The Life Of A Fashion Model

Because of my interest in photography, I enjoyed reading The Wall Street Journal Page One feature article concerning fashion modeling Strike a Pose, Count Your Pennies (subscription required). While the work might seem glamorous, I get the sense that for most models, it is a challenging career choice.

Bianca Gomez, an 18-year-old model from Los Angeles, is rail-thin at 5'11" with almond shaped green eyes, honey-colored hair and translucent skin. She attracted interest from famous New York design houses well before she'd arrived in town to audition for their runway shows.

But in the brutal new calculus of high-fashion modeling, the odds of becoming a big-time mannequin have grown even slimmer. Competing with a deluge of fresh faces from Russia, Eastern Europe and Brazil, Ms. Gomez has faced many rejections. Expenses -- such as foreign travel costs -- have siphoned thousands of dollars from her fees. In December, she even considered calling it quits.

The global economy is transforming the modeling world. Supply has soared, as aspirants from developing countries stampede into the field. At last season's New York's fashion week, the quintessentially American design house of Calvin Klein didn't send a single American down its catwalk. Twelve of the 22 chosen were from Russia and Eastern Europe.

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Part of Ms. Gomez's problem was that at 5'11" and 120 pounds, she wasn't quite thin enough for some designers. On the runway, "the ideal body type for models today has been smaller shoulders, small waist, small rib cage, small hips," says Nian Fish, creative director of KCD Worldwide, which produces fashion shows for Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs. Eastern European girls, with their distinctive bone structure and narrow bodies, often fit the bill.

The WSJ also provided a video that accompanies this article. Note, those viewing this article through a newsreader might not see that there is an embedded video below. If you are unable to see the embedded video, then if you want to see the video, you will need to view my weblog article.

The video certainly give the reader a different sense of the career of a fashion model.