Posted 11:13 AM by Blah blah

Models Dream of Other Jobs (Modeling)

At NY Fashion Show, Models Dream of Other Things (Reuters):
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[A]t Peter Som's Spring 2004 collection the young women were paid in clothes, leaving them coveting a regular paycheck and a steady job instead of the tedium of day-to-day modeling....

"I would like to be an engineer. I love math," Lisa, a 21-year-old blond, size 2, model from Florida said, adding with a laugh that she would return to college "when my modeling career dies, in about a year."

Lisa isn't quite ready to quit yet but complains that modeling is a "very lonely" business.

Dasha, 19, a brunette Estonian national living in Florida, dreams of becoming an architect. "A soon as I make enough money to go to school I'm getting out. I want to go to like an Ivy League place to study architecture."

Quiana, a 21-year old model from Virginia dreams of becoming a pediatrician. "People think it's so much glamour and glitz, but it's just a job, she said. Models were always on the run -- "running to a fitting, to a show, to a photo shoot, like headless chickens."

Two hours before Som's show begins, backstage is a frenzy of powder puffs and hair spray. The 21 lanky models move between 10 make-up artists, 9 hair stylists and 17 dressers.

Minutes before show time, they assemble by clothes racks and undressed, apparently oblivious to the throng of people looking on. As they wriggle into outfits, double-sided tape is used to keep gowns in place and the soles of high-heeled shoes are scored with a razor blade to give traction.

After almost two and a half hours of preparation, and more than 30 minutes late, the models take to the catwalk.

Their mission, according to Som's publicity, is to somehow leave the audience with a feeling that these clothes are "about a feeling of knowing innocence, unbridled happiness and leaping toward the future."

Model after model parades down the runway with no smiles in evidence and no obvious sign of that "unbridled happiness."