It’s Not All Limos : Job, Image Don’t Jibe, Model Says

The early evening temperature stood at a scorching 95 degrees as Paulina Porizkova, pirouetting and prancing in a tan wool winter coat, made her way down Grand Street in Lower Manhattan.

Pursuing the top model were Arthur Elgort, a fashion photographer who wore a T-shirt proclaiming “Arthur the Groovy” under his white shirt, unbuttoned because of the oppressive heat; Chris, his assistant, who wore shorts; Christiaan, the hairdresser, with combs and brushes protruding from the waist of his electric green pants; Sonia, the makeup artist, with tissues at the ready, and Elizabeth Tilberis, the cool and calm fashion director of British Vogue.

Drivers Hit Brakes

“Go down another column or two,” Elgort ordered as Porizkova, sweatless and sexy, slinked alongside a building. A man on a motorcycle screeched to a stop and stared. So did a cabdriver.

“Continue the turn. Soft on prancing,” the photographer commanded. The driver of a station wagon suddenly decided to double-park.

“Good light on her face,” Elgort said softly.

“Very pretty light,” said Tilberis. “It’s beautiful, Paulina. It’s working.”

Porizkova turned in the coat, leaned against the building, flirted with a stranger as the photographer, on his knees, snapped pictures. “Come a little closer now.”

Two huge blue flatbed trucks carrying rolls of sheet steel turned the corner and the drivers simultaneously spied Porizkova. Horns sounded as the vehicles nearly collided.

“250th at 2,” said Chris, holding up his light meter while ignoring the near-accident.

“OK, we are going to work our way back, in easier turns,” Elgort said, posing Porizkova near an auto transmission company for still more pictures.

“Great! Thank you very much,” Tilberis announced when the finely choreographed ballet ended.

“Icky, sticky!” Porizkova said.

From the time she was 15, Porizkova, now 22, has been a classic, timeless beauty. Her riveting, traffic-stopping figure has twice graced the cover of Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue. In her seven years as a model, she has decorated more than 400 magazine covers around the world, including British, American and French Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Mademoiselle and Cosmopolitan. Her swimsuit calendar and poster ignite teen and post- teen passions. She has traveled the world, been in television commercials and hundreds of advertisements, and appeared on talk shows and in music videos and a movie.

In short, said Elgort, summing up widely shared sentiment: “She sells.”

Porizkova is at the pinnacle of her profession, able to command as much as $10,000 for a day’s work. Charisma, glitter, the good life are embedded in her svelte image, which tends to overshadow her very active intelligence. For thousands of teen-agers flocking to New York each year with the hope of becoming models, Porizkova personifies the dream . But like many dreams, this one can leave a sense of emptiness upon awakening.

“The fact is, it is not a very creative business, because you are really nothing but an apple in a still life,” said Porizkova, who is known for outspokenness about her work. “The creative part is really for the photographer to decide where to put it and how to light it. The model is really nothing but an apple.”

” . . . People, usually women, get very upset I dared bite the hand that feeds me. They say: ‘I always wanted to be a model and now I have three kids. How dare you say something like that about modeling.’ Well, of course, they haven’t heard the whole story.”

Porizkova’s day begins at 9:30 on a Friday morning in Elgort’s 5,500-square-foot white-walled studio on the sixth floor of a dingy loft building in Manhattan’s SoHo district. Large windows and a two-story skylight ensure an ample supply of natural light for photography.

Clothing to be photographed hangs on racks or lies in boxes near an ironing board. Mood music from two large speakers fills the room. Porizkova prefers piano music--Chopin. Already, the ceiling fans in the un-air-conditioned studio have lost the battle against the heat.

“What kind of clothes are you doing?” Porizkova asked when she arrived, managing to look cool in a print sun dress.

“Think of the North Pole,” someone said. “They were doing furs yesterday.”

On the previous day, Porizkova had flown by helicopter to the Franklin Mint in Philadelphia to pose for a jewelry ad. The day before, she had also worked, though it took a bit of thought to remember the product.

‘Four Hours on One Elbow’

“It’s amazing how badly I remember what I do. It wasn’t covers. Oh, it was for Hermes--bags and accessories. It was one of those shots that looks extremely painful. You know, you are on an elbow and a hip and things are stacked up all over you, and you lie there for four hours on one elbow. . . . This was done in a studio in New York.”

