, like the country, continues to feel the effects of this recession. Macy's is laying off 4% of its workforce, or some 7,000 people, in company restructuring. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne, which owns the brands Mexx, Lucky Brand, Juicy Couture, and Kate Spade, announced plans to cut 725 jobs across the company this morning. That's 8% of its workforce. [Reuters]
• Avon is struggling against poor sales, and the high US dollar. Restructuring made net income jump 80% last quarter, but the company expects 2009 to be tough. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, retailers whose margins are hit hard by discounting this season are trying to find ways to manufacture and distribute clothing ever more cheaply. Think less embroidery and time-consuming embellishment, less air-freighting, and switching from Chinese factories to ones in countries like India. [WSJ]
• Update in the ongoing search for the "recession-proof" inessential of myth. It's not designer frocks. It's not lipstick. It's not body creams. But it might be shoes! A survey of consumers reports people are still planning to buy new shoes. [WWD]
• Annick Goutal's sales were up 7% on last year in December, but the figure for the average sale dropped. The iconic luxury perfumer is accordingly scaling back its expansion plans. So for now you'll still have to go to France, or the magical land called eBay, for those gorgeous bottles. [Financial Times]
• Uniqlo is faring better than most. Same-store sales climbed 5.7% in January, and it also grew sales through the difficult months of November and December. Their raft of designer collaborations for the coming months and their commitment to cheap, beautiful basics should put them in good stead. [WWD]
• Can you imagine New York Fashion Week taking place at Lincoln Center? The Bryant Park Corporation, which runs the park where the tents have dwelt twice-annually since 1993, has frequently clashed with fashion week organizers IMG, and apparently the $2-3 million it receives in rent from IMG every year is no longer enough to keep BCC happy. It wants the giant tents, the stiletto-clad editors, the sulky models, the hyperactive stylists, the vague celebs, the chattering media, the whole faaaaaabulous lot of us out after the coming September. Lincoln Center is in the middle of its own redevelopment, and I can't imagine designers who are mainly headquartered downtown, in Chelsea, or in the garment district being happy with such a faraway location. [New York Times]
• The Kaiser acquired a furniture company. "One thing is on the body, the other thing is around the body," he shrugged, says Women's Wear Daily. He's also dressing Marianne Faithful on her upcoming tour. [WWD]
• ABS by Allen Schwatz is rushing production on a $300 knock-off of Michelle Obama's Jason Wu inaugural gown (Wu himself is not producing the one-off dress for sale). Schwartz is also doing a version of Obama's Isabel Toledo sheath, but in ivory, since he thinks women won't buy lemongrass. Which is odd because lemongrass is exactly the kind of color most women would not have considered wearing until we saw the first lady looking so radiant in it. He doesn't give a fig what Jill Biden wears, either, so Reem Acra need not fear a reproduction of the red chiffon sleeveless gown Biden chose for the inauguration. Schwartz has bigger fish to fry, like taking inspiration from what Kate Winslet, Sandra Bullock, and Drew Barrymore wore to the Golden Globes, and guarding against "soft" sales in a market that has seen the designer dresses he copies so heavily discounted that they approach his versions in price. [WSJ]
• Maybe P. Diddy ripped off an artist's glass sculpture for his perfume bottle. [TMZ]
• Jason Wu's not going to show fur in his fall ready-to-wear collection, after all. Seems like quite a sudden reversal of concept less than two weeks out from fashion week. [WWD]

• Michelle Obama wore Tracy Feith yesterday. She has yet to warn any designer what she's wearing — which is kind of awesomely normal. It must be the best surprise one could get. [WWD]

