Scot In Line To Be New Face Of Dior At Just 17
TWO years ago school bullies were calling Amanda Hendrick an "ugly model".
Now the 17-year-old from Airdrie has been singled out for stardom by fashion giants Dior.
Her rise to the giddy heights of international modelling has been nothing short of meteoric.
One moment Amanda was an ordinary Lanarkshire schoolgirl. Then aphotographer spotted her walking through Glasgow Central Station.
Weeks later she was working for the city's Model Team and offers were flying in. Within months she was gracing the catwalks of Milan. This weekend she flies back to the fashion capital of Italy for fittings with Dior.
The 5ft 10in Lanarkshire lass was one of a handful of girls chosen at a casting for the legendary design house.
Dior bosses picked her out after spotting her picture on the Model Team's website.
Amanda has also been in demand for photoshoots, including one for Glamour magazine in which she wore aValentino dress and Cartier jewellery.
And she has had to turn down requests from designers in Japan because she is too busy.
But despite everything, Amanda still can't decide if she wants the highflying model lifestyle or just to got to college and "get a wee job somewhere".
She said: "I am really proud of what I have achieved and it has been fantastic to go to Milan.
"It is just I am not certain modelling is what I really want to do.
"Don't get me wrong. Model Team have been such a huge help and encouragement to me and I am really delighted and surprised that a fashion house like Dior is interested.
"But I still do sometimes think that I would be better off going to college and just getting a wee job somewhere.
"A lot of people don't believe this but modelling can be really hard work.
"In Milan I would spend about 10 hours a day just running from casting to casting without getting a break.
"Then sometimes when you get there you have to wait hours just to spend a couple of minutes getting your picture taken.
"Some of the girls in modelling can be real b*tches and there is also pressure about what you eat.
"I remember going to one casting where a girl fainted through lack of food. Another girl I lived with out there for a while obsessed about food all the time.
"I'm just not like that. I try to eat healthily but if I want ice-cream I am going to have it."
But Amanda admits it wasn't all work and no play.
"It was great fun as well," she confessed. "The nightclubs are desperate to get all the models into their premises so they send cars to pick you up, take you out for dinner where everything you can eat or drink is free, then take you to the club and drop you off home at the end of the night.
"It was quite amazing."
Amanda's model potential was first spotted when she entered a modelling competition for the teenage version of Elle magazine when she was 14.
The prize was a modelling contract with Storm in London and the agency told the organisers that no matter who won the prize, they still wanted to sign Amanda.
She came in second and true to their word Storm invited her down to get photographs taken for a portfolio.
Unfortunately, Amanda was sitting her Standard Grades at the time and couldn't make the appointment, deciding to concentrate on her schoolwork and put her modelling ambitions on ice.
She said: "It wasn't that I had been desperate to be a model but people kept saying to me I should give it a try because I was so tall.
"So when I saw the magazine competition, I just thought it would be fun.
"It was a shame about Storm though, but I just couldn't not go to my exams at the time."
A year later Amanda was walking through Central Station when she was approached by a photographer. Just weeks later she was modelling for the Original Shoe Company, had signed with Model Team and had offers of work flooding in.
So much so the teenager decided she couldn't concentrate on both modelling and her studies and chose to leave school.
AND she was more than happy to do so because of the jealousy she was encountering from her fellow pupils since she had become a model.
She said: "There were certainly people at school who were pretty mean to me. My friends and I would just be standing talking during lunch time and they would walk by and say things like: 'Oh look, there's the ugly model'.
"Me and my friends liked rock music and were a bit gothy as well, so we had never been part of the cool crowd at school.
"When I started modelling I just got picked on."
But that's all history now. There's only one thing worrying Amanda, who lives with mum Karen, step-dad Gordon and little sister Melissa, as she prepares to jet off to Milan - getting home in time to spend Christmas with her family. She said: "I am looking forward to it, but I have been away from home so much recently I really miss it.
"I am still just looking forward to coming back in time for Christmas.
"For the first few weeks of my last trip to Milan, which is the first time I had ever been away from home modelling, I was so homesick that I was phoning the Model Team every couple of days to say I was coming back.
"Thankfully they talked me out of it and I ended up staying for nearly three months just because there was so much work."
I sometimes think I'd be better off going to college and getting a wee job somewhere.''
how great for her!
I hope she does Milan next season.
