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. More »

Vogue's 'Model.Live': "You Really Have To Give Up Stuff"

Cato Van Ee has had the best season of the three models IMG picked to follow for this series. The agency must have known it had a surefire smash hit in Cato; coming off high-profile exclusives for Prada and Miu Miu the previous season, plus a cover of L'Officiel, it would take spectacular bungling on the part of either agent or model for her to not have had a stellar season. What's been served up is a kind of very managed portrait of an emergent supermodel—what the head of the IMG development board, David Cunningham, terms "A confirmed new star on the market—but, you know, I say 'star' in small letters." Clip above, and full recap of what's new with the Dutch beauty after the jump. More »

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. More »

Vogue's 'Model.Live': "Shows Don't Even Pay. At All. Nothing. Zero. Zip."

I never know how I'm going to feel about "Model.Live." Some episodes, it tries so hard and achieves so little of interest, and then other weeks it's like they more or less just let the camera roll and the footage is effortlessly compelling. This time they find the sweet spot. Madeline, after a really tough show season, returns to New York to chase the elusive campaign dollar. She's joined by her Aussie boyfriend, Jimmy, to reflect on the mountain of debt she's racked up on her world tour. But they're young and in love and it's still warm out, so even the jeremiad has a jokey quality. They pass a mattress on the sidewalk, and Madeline calls out, "Hey, there's a mattress! We need a mattress." Then she books two days of work that she says pay better than the previous month of shows. Clip above, and recap after the jump. More »

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. More »

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. More »

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." More »

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. More »

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. More »

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. More »

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

As I suspected, Madeline has become my favorite of the three new faces profiled in Vogue's online reality show, "Model.Live." The girl doesn't much go for moderation: a 20-year-old from Logansport, IN, she has already found time to live in Arizona, Athens, Berlin, Geneva, and Sydney, attend a year of college, and sling subs at an Indiana café. Madeline talks a mile a minute as she explains how she got in to modeling, gushes goofily about her Australian boyfriend and first love, and says things like, "I think I'm pretty cool. But I'm pretty much a nerd." Clip after the jump. More »

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

The second episode of "Model.Live", Vogue's nifty Internet realidocumodelshow, is up. This week, Cato — who seems to think that college entails more partying than modeling — sets off from the Netherlands for New York, leaving behind a concerned but supportive mother who doesn't want her to get famous and a mystified but supportive father. (Dad: "Modeling is certainly a nice effort, but you know I'm an engineer, so I know the external side oxidizes. You always have to work on the inside.") Also joining the farewells is Simon, who seems like every utterly reliable, reasonably good-looking, overall sweet-natured and totally stultifying high school boyfriend, ever. Simon has the resigned hangdog look of a dude who knows he has lucked into a relationship with an amazing girl who's out of his league, and that whatever day she comes to share this knowledge is the day he'll be out of the picture. Check out Cato's mortified expression when Simon explains that, even though he hears fashion is all about sex and drugs and stuff, he trusts Cato because he knows she would never do any of that. More »

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. More »