Aspiring supermodels say the road to magazine covers and runways is far from glamorous--it means going to castings, working out at the gym and watching what they eat.
We know them familiarly as Cindy, Linda, Claudia, Kate or Nadja. Ditto our understanding that they make beaucoup bucks, get to trounce around in fabulous clothes, jet-set from Milan to New York and other chic places and in between fraternize with the Beautiful People.
So why shouldn’t any teen want to share the spotlight with the supermodels?
The reality: It’s not easy for young men and women to crack the highly competitive world of fashion modeling.
Chelsea Galanti, 16, of Laguna Niguel is one of the lucky ones. The 5-foot-10 Dana Hills junior recently signed up with the top-notch international agency Elite Model Management and her life now includes trips to New York, Sydney, Miami and Paris (where she heads this weekend).
But the trips didn’t happen overnight. Nor did the sessions with renowned photographers, including Bruce Weber, who slotted her as a rising star in an issue of Interview magazine last year. Likewise the runway work for Isaac Mizrahi, the editorial work for Shape magazine and the Singapore and Greek issues of Elle.
Things didn’t really get moving until she turned 15, three years after she started. Chelsea spent the first year or so in “development”--model-ese for an agency shaping the look of potential working models and hiring them out to lower-rate jobs to cultivate their experience in front of a camera and build their portfolios.
Then last spring Chelsea went to a casting for a Volvo commercial Weber was shooting in nearby Balboa. She hesitated showing up for such an unglamorous product. But she did. And she ended up serving as one of the principal models (“I love my mom for making me go,” she gushes).
Weber personally called her agency and requested she return for a test. That led to the seductive, tousled-hair black-and-white in Interview, followed by a Banana Republic assignment on Long Island last September--the “highlight so far” of her career. Her mother, who works for an airline, accompanied her on the weeklong job and shared a room as has become customary.
Working with Weber and more experienced models provided Chelsea a sort of crash course in modeling. “I was so nervous. I had to kiss a guy!” she pipes. “I kept thinking my dad’s going to kill me--he’s 100% full-on Italian.”
But there was more to it than that: “I learned so much from Bruce Weber. He changed my idea of what a model should be. He taught me to just be a real person in front of the camera.”
Work? Cynics might balk at this notion. But consider that being out and about in New York or Australia means hitting a dozen castings daily. There’s the gym, although Chelsea prefers to tone and keep her shape via her in-line skates--the one risky behavior she won’t drop.
As for food, she again calls attention to her Italian heritage, saying she continues to eat well “but it’s everything in moderation--don’t gorge. From Thanksgiving to Christmas I told my agency I’m going to be a teen-ager and enjoy the holidays and the food.”
Modeling consumes much of her time, not to mention “you have to give up a lot of fun things,” she says, “boyfriends who get (upset) if you appear in a photo with a guy, skipping parties because you have to wake up the next morning early and without dark circles under your eyes.”
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For Irvine High senior Jennifer Kettner, the sacrifices are just beginning along with her career. “When I play basketball, my mom makes me wear kneepads which are really dorky,” says the 17-year-old all-American beauty with long, wheat-colored hair and legs making up a considerable amount of her 5-foot-11 height.
“If I get a zit, it’s let’s go to the doctor, let’s get a facial,” she grimaces. “I eat pretty good anyway. But I won’t give up chocolate.”
School breaks haven’t been total treats either since her sophomore year, when her mother sent snapshots into Marian’s, a Costa Mesa agency that deals in the fashion industry.
During spring recess that year, Jennifer went to New York City for the first time after meeting a scout from the Next agency at Marian’s office. She returned to the city for a month in the summer, again with her mother and again staying in an apartment provided by Next.
Appointments with prospective employers--magazines, clothing companies--are stacked from 9 a.m. until as late as 11 p.m. daily.
“They look at your book, look at you and take a Polaroid--over and over again,” recalls Jennifer. No casting proved as nerve-racking as when she visited Seventeen magazine: “I was so scared. I read the magazine and I kept thinking what if I might be in it.”
She jetted to Germany last summer for six weeks, again at Next’s bidding. Next connected her with an agency in Hamburg and lined up living accommodations. First, she lived with a family, then she moved into her own apartment with another 16-year-old model from Memphis, Tenn., who within a couple of weeks was replaced by a 19-year-old German model.
“It was a totally different experience living on my own. I had to pay my utilities, groceries, rent. There’s a lot of freedom. I just didn’t go out that much because my roommate wasn’t into going out and I didn’t speak the language.”