• There's a slick "behind-the-scenes" video of Madonna's shoot for Louis Vuitton. Marc Jacobs explains his casting choice, and our girl from Detroit says she thinks MJ is "kinda hot" in her weird pan-European accent. [The Life Files]
• Remember when pink-obsessed Russian orange juice oligarch heiress/designer Kira Plastinina’s chain of stores was depressing because it proved the wealthy will get ahead regardless of talent and cutting taxes for billionaires only encourages them to do dumb-shit things like giving 15-year-olds stores to "run"? Well, now it's depressing because the recession is here and suddenly the rich not having more money than they know what to do with is, you know, A Problem. Less than one year (and one Sweet Sixteen party with Chris Brown) after its US launch, the firm is in bankruptcy court, owing over $54 million. Employees were turfed out on the street. Russia! magazine has a timeline. I suggest you use it to occupy your forebrain as you ponder the moral correctness of feeling schadenfreude at the expense of a schoolgirl. [Russia!]
• Michelle Obama might be at NY Fashion Week. She certainly will soon be entertaining overtures from Fern Mallis, the IMG vice-president who runs the event. Mallis wants to propose some charity initiatives that would be a good fit for the new first lady. [NY Mag]
• Imagine what an impact she could have on fashion week during this economy of lowered expectations: Yesterday, in addition to crashing J. Crew's site with her choice of gloves, Michelle Obama made Isabel Toledo and Jason Wu the 70th and 11th most-searched terms on the internet. [NY Times]
• As my mother would say, some people just have no class. "Designers" are already lining up to copy Wu and Toledo's inaugural looks. [NY Daily News]
• Whatever happens, don't expect this fashion week to be like fashion weeks past. As you know, there's a general trend away from the Bryant Park tents and towards cheaper presentations in designers' own spaces, or towards group shows to split costs. Also pretty much nobody is having an afterparty. However, registrations and sponsorships are about the same as last season, and the total number of fashion week events is only down to 197, from 225 one year ago, so...maybe it won't be so bad? [WSJ]
• Giorgio Armani showed the quilted pants that he claimed Dolce & Gabbana ripped off in Milan; now there's a photo for comparison. They look like two pairs of pants that are ugly in the same way. [Guardian]
• Hussein Chalayan has sensible advice for aspiring fashion designers: the most important thing — even and perhaps especially in these days of Lauren Conrad and Project Runway contestants, more memorable for referring to themselves in the third person than any garment they may have sewed — is not to become your own brand. It's to make good clothes. And to learn how to work as part of a team. Hussein Chalayan is wise. [Elle UK]
• Coach's profits fell 14% in the last quarter of 2008, and the company is scaling back its expansion plans as a result. Ali Michael was paid a reported $50,000 to shoot Coach's fall 2009 campaign last week. [WSJ]
• NOOOOOOOO! Filene's Basement is to close almost a third of its stores. Damn you, recession. Don't they understand that now more than ever do we need designer wares at 90% off! I will go and cry into the hem of my latest Filene's find now. [Boston Globe]
• Scott Schuman's The Sartorialist is to become a photography book. [Reuters]

• Olivier Theyskens is holding true to the fundamentals. “When the economy changes, it’s not like you want to start eating bad-tasting chocolate,” he said, after showing his pre-fall collection for Nina Ricci. [WWD]