Porizkova was 15 and living in Sweden when she begged her mother for a chance to travel to Paris and a chance to model. A girlfriend who noticed an agency’s ad for new faces had teased Porizkova’s hair and had sent in pictures. Porizkova’s mother, who had gotten out of Communist Czechoslovakia with her two children (Porizkova has a younger brother), was dubious. But she agreed to let her daughter go--just for the summer--with a promise to return to school if things did not work out. Porizkova’s father, a psychiatrist who had been living in the West, had separated from her mother soon after the family was reunited.

‘Completely Terrified’

Porizkova recalled that, when she walked into the Paris office of the Elite Model Management Corp., “I was terrified. I was completely terrified. . . . I was standing there while they were looking at my pictures. Of course, I couldn’t understand much English or French. I was trying to look at their faces to see if they liked them or not and whether I had to go back home or not.”

Porizkova laughed. “They liked it.”

Doubt had been a constant companion on her trip to Paris. “When I grew up, everybody always told me I was very ugly. I couldn’t get a date. No boys were interested. They poked fun at me. They told me I looked like a plucked chicken. That was my nickname--the broiler.”

All that changed soon afterward when Porizkova was booked for a photo session with a star model. “The photographer took me aside and said: ‘You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.’ I said: ‘What about this other girl?’ And he said: ‘Ah, she’s not even anywhere close. You are going to be a big star. She’s over and done with now.’ I thought: ‘Somebody actually thinks I’m pretty!’ And then I got to hear it every day.”

‘Is This What Happens?’

The photo session was an eye-opener in another way. Porizkova, who had been secretly idolizing the famous model, finally overcame shyness to make conversation. “I said: ‘What do you want to do after modeling?’ I didn’t even think you wouldn’t want to do something afterwards. She said: ‘I don’t know. I’ll just model as long as I can and maybe I’ll get married to some rich guy or something.’ And I think that was my first shock. I went: ‘Oh my God, is this what happens to you?’ ”

From that moment on, she said, she was careful not to be like “the ones who adore modeling because they have nothing else they can do. They are not smart enough or they are not talented enough. Every time I see them, I just go: ‘OK, Paulina, watch this. Be aware.’ Sometimes you sort of have to kick yourself a little and say: ‘Don’t believe what people are telling you, because people might change their minds tomorrow.’ You have to be sort of a pessimist really, semi-pessimist because otherwise you get floored real hard when bad times hit you.”

‘Thrilled to Death’

Within weeks, to her complete surprise, Porizkova’s face appeared on the cover of a French magazine. “I didn’t even know I had a cover. I just walked out on the street by the newsstand to go to work and all of a sudden, there I was, front page, looking cute. It was a nice picture actually. I think I bought about 25 issues. I was thrilled to death. The thrill of that first cover was really something.”

For Porizkova today, going to the newsstand in her Manhattan neighborhood is like looking in the mirror. “Now, I pass by the newsstand and go: ‘Oh my God, that one is not as good as the February one.’ ”

Porizkova occasionally doodles on her magazine covers, sketching cross-eyes and fangs for teeth on her face.

“I just think you have to poke fun at yourself. Beauty is only skin deep and you can’t believe it. I mean, if you have a sense of humor about people telling you you are the most beautiful woman in the world, and you have a sense of humor about all that stuff going on, about your weight and your discipline, that is the only way to survive it, with a grain of salt.”

‘Be in Love’

“Want to know a beauty secret?” she asked, an impish look in her eyes. “Drink a lot of water and be in love.”

It was time for Porizkova to be made up for her first picture. With her hair up in a chignon, she was transformed from a girl in a simple sun dress to an elegant woman in a pink bodice and skirt.

“If you are a good model, you usually just take on the character that you see in the mirror, which is not really you,” Porizkova explained, studying her reflection. “You really do need the mirror to look yourself over, and you know what part you’re playing--if you’re playing the lady, if you’re playing the slut, if you’re playing the junior.”

Elgort adjusted the leg of a tripod. Christiaan moved in to spray a stray strand of hair. Porizkova--arms thrown back, bodice thrust forward--looked intently into the camera, seducing it.

“Very relaxed,” Elgort directed.

Porizkova thrust her bare shoulders back and forth, shifting her body, offering a kaleidoscope of poses.

“Perfect!” Elgort said after he had shot several rolls of film. “Done!”

