Not everyone can be a model. You might be a nepo baby, like me, walking for Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Chanel at the age of 17. But if that route is unavailable, then becoming a model may be bestowed upon you by a scout passing you on the street. ‘Hey darl, have you ever thought about being a model?’ they say, with a smile that puts your mother’s mind at ease.
To find one, head out to the watering holes where scouts congregate, like Brandy Melville or the gates of private schools. They’ll also line the streets around Wembley as girls queue up for Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift. I was at the Eras tour myself and things didn’t look great for scouting. ‘Found anyone good?’ I texted my scout friend. ‘No, all ugly and no racial diversity. Not even white, they’re pink.’
But while the scouts have free rein on skin colour, a lack of body diversity remains stubbornly persistent. So my first piece of advice is to be skinny – and genetically predisposed to being skinny. If you were scouted young, say 13, 14, 15, you’ll go through ‘scrubbing’ or ‘polishing’, the multi-year period between being ‘discovered’ and debuted at a fashion week, during which you are constantly checked to see whether you ‘fill out’. Emerging from your chrysalis, you will have gone from a shy, prepubescent, bug-eyed thing into a slightly less shy, postpubescent but prepubescent looking, bug-eyed thing – except now you have a choppy bob.
Even if you’ve been graced with the good luck of being able to say, ‘I just have a fast metabolism’ you’ll still hit the age when the goalpost legs disappear. Sorry babe, it happens to the best of us. Gigi, Bella, Kendall and Iris Law only really took off when they got proper skinny. You may be told this explicitly by your agent: ‘An inch off the hips please.’ From then on, you’re on ‘fat watch’ – an arduous process, whereby you head into the agency once a week, standing in an open-plan office and pulling your trousers down while the newest agent wraps a measuring tape around your arse. Over in a few minutes, a Post-it note with your measurements gets taken to your main agent. ‘Oh, 91cm this week. You were 90.5cm last week’.
Public pressure on the fashion world to stop promoting unattainable body ideals can turn these weight-loss requests into an absurd farce. One such meeting with my agent after a few months of no work and post-COVID weight-gain springs to mind. ‘I want to get you working again,’ she said, ‘but I think we need to make some changes.’ I knew what was coming. ‘Your hair is a problem, it needs to be longer.’ A pause. ‘So I’ve pulled up this picture from where I think your hair looks really great.’ The iPhone is passed to me, and I look at a picture of myself six months prior, maybe the skinniest I’ve ever been in my twenties, my hair only marginally longer than it was now. Two weeks later, with minimal weight loss and even more minimal hair growth, I returned to the agency. A few gasps were heard around the room. ‘Oh my God you look incredible, has something changed?’ said one. ‘Have you done something different with your hair?’ said another. It continued with the Spanish in-house cameraman: ‘You are lookin’ incredible, wow, wow.’ As he leaned in for the final shot I was released from the charade, as he whispered: ‘Have you lost weight?’
The inch shaved off, you may now return for your bikini digitals, the only time when you’ll ever wear heels and a bikini unless you were to audition for Love Island. The digitals should be taken in the morning, before you’ve eaten, so there’s no bloating. If you have a personal trainer, make sure to come before your workout so any muscle swelling from your 2kg bench presses doesn’t make you look hench. Doing squats? Don’t be silly. My personal trainer was under strict instruction of absolutely no squats, to avoid any chance of my bum getting bigger.
Scrubbed and polished and thin, it’s time to get ready for a casting. Seven years ago this meant skinny jeans, heels and a tight top. Nowadays, the rise in ‘personality’ models means you can turn up in ‘a look’. A pair of very low-rise, straight-leg trousers that sit low enough so that you can see a slight jut of the hip bone will do perfectly. Think empty. Think deflated. On top wear a big bulky leather or bomber jacket, probably black. The overall effect should leave you looking somewhat like Gru from Despicable Me.
The hours that went into your carefully crafted sartorial choices – which inevitably make you look like everyone else – may, however, have all been for nothing. Some casting directors want to get straight to the point. Enter the nude leotard. Hundreds of girls will turn up to cast for a show where the same ten leotards are passed back and forth. Remember, a model is a human with a homeostatic system and has probably been traipsing around to castings all day. At this point they stink. Removed from the safety of the heeled boots that made your legs look four inches longer, and standing in a damp bodysuit ripe with the sweat of the already fallen, you turn to the shivering girls queued alongside you, and size up the competition, literally.
