Fashion is fickle. It promises only two things: continually evolve and be presented by those selected to sell it. What’s in fashion, worn by who’s in fashion: the Model. Here’s my experience on trying to sell it.
V Magazine & Ford Models Model Search in 2013. I submitted. Weeks later, a Voicemail from the Director of Ford’s Women’s division, New York. “Out of thousands of applicants, you’re being considered as a finalist.”
Having only been to New York in my imagination, suddenly this kid was making travel plans!
A few days later I arrived at Ford, stepped off the elevator and into their booking area. People with headsets sitting at a long table covered with computers. I introduced myself. Photos were taken. Then, the photographer asked me to sit down. I looked at the radiator and wondered how many coats of paint had been applied over the years. Chips large and small just continually painted over. Someone should sand the radiator down to metal and start again, but that would take time. I waited longer. I tried not to be nervous.
Waiting allowed me a chance to think. I realized the photographer had never introduced herself. Maybe they do things differently in New York. The photographer returned. “Are you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
In some crazy roundabout way, I’d just met the scout who’d called me. I left a few minutes later. Once in the elevator, I turned around one last time to admire the white covered books full of past and present Ford models and imagined myself in one before the doors closed. I returned home.
A few days later, an email. “You have a great look,” but the “team was a pass.” My eyes narrowed on the words, “team was a pass.” Who writes like that? A New York thing? Kinda like not introducing yourself? I had been rejected.
No next steps with Ford, just an ending.
Months later, an offer for representation from Next Model Management and a request to move to L.A. Step out of all I had, be charged 50 dollars a day to live in a model apartment, and see what happens: leave the full life I was leading to pursue another. Their business model didn’t make sense for me.
Ford had concluded I was “a pass.” And ironically, “Next” wasn’t Next for me. I couldn’t see my way clear to a L.A. apartment where I would be charged $50.00 a day plus expenses for the equivalent of a lottery ticket. I respectfully declined.
Rejection.
Time Passed. Then one day I thought of the waiting room at Ford, the white books, the bookers, and that radiator. I wouldn’t have been content to add another coat of paint. I would have taken it down to the metal, gotten rid of a hundred years of not taking the time, and applied a new coat. That’s when I knew what I would do.
I decided to create Mimi Model: an outlet for my creativity and a way for me to model on my own terms. What do you think?
Danielle
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