‘Never Had a Reshoot’

“She takes care of the whole thing by herself,” the photographer said as Porizkova laughed. “It’s like having an editor there and a commentator at the same time, and an extremely professional person, aside from being beautiful. I have known her since she was 15 and she has always come through. I have never had a reshoot.”

“To me, part of being a great girl like Paulina is she stays good year after year. Most of the girls come along and are good for about three years and they wear themselves out and become disinterested. . . . She gives what’s needed and even improves, which is fun to see.”

Porizkova is acutely aware of the pressures young models face: constant travel, the interruption of childhood, disruptions in education, the loss of leisure time in an often short-lived quest for success.

“They are being badgered left and right,” Elgort said. “The girls still have to keep their cool, be able to please people and yet somehow or other come out of it pleasing themselves, or else it shows on their faces.

‘Body Starts to Change’

“You know, you start to see the mouth starts going down, the tantrums start setting in, the eyes get lower, the body starts to change. They can’t take the year-in, year-out pressure of people saying: ‘And then you have to do a cover try tonight for Mademoiselle at 8 o’clock when you finish this, and so and so wants to interview you in the morning on the way to work. And don’t forget to do that, that and that and that. And by the way, can you work this weekend?’ Some girls are very good at saying no. There is an art in doing that so you don’t lose your agent’s interest also.”

Clearly, modeling has treated Porizkova well. She has traveled the world, and very regularly to the bank. At the age of 22, she enjoys the freedom money can bring. She has been able to cut back on her schedule this year, to have time for painting, being with her boyfriend, reading the classics and playing classical music on her piano. For several years she has been trying to write a children’s book about her cat. Recently, she says, she has come to realize that writer’s block can be overcome only one page at a time.

Meat-Market Atmosphere

Still, parts of modeling grate: the constant stress on looks, which can make even the most beautiful woman insecure, the meat-market atmosphere in which models compete for jobs, today’s style of eternal youth, which forces models barely in their teens to pose as grown-ups.

“One of the biggest minuses is the insecurities modeling gives you,” Porizkova said. “If you’re a model you become a very different kind of person, because no matter how beautiful you are, you always think you’re not beautiful enough. You’re not perfect, and modeling sort of digs that in more than anything.

“It makes all the women in America insecure about what they look like, but it’s not only that, because it makes you insecure about what you look like. There is always going to be a girl who has better legs or has nicer eyes or better-looking hair. . . .

“People think it is such a glamorous business being a model, and little girls dream about being models the way little boys think they are going to be rock stars. . . . Americans are very obsessed with looks. America is very obsessed by the perfect body, the perfect teeth, perfect hair, the perfect everything. You know, the Barbie woman.

‘Bathing Suits in the Winter’

”. . . I really wish every woman who wanted to be a model, who had dreams about how wonderful it could really be, could really be a model for just a week, not more, and then ask her what she thinks when this week is over. I am not talking about doing Cosmo covers that week. I am talking about doing catalogues, doing advertising for furs in the summer, bathing suits in the winter, that kind of modeling we deal with every day. That is not what those people think. It’s not wearing sequinned dresses and riding around in limos drinking champagne.”

As the day progressed, Porizkova posed in other outfits. At one point, as she crossed her legs in a clinging short dress on the piano bench, Sonia, the makeup artist, sighed. “In my next life, can I be like that?” she asked. “No way,” she answered herself.

Finally, at day’s end came the trickiest part--a double shot with Linda Evangelista, a model who like Porizkova worked in Paris and is quickly rising to prominence in New York. On the way outdoors into the heat, Porizkova stopped to frolic with Christiaan’s two young sons, who were climbing one of the studio’s ladders.

Mock Fight

For a photographer, creating the proper relationship between two models can be difficult. When they reached the street, it was 7 p.m. and the heat had not abated. Porizkova wore a blue winter coat; Evangelista, a red one. Before both models wilted, Elgort arranged poses--a mock fight, a fast walk down the street toward the camera. “I’m not getting a double page yet,” the photographer said, as Tilberis, the fashion director of British Vogue, stood at his side.

Porizkova paused and thought for a second. A smile crossed her face. Like a schoolgirl, she put forth the palm of her hand and taught Evangelista how to play patty cake as Elgort happily took pictures. Palm to palm, faster and faster, the two models slapped palms in the ancient children’s game. It was picture perfect--but for just a moment, being all grown-up was forgotten.