• Serial rapist Anand Jon, the former celebrity designer, is scheduled to be sentenced today. The penalty for his 16 counts of sexual abuse against models, including 7 counts of forcible rape of women aged 14-21 is a mandatory life sentence, with earliest parole eligibility in 2075. Regardless, his mother was apparently overheard approaching wealthy guests at a hotel in Chennai, India, asking for money for an appeal. Jon's website greeting page opens with a quote from Gandhi: "Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." [NY Post]
• Nixonite dirty trickster Roger Stone — subject of an excellent Jeffrey Toobin profile last year — apparently thinks himself a fashion maven. Taking up the mantle of the deceased Mr. Blackwell, Stone inaugurated a new annual feature on his website, a worst- and best-dressed list. Though occasionally wacky ("Lobbyists are the only elegant men left in America"), his advice isn't all off the mark: Obama and Carla Bruni tops the men's and women's lists, respectively, and he says Tom Wolfe "looks like he's a cross-dressing character in a lesser Dickens novel." [The Stone Zone]
• Designer Vivienne Tam held a fashion show in Beijing to raise money to save the panda habitat destroyed in last year's Sichuan earthquake. The five one-off outfits she auctioned featured panda motifs. Adorable. [Reuters]
• As part of his prize for winning the 2008 CDFA/Vogue Fashion Fund award, Alexander Wang gets one year of professional mentoring from none other than Diane von Furstenberg. Runners-up Vena Cava and Albertus Swanepoel are to be mentored by Patrick Robinson and Andrew Rosen, and Andy and Kate Spade, respectively. [WWD]
• Ellen Tracy has inked a licensing deal for intimate apparel. Expect to see "sleepwear, at-homewear, robes, foundations, shapewear and lingerie" everywhere Ellen Tracy is sold as soon as this fall. [WWD]
• WWD has a good round-up of the status of designers' venue preparations for New York Fashion Week, just one month away. IMG is not introducing a fourth, off-site presentation venue this season, as had been floated, meaning rental at the Bryant Park Tents proper will cost $28,000-$48,000. Many designers are opting for cheaper locales. Calvin Klein is moving its show to the ground floor of the company headquarters, Vera Wang is holding hers in her new SoHo store, smaller labels are banding together for shared shows, and others, like Thakoon and Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, are showing in Chelsea gallery spaces. Meanwhile, Tommy Hilfiger is back to the tents after a multi-season absence. Marc Jacobs, as usual, intends to use the Lexington Avenue Armory. [WWD]
• Sass & Bide are down for the count entirely. Although they intended to return to fashion week this season, co-founder Sarah Jane Clark's third pregnancy means the Australian duo will stay home. What a happy event to spur such a sad occurrence. [Fashionista]
• High dudgeon at a retail bigwig confab: J. Crew's chief executive Mickey Drexler reportedly took Neiman Marcus' chief executive Burt Tansky to task over luxury markups. Drexler told Tansky the days of the $800 high heel are over. “Wall Street is over,” he continued, and “more wealth has been created on non-productive [financial] transactions” than ever before. When the market comes back, Drexler said, consumers will not be tricked into paying department store margins again. “There’s a whole reset button that has been pushed," he said. Tansky responded by saying “It’s premature to start denigrating what the affluent customer will want.” This fight sounds like it was awesome and very, very awkward. [WSJ]
• The man behind the "Save Anna" t-shirt has a new thing for you to wear: A Rachel Zoe "bananas" shirt with a Warhol-esque screenprint of the stylist-approved fruit and the phrase "I die. Bananas." underneath. Eating disorder, tanning club card, and giant hippie dress optional. [The Cut]
• NY Mag has a sweet video of Marc Jacobs in bed talking about the Stephen Sprouse graffiti collection, which was recently relaunched. "I have a lot of Stephen's clothes and the thing is every time I look at them, they never feel old-fashioned to me, they never look out-of-date. I don't originate or create anything, I'm just here putting things together or re-putting things together, and I like it that way," says Jacobs. [The Cut]
• Wait, what? Stephen Alan for Uniqlo? Please let this not be like that time Amy Winehouse said she was doing a clothing line. [The Cut]
• Dolce & Gabbana's new campaign, shot by Steven Klein, is being proudly trumpeted as a potential source of controversy. Inspired by the Visconti film The Leopard, about a Sicilian aristocratic family at the time of Italian unification, the ads will feature images of male models praying. "For sure they will say we are offending religion," sighed either Domenico or Stefano, reports Reuters. "Instead it could be read as a return to values. And there is a need for that at this time." Yes. For "values," and, presumably, for valuable clothes. [Reuters]
• Remember how Domenico Vacca and John Varvatos both claimed to have dressed Jeremy Piven for the Golden Globes? Turns out it was a tie. The actor's publicist says he wore a Domenico Vacca jacket and John Varvatos pants. Which might be true, or it might be her trying to stay on both companies' good sides after pledging separately to each to wear its clothes and screwing that up royally. How much you want to bet pissed reps for both labels are poring over photos trying to tell their lapel notches from the competitor's as we speak? [WSJ]
• Nonetheless, expect more of the same as award season wears on through the grim retail market. The thin consumer dollar means designers are even more eager to get their gears on a red carpet. Katie Holmes' Golden Globes stylist even received personal phone calls from several solicitous designers. "That never happened before," said the stylist, "usually I just hear from their publicists." And cows walk upright and eat manburgers in this strange opposite world! [WSJ]

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

This kind of peek at a girl-on-the-verge reminds me of nothing so much as novelist Jennifer Egan's wonderful 1996 New York Times Magazine cover story about the first European season of a certain 16-year-old from Omaha who went by James. James got shingles on her back from the stress.

