Search for next hot fashion model
Model scouts are the gold miners of the fashion industry and are relied upon to search out the teens who can be turned into the runways' next superstars
Aug 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Bernadette Morra
Fashion editor
Don't be alarmed if you see a man bolt from a streetcar and chase a teenage girl down the street.
Could be that he's a model scout.
The runways and magazines are more than hungry for the fresh faces that scouts unearth
In fact, the fashion industry's appetite for bone-rack bodies with wide-set eyes, clear skin and perfect teeth is positively insatiable.
"You're always looking because clients always want to know who you have that's new," comments top Canadian agent Elmer Olsen. "It's an industry that thrives on newness."
Factor in the popularity of television shows such as
Canada's Next Top Model, and the role of the model scout is suddenly a hot new career.
"You have no idea the number of people who say they're model scouts," Olsen says. "It's become a trendy new thing."
Websites such as modelscout.com, modelscouts.com and themodelscout.com promise to introduce registrants to top agents. Whether they do or not is another matter.
"A true scout works for a reputable agency," Olsen explains. His or her job is to hunt up-and-coming talent. "You go to malls and McDonald's and other places young people go. It's boring, boring, boring. Your chances of finding someone are like winning on the horses. And there are scouts who are always on the road travelling, always pounding the pavement."
Olsen hosted a dozen or so of the world's top scouts last night at The Guvernment to mark the fourth anniversary of his agency. Scouts and agents from Milan, London, New York and Brazil flew in to have first dibs on Olsen's latest "girls."
The "hottest" include Tara Gill, a 17-year-old who is part-native, part-Irish.
Olsen learned of Gill through Shok Models, a local agency run by Camille Bailey and Cindy LaChapelle.
"They have something magic," Olsen says. They also have something Olsen doesn't – time to trawl the Eaton Centre and ride the subway looking for new faces.
That's how they found Gill four years ago. "She's a girl you couldn't miss, with the biggest hair, the tiniest body and huge lips," Bailey recalls.
Gill's parents stayed in touch with Bailey and LaChapelle while their daughter matured and focused on school. Ultimately, the Shok team's goal was to hand her over to Olsen
"We are a general agency with models and talent, teens and kids, and we do television and voice-overs," Bailey explains. "Our roster is not specific to one type. But we scout for high fashion because the other types seem to find us."
High-fashion models have a more extreme look than the bread and butter, girls-next-door who do well locally.
"The girls who can work on the world stage are very specific," Bailey says. "It's almost like they come out of a different factory."
Sofi Berelidze is another Shok find. Bailey and LaChapelle discovered her strutting along Queen St. W. last year. In March, Berelidze opened the Louis Vuitton show in Paris. She has also modelled for Lanvin, Nina Ricci, Christian Dior and Marc Jacobs.
"Elmer's connections can do a lot more for a girl," Bailey acknowledges. "And we have worked out a commission arrangement that is fair." Usually, however, freelance scouts receive a flat finder's fee.
Most large, reputable agencies also find talent through open calls – weekly open houses where potential models can walk in, meet the agents and get honest feedback.
"But rarely does the right girl walk in the door," says Trudi Tapscott of DNA Models in New York.
Last year 21-year-old Agyness Deyn strolled into DNA – and shortly after, onto the world's top runways. Her boyish blond pixie atop angelic features set her apart from the pack of long-haired waifs. But Tapscott can only recall one other time, many years back, that an undiscovered star walked through her door.
"Scouting is the gold mine of the whole operation," she says. "Basically, you are trying to find a needle in a haystack, a diamond in the rough. It's incredibly difficult. It's never the most obvious choice. The average person thinks it's the cheerleader with the great personality. But we're looking for the quiet girl in the corner who is taller than everyone else."
DNA has a staff scout who searches for models specific to the agency's clientele.
Some design houses have their own scouts, too. One of the most powerful is Russell Marsh, who works for Prada, Balenciaga and produces many London Fashion Week shows.
"Russell sees girls after a big chunk of the hard work is done," Tapscott says.
That hard work is known as development – polishing the diamond in the rough so that she dazzles. That could involve hair and eyebrow alterations, body sculpting, weight adjustment, and changes to the way she walks and presents herself – even the way she shakes hands with a client.
"Development can be done by the same person but lots of times it's not," Olsen says. "Usually the scout has an eye for raw talent and hands the girl over to an agency, to the development division. The art of it is grooming them."
"Development can take two minutes or six months," comments Matti Gidilevich, an agent and scout with Elite Canada. "You don't want to present a girl until she's finally ready." It took three years before B.C. model search contestant Bobbi Wiens was ready to go to market.
Gidilevich figures he eyeballs thousands of new faces a year at open calls, conventions, model and mall searches. And, yes, he also jumps off streetcars and chases girls down the street.
"If the parents are there they may get defensive that someone is approaching their child. But you introduce yourself, you say, `This is what I do. I think your daughter/son has a great look. Here's my card. Call me.' Usually, they do some research on the Internet and, once they inform themselves, at least 90 per cent come in to the agency."
Many of the scouts have scouts, too.
"Lots of us have our own scouting networks in place, and they may not necessarily be people in the business," Gidilevich says. He gets tips from friends, hairdressers, even his mother, who works at a Kitchener school.
With so many people touching a model's career along the way, there are inevitably debates about who actually "discovered" a girl.
"Usually it's the bigger agency, not the scout, that gets the credit," Gidilevich says.
That doesn't bother the Shok duo a bit.
"At the end of the day, it's what's best for the model," Bailey feels. "And the best thing is to put her in the best hands."
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