Model's Digest

Gisele Bundchen, the Brazilian bombshell who is one of the last to earn the supermodel title, has the luxury of picking and choosing her assignments now. That privilege didn't come quite overnight, even if she's only 28 years old: She has been in the United States for 11 of those years and in front of the camera the whole time. Bundchen has walked the world's fashion runways and has been the face of Victoria's Secret as well as Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana and Apple. Her newest job is the spokesmodel of Procter & Gamble's Max Factor cosmetics brand, which is approaching its 100th birthday and planning a big ad campaign to celebrate.?I thought it was really cool to be a part of something so old,? Bundchen says. ?I can't believe something can exist for that long. For a business to stay alive for that long, it must be really good. ?She adds: ?Imagine what I'd look at 100 years old?!? At a time when cosmetics companies typically turn to movie and music stars to get their products noticed, Max Factor felt Bundchen had sufficient star power. The brand has a legitimate connection to Hollywood; its namesake makeup artist began working on films in 1909 and is credited with designing Clara Bow's cupid-bow mouth and making Jean Harlow a platinum blond. But Bruce Katsman, associate marketing director, called choosing Bundchen ?a no-brainer.? ?She's the image of our high fashion consumer,? he says. ?It's not so much about her look, per se. She's rocked the runway so she's perceived as a great canvas. We think she does the same thing for makeup.? Bundchen acknowledges her chameleonlike quality and she thinks it's been part of her success. ?There's been the androgynous look and the classical pretty girls. I'm not one and I'm not the other, but I can look androgynous or I can look pretty ? but I'll never look too much one way or the other,? she says in a telephone interview.

When Bundchen emerged on the American modeling scene in 1997, it was the twilight of the supermodel era. She says she got in at the right time. ?I think I had the timing and the hard work. ... People had been tired of the supermodels ? the things you hear about the models not coming to work. I came along right from Brazil. I was having a good time, excited to have a job ? it was refreshing. It's what people thought they needed at the time. I'm respectful of people and people's time.? Luck, she adds, also played its part. ?Sometimes I ask, 'Why me?' I'm from a village of 10,000 people in the south of Brazil. I'm very grateful for my opportunities.? It's harder for models, even hardworking ones, to break out nowadays and make a name for themselves, Bundchen says. There's competition from celebrities and reality stars, and the en vogue look just keeps changing. Plus the older supers ? Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and the rest of that gang ? all are still beautiful women and getting their fair share of work.On her own days off, which are numerous by her own choosing, Bundchen says she doesn't pay much attention to fashion. She hasn't walked a runway in a long time, and won't be glued to the coverage of the shows at New York Fashion Week, which kicks off Friday.?I've never been one of those girls who was a fashion girl. I didn't have to have the bag or belt of the season,? she says. ?I like fashion, I like clothes, I enjoy when I look nice, but my main concern is how comfortable I'm going to be all day.? (AP)

Yesterday a law suit against Louisa von Minckwitz, the owner of Louisa Models has begun in Munich, Germany. Carina Wanzung, a former model of the agency, has sued von Minckwitz for 100,000 euros. Wanzung says, she has not received enough fee for years. The agency has mentioned a lower day fee than the customers would have really paid. Louisa Models has kept the difference. This is a practise current for many years employees had insured in affidavits.

The Casting Team from "America's Next Top Model" is conducting a nationwide search to find candidates for the next season. They are looking for young ladies "who are articulate, interesting and exhibit enthusiasm for the Series as well as a willingness to share their most private thoughts in an open forum of strangers." People who think "they have what it takes to make it in the high stress, high stakes world of modeling" can apply on gotcast.com and create a profile.

Model Ruslana Korshunova spoke of feeling "lost" and "hurt" in the months before she plunged to her death from her ninth floor flat in New York.The 20-year-old, who had appeared on the covers of French Elle and Russian Vogue, poured out her heart in postings on social networking sites.The Kazakh beauty was found dead outside her Manhattan apartment block on Saturday after apparently leaping from her balcony.While friends said there had been no signs she had been suicidal, internet postings show swings between euphoria and despair in a series of postings on the theme of love. In one message three months ago she wrote: "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?"An earlier posting, quoted by the New York Daily News, she wrote: "It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out." One cryptic entry in March reads: "My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high."Other postings revealed anger. In March she wrote: "I'm a bitch. I'm a witch. I don't care what you say ... I know why my other relationships didn't work out, 'cause I'm unpredictable. "Her most recent posting, quoted by the New York Daily News, amounted to a virtual discourse on the theme of love."Love is the sun, desire ? only flash," she wrote."Desire dazzles, and the sun gives life.""Love does not take away from one in order to give to another,"

