I once worked with an editor who said if you can cast the right model 80% of your work is done. This is so true. So many people underestimate what the model can do for the brand, without the right girl - it’s just clothes on a rail.
We all think about walking in someone else’s shoes and we always think it would be easier. Of course models do this on a regular basis and they just make it look easy. Shoes can be one of the most challenging part of any catwalk show. Everyone thinks it’s so easy to be a model and so simple to walk down a catwalk.
Abbey Lee Kershaw fell at Rodarte’s spring 2009 show because of the shoes. She, Sasha Pivovarova, and Natasha Poly all declined to wear the McQueen’s spring 2010 Alien 10" heels - the ones that Lady Gaga wore in her video Bad Romance. The shoes are considered so unique that they are protected by copyright!
It was model casting day at Vauxhall Fashion Scout - it’s a 4-hour open casting where about 300 models come by at once, and very patiently wait to be seen by all the designers (and stylists) showing at Vauxhall Fashion Scout for a chance to be in their show.
Anyone who thinks models don’t work hard doesn’t understand that for every well-paying job there’s a lot of not-so-well-paying jobs, and for every job there can be 20 castings or more, for which you get paid nothing and it takes up your whole day! The models were all fresh and friendly, even after waiting for a long time - amazing!!
I’m styling several shows, so I had to pay close attention to a lot of models - after about a hundred models it kind of becomes a blur, but you also really get into the zone, really focused, where you can just tell right away whether a model’s right for the show. The problem is so many them are so nice you just want to cast them all!
Vauxhall Fashion Scout is getting more and more important each year - it’s something which shows up in all sorts of little ways - like this year one of the models who came by for casting was Georgia Frost - beautiful!