So because of this strange moment, we get to see Cato — who walked in 37 shows in four cities, and, yes, that is her in the brand new D&G cruise campaign—thinking out loud about her future in the business at a time when she is still sometimes uneasy at having to think of herself in the third person. And we get to see her parents expressing their reservations about her choices. Her mother calls her burgeoning career "bittersweet" since Cato's rarely home in the Netherlands these days. Her father seems disappointed that she is delaying university, saying, sternly, "You've gotta finish an education."

On this week's episode, Cato is moved from the development board — the home of the young, the inexperienced, the rising stars who could go either way — to the main women's board, which is for those who have more or less arrived. Cato's reaction, in the full clip, when her agents sit her down for the news is unruffled: "I was thinking that at any moment it could happen," she says, evenly. She's not stupid; anyone with an inkling how this industry works would know it's time for a girl like Cato to graduate, though not in the way her dad would wish.

'Model.Live' must be taking off on a Cato-ish trajectory for IMG and Vogue. What was originally conceived as a one-off series with a 12-episode arc has somehow stretched the 4-week ready-to-wear season into 14 weekly episodes, with the last set to go live next Friday. I had been wondering if the success would lead IMG to develop the idea further — for instance, if there would be any follow-up with Madeline, Austria, and Cato when the Fall/Winter 09 shows roll around. But this episode ends with the revelation that there will be a second season. Maybe sometime soon Cato will take Caroline Trentini and Catherine McNeil's places over at Express.com. She was all over competitor H&M's online home earlier this fall.

Earlier: 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: Model.Live Episode 13 [Vogue.tv]

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]

Modeling is just like Madeline says. (And, to their credit, what Vogue and IMG allow her to say so clearly and directly.) Agencies deduct so many expenses — rent, any advances you've taken, messenger fees, laser copies of the images in your portfolio, composite card printings, airfares, et cetera — that your wages arrive so garnished you could mistake them for canapés. (I remember the first time I spent a whole summer in one market. It was my big break, with a big agency, in a big city — and I worked solidly, doing mainly editorials, and look books for designers who'd keep me for 10 hours and then say, "Now you get to pick out....A dress!" I was dismayed to find that by the end of the season, despite working regularly, I owed my agency $1000. For what amounted to photocopying.)

You sink into debt so deeply that your only hope of earning it back is to stay in the game. But then when the nice money job, the $5,000-a-day catalog or the campaign for the South American mall brand you've never heard of, does come through, you don't see a penny because you technically spent it three months prior, when you had to pay your $325 weekly rent to stay in the agency-owned apartment and buy your $25 MetroCard and eat and reprint your cards to the tune of $500 — and all you'd booked back then was a lousy editorial that paid $100. Less your agency's customary 20%.

But, eventually, the campaigns and the catalogs come a little thicker, and occasionally your ledger even nudges into the black, because it turns out that during all those poorly paid editorials and look books, you were learning how to model. You were learning how to pose, how to give the client what he wants, how to ease the tension between the panicky fashion editor and the self-conscious photographer when it's only Look 7 and the light is going, how to make clothes look good in two dimensions, how to take cues from the makeup and styling and setting and form yourself into a kind of character. Madeline says in this episode, "I think I'm a really good model, and I can give any photographer what they want." That's a sentiment I can relate to; and while nobody pretends modeling is the most important job in the world, I do believe everyone has the right to take pride in their work. The hard part remains getting the opportunity to demonstrate one's skill. But if it were easy, I'd probably enjoy it less. I suspect Madeline might feel the same.

Earlier:
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 11 [Vogue.tv]

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]

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]

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

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

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

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

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]