Police reported no sign of a struggle inside Miss Korshunova's apartment.But Kira Titeneva, a friend from Korshunova's hometown, said: "There's no way she would have killed herself. She loved life so much."Another friend said that Miss Korshunova, who was three days shy of her 21st birthday, was "one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet. "He went on: "I'm still in shock. The world lost a great person."He added she had just returned from a modelling job in Paris and seemed "on top of the world". "There were no signs. That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that. "The 5 ft 8 in, longhair model, would have earned around $5,000 for a catwalk show and had been sending money home to her family in the former Soviet Republic. Her death is the latest to rock the fashion world, an industry often criticised for the pressures and demands it can place on models. In February, the body of Katoucha Niane, the former supermodel muse of Yves Saint Laurent, was found in the Seine near Paris after an apparent suicide. Over the past two years, a number of South American models have died of suspected malnutrition, prompting international debate about eating disorders and "size zero" models. But industry observers urged caution in assuming Korshunova's job was to blame for her death. Zach Eichman, a spokesman for Korshunova's agency, IMG, which also handles Heidi Klum and Kate Moss, said "she was one of our very good working models. She did a lot of shows and successful campaigns." Everyone I have spoken to is very surprised and the feedback I am getting from people is that there was little indication that there was something troubling her and that she was always very happy." A former boyfriend, Artem Perchenok, 24, said he dropped Korshunova off at her apartment several hours before her death after they watched the Demi Moore film Ghost together.

Police are still investigating the death of a model who fell nine stories from her apartment in Lower Manhattan yesterday afternoon. Published reports identified the victim as 20-year-old Kazakh fashion model Ruslana Korshunova. They say she died around 2:30 yesterday afternoon after falling from her building on Water Street, and that her death appears to be a suicide. The Kazakhstan native was discovered in November 2003 when bookers for a modeling agency saw her in a flight magazine. She subsequently appeared in fashion shows in London and New York and modeled for Nina Ricci, Marc Jacobs and Cynthia Rowley.

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Though America stands poised for its first black president in history, the fashion world descending on Paris for this week's couture-show summit will be treated yet again to a "white-out" on the catwalks. After the emergence 30 years back of black faces on catwalks -- thanks largely to recently demised French couture giant Yves Saint Laurent -- fashion in the first decade of the 21st century has turned relentlessly white. "I asked the modelling agency for black girls for our next show but there simply aren't any," said Mario Lefranc, half of the Lefranc-Ferrant designer duo, one of 40-odd labels presenting couture collections in Paris over the coming week. "I'm sick of blonde Russian girls," he told AFP. "Clearly the trend now is all for blue-eyed blondes." And at Jean-Paul Gaultier's, a designer renowned for using models of all ages, sizes, and origins, one assistant said: "It's really very difficult at the moment. There are no black models on the market, the agencies have none." In the last few years, she added, "there's been an invasion of girls from Eastern Europe, of their type of beauty."
Former model Mounia, now 40-something and born on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was one of the first top black models to hit high fashion those few decades ago, along with by Iman, Katousha, Naomi Campbell, Jourdan Dunn, Alek Wek and Pat Cleveland. An aspiring air hostess discovered by Hubert de Givenchy, then propelled onto the catwalk by Saint Laurent, she acted as the face of YSL for some 15 years from 1985 onwards. "He was inspired by the colour of my skin," Mounia told AFP. "I was his black model, his first black muse." "I've noticed there are many fewer black models on the catwalks today and I think it's a pity," she said. "Particularly when you look around at what is going on worldwide, at how society has evolved, at what is going on in America." Fashion has long been said to reflect changes in the air, and Barack Obama's rising star was one of the reasons behind a momentous decision in the rarefied world of style by Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani to make a statement against discrimination in its forthcoming issue.
Bound to make waves in the weeks and months to come, July's issue of Vogue Italia is to feature more than 100 pages, including the cover, of images of black women -- models as well as successful black women in arts and entertainment. The pictures were taken by influential US photographer Steven Meisel, known for his 1992 volume with Madonna. "Franca doesn't realise what she's done for people of colour," Campbell was quoted as saying of Vogue's "A Black Issue" in The New York Times. "It reminds me of Yves (Saint Laurent) using all the black models." And London's Daily Telegraph noted that "this will be an event to remember." As advertisers increasingly beam images of a multi-ethnic global society around the world, the whitewash on the catwalks appears absurdly out of touch with reality. So what ever happened since YSL, Paco Rabanne or Azzedine Alaïa put black models on the front pages? White domination on the catwalks in the 50s and early 60s, when racism and ostracism remained rife, reflected the times, said fashion historian Lydia Kamitsis. "Seeing black girls on covers and catwalks in the mid-60s caused a real scandal," she told AFP. "In the 80s there was an explosion of cultural and ethnic diversity, with models of all shapes and all cultures." "Then all this disappeared progressively to become this uniform whiteness of today." Kamitsis said she believed the white-out of black girls was because labels had become more important than creativity in contemporary fashion. "The product is what counts, the product is more important than the model's personality.
Today's style, in contrast with times when to be different was what counted, was "more uniform, more neutral" and designers themselves subjected to marketing strategies and zero-risk production diktats. "The market for fashion goods, emerging nations such as China, Russia, the Arab world, are countries that are not specially known for favouring social or cultural mixes," she said. "White models are without a doubt the easiest ways of attracting these clients." According to Renee Dujac-Cassou, who heads Paris' Crystal models agency, "blue-eyed blondes have always been the dream type. It's as simple as that." "A beautiful African woman is not the dream type, neither is a Tibetan or a Chinese princess." The number of non-white models parading on catwalks, she said, "will always be extremely limited." (AFP)

By Zosia Bielski
I am 5 feet 3 inches tall, a woman most often described by her exes as "cute," despite an abundance of acne scars and a body almost entirely covered with stubborn, fine black hairs. So the prospect of covering a Ford Model search as an "embedded reporter" fills me with understandable dread but also vague curiosity. I have never seen a model up close, but will now spend two days alongside some of the country's finest specimens, six girls vying to represent Canada in the Ford Models Supermodel of the World finals in January. Models from Ford agencies in some 50 countries will compete for a contract worth $250,000 and an opportunity to work in New York City - plus, of course, get massive exposure. My assignment is to experience everything that the real models do - hair, makeup, the long strut down the catwalk. In other words, I will face the same physical scrutiny as those who make a living off their looks. A day before the assignment, I visit my local manicurist to get my ragged reporter's nails looking presentable - sanded down and covered with a toxic sheet of acrylic. I tell her to file the claws short and paint them pale: no porno nails for Ford.
Getting dressed the next morning, I go for safe: dark jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Will the models I meet today have the innate fashion sense of, say, Kate Moss and, if so, what will they make of my ratty Joe Fresh ballet flats? I arrive at the Redken Exchange, the Toronto training facility for the company's stylists (Ford employs Redken staff to do its models' hair). The girls are already holed up getting their hair prepped for the following day's fashion show and finale, and I join them at the sinks in an enormous white cube of a room. From the slew of stylists and PR people, I pick out the six girls, and I'm surprised to discover that's exactly what they are: Most are between 14 and 16 years old and some are studying for high school exams while they're getting their hair and makeup done. With their long, thin, muscle-free limbs and bored faces popping out from their hairdressers' smocks, the girls look like they could be on a school field trip. As their hair is dyed and straightened - in many cases, for the first time - it becomes apparent they have little previous experience in fashion. Few can name favourite designers or models, and although several have put on heels, most look like they've stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad in their short plaid shorts, tights, sneakers and bulky hoodies. Which is exactly what you would expect 14-year-old girls to wear.
There is tiny hockey-playing Ali, 14, and blond; horseback rider Arielle, 15, from Calgary; a confident brunette named Erin, 16, from Halifax; ballet-dancing Shelby, 15, from Toronto; a snowboarding Laetitia Casta-look-alike named Cassandra, 14; and the eldest, 20-year-old Nadia from Montreal. Diane Lang, Ford's Canadian co-director, requests that their last names be withheld for safety reasons, because the girls are so young. Jarrett Plyley, a Ford scout, says that all six girls approached Ford to compete in these finals, but that often he finds his best models by chance. He says he's had great luck on the Toronto subway and "by the side of the 400" - places like Barrie, Ont., and Canada's Wonderland. He also goes with his models to their school track-and-field meets in hopes of spotting other contenders. "These are wholesome, healthy Canadian girls, good homegrown ladies, the all-Canadian girl next door," says Redken vice-president Doriane Dalati, who flutters like a doting mom around the studio where the glamour music has just come on - remixed Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk and other ageing club tracks.