Most of the money she made (she can’t remember the total but knows it ranged from $250 to $500 per day) went toward living expenses and shopping, though she came home with about $400. Most importantly, she got what she came for--tear sheets from several European magazines. Jennifer hopes the “tears” will score more work when she leaves for New York a week after graduation this June. Meantime, she awaits word from Barnard College, where she hopes to continue her education while working in the Big Apple (otherwise it’s to UC Berkeley or Stanford).
The honors student is aiming for genetic counseling or law--modeling or no modeling. Although, she confides, “if things went somewhere this summer I might defer admission for a year or two.”
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Formal education can be a juggling act for working teen models, especially when demand is so fickle and diminishes as one nears the ripe old age of 25. Many opt for home schooling and the GED test to complete high school as the traveling increasingly interferes with class attendance, an option Chelsea is considering and one that San Clemente High junior Micah Grisham has already accepted.
A motorcycle ride to Marian’s with a buddy interested in modeling turned into an “accident” that would turn around Micah’s life in the last 18 months.
“I rode to the agency with him but he was the one who wanted it,” he recalls, still a little stunned by his turn of fate that day. “I just wanted to ride my bike.”
The agency fell for his chiseled good looks and soon after testing him sent the prints off to Weber.
Micah flew to Montana within weeks for a test shoot that would lead him that fall to an extensive print campaign for Versace, shot in Miami with the likes of Claudia Schiffer, Tatiana and other giants. Striking a pose with the divas adolescent dreams are made of, Micah mumbles in stride that “they’re just normal people.” Of course, he admits: “Afterward, I was, ‘Wow!’ ”
That shoot followed with a steady run of work in Los Angeles until last summer, when he flew to Milan to strut the runway for Versace and several other Italian designers for two months. Then it was New York, after that Los Angeles, and back to Milan last month for runway work before heading to New York, where he is currently sharing an apartment in the East Village with a friend (“I’m thinking about sending my surfboard out here,” he says).
While runway work pays considerably more than print--Micah gets $2,000 to $3,000 a day on the catwalk versus an hourly rate of $100 for editorial to $600 for an advertising campaign--both appeal to him equally.
“Runway is a big, fast adrenaline rush like surfing or jumping off the pier, but it doesn’t last as long,” he says. At print he gets more creative, like at a recent shoot for a Buffalo Jeans ad where he “started fooling around to get everyone in the spirit.”
Having lived on his own since age 15 (he decided then he was ready), Micah regards this career as one he can’t refuse now. “If I don’t do the modeling now I’ll never have another chance. It’s great to see different cultures and experience them. I have friends all over the world. But school isn’t something I’m going to blow off either,” he says.
“Modeling makes you grow up fast,” he continues. “You have to be street-smart.” That means hiring an accountant and knowing when to reject offers that to the less savvy might seem attractive.
It’s admittedly a lot for any teen, no matter how mature. Getting old friends to relate is no easier. “They ask me about my summer and I tell them,” Micah says. “But they have no idea what I’m really talking about and they end up thinking you’re conceited and trying to act like some top model guy. I’m not. It’s just what I did.”
A level head is as invaluable as the right look, says Elite agent Katy Strouk.
Aspiring fashion models must own up to what it takes to even be considered. If you want to work, you have to meet a minimum 5-foot-8 requirement. Any shorter and jobs are considerably fewer, if at all (there is the petite category, with even fewer chances at making a living). At 5-foot-6, Kate Moss stands alone and probably will for another millennium. “Anyone who’s telling you anything other than that is feeding you a line,” Strouk warns.
Be careful of excessive charges for photography, she says. Of course, you’ll have to shell out some cash initially for test shots but it shouldn’t run over a couple hundred dollars.
“If an agency thinks you have what it takes, it’s going to develop you without you having to put out a lot of money,” Strouk adds. Indeed, Elite asks for vacation snapshots to determine if someone’s photogenic.
Also be wary of model searches unless they are affiliated with legitimate agencies, such as the one this Saturday afternoon at Fedco in Buena Park, which is co-sponsored by Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzgovia’s West Coast agency L.A. Models.
Once in, Chelsea recommends approaching it seriously like any other job and as an adventure that can be survived. “Take advantage of your time traveling or in between jobs to educate yourself about anything, a language, literature.
“A lot of girls get in too young and have nothing to fall back on--unless their only other goal is to marry a rock star.”
“I worry about my future,” continues Chelsea, who nets $300 a day for editorial work and $2,000 for catalogues. And for the record, she plans on going to cooking school in Bologna, Italy.
“In 10 years I’d like to be financially secure, be married, settled down. I’m into this just for the experience.”
She stops. “Wait--10 years? I’ll be 26. No, what I really want is to be a supermodel.”
The Scene is a weekly look at the trends and lifestyles of Orange County high schoolers.
