Nicole Bordeaux, Model screener, Wilhemina Models West
“I make the decisions about who we take and we don’t,” says Nicole Bordeaux. “I have a particular eye and an instinct.”
As women’s director for Wilhemina Models West in Beverly Hills, which supplies beautiful people to magazines, catalogs and commercials, she rigidly adheres to hard criteria. Successful applicants must be at least 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with high cheekbones, full lips, wide-set eyes and a small but elongated nose. And thin. Though Bordeaux says she once signed a 170-pound girl and put her on a diet. Being model perfect, however, is not the end-all. To stand out in L.A.’s stream of hopefuls--as many as 15 a day, referrals from talent agents and hair and makeup artists as well as the Thursday open-call walk-ins--a candidate needs that intangible something, a special energy or unique expression. This year’s look can be summarized in one word: globalization.
“We believe in beauty being a wide range of different origins,” Bordeaux says. “So we look for the African American girls, the mixed [race] girls, the Japanese girls, the Chinese. . . . Asian models are very big right now.”
Considering that the agency takes on roughly 10 girls a year, the odds of making it are tough, about 1 in 330. That’s a lot of disappointment, something Bordeaux, 34, knows firsthand: “When I started out as a model, I went to see the agencies five and six times. Then I bought a one-way ticket to Paris, and nobody wanted me there either.” Then, she says, photographer Guy Bourdin “discovered” her crying on the subway. She appeared in French Vogue, and other jobs poured in.
At Wilhemina, a simple Polaroid mug shot can be the passport to a lucrative career. “The best part of this job is transforming these girls’ lives: taking someone new, putting them into a situation where they’re making a lot of money and changing the direction of their life,” Bordeaux says.
And the worst part? “Dealing with the bitchiness. This is a catty, gossipy business with a lot of back-stabbing and mudslinging. It’s a very egocentric business. There’s not a lot of humility.”