It's my turn at the sink. Redken's director of education, Terry Ritcey, assures me I have "great hair," but too much of it - he "texturizes" half of it on to the floor, and streamlines my bangs so I can enjoy peripheral vision again. I'm also showing roots and an unintentional red sheen in my hair because of the ammonia from a previous dye job. Ritcey mixes what looks like raspberry jam for my colour. He's been doing hair for 25 years, most recently for Prada, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan at New York's Fashion Week. The next day, he is to fly out to Calgary to style Ben Affleck's mop. Ritcey tells me that despite new stars like Agyness Deyn - the British model who arrived on the scene with shaved, bleached blond hair and thick black eyebrows, blithely crediting skinheads for her fashion sense - the Ford look is more about "classic beauty." Long hair that is one colour is the goal here, he says. "No one at Ford is encouraging the girls to cut their hair." While chiselled models with square jaw lines and plump lips - think Monika Schnarre - made it big in the 1980s, the look now, he says, is "balanced, refined and perfectly symmetrical." Just like Nadia, who takes a seat beside me. With her tiny white teeth, cupid-bow lips, a button nose pierced with a small stud, enormous doe eyes and flawless caramel skin, I find it hard to concentrate on what she is saying.
Now 20, she did her first year in biochemistry at the University of Montreal, but it was not to her liking. Now she is trying modelling in the hope that it will launch her into acting: "Modelling is a form of acting where you cannot speak," she says. I ask her who her favourite actress is: It's Charlotte Gainsbourg. Tomiko Fraser, the American model and one of the faces of Maybelline cosmetics, weaves between the sinks interviewing the girls. She is hosting a Citytv special on the girls (it ran earlier this month). She asks Nadia to name her favourite designer. Chanel, Nadia says. Fraser then asks her what her hair was like before she had it straightened. "I got an Afro," she says, laughing. And finally: Would she shave her head for Karl Lagerfeld? Yes, Nadia replies.
"That's the right answer," Fraser says. Nearly a decade ago, Fraser went from hostessing at a Manhattan restaurant, where she was discovered, to modelling couture for Chanel on a conveyor-belt runway in Paris. Lagerfeld called her "a little chocolate doll." She is now mentoring the girls for Ford. "They have no idea what they're getting into. It takes an empowered woman to get into this business. They probably don't even understand what empowered even means yet." For the shrewdest of the girls, the exposure that could come from this competition could very well be parlayed into a career spanning the next 40 years, Fraser says.
Makeup artist Shanon Stewart tells me she's toured with Avril Lavigne, and recently became enamoured of Sting while doing his makeup during the singer's Toronto pit stop at Downward Dog studio for some pre-show yoga. Now it's my turn. Stewart applies layer upon layer of foundation, several coats of blush, eyeliner, mascara and bright pink lipstick. I feel like I'm wearing a kabuki mask. Having taken a "before" shot in the morning, my photographer shoots me after my makeover. Directing my gaze up and down, left to right, he takes shot after shot.
"Demure!" he instructs. I realize I have no idea what demure looks like. The girls sit nearby but don't register my half-assed attempts to posture like a model. They're too busy playing a card game that involves snatching up objects they've pulled from their purses and laid out on a chair - a tube of mascara, lip balm, moisturizing cream and a hair elastic. I join their circle and suddenly experience the cliché of "radiant beauty": The girls literally glow. I lose two hands of the game twice and realize that behind the perfect smiles and Ford's absolute ban on cattiness, these girls are competitive. The next day is show time at Toronto's Distillery District. That morning, Jarrett Plyley, the scout, teaches the girls how to walk: Shoulders back and hips forward, he tells them. They teeter in three-inch heels, holding Plyley's hand. But by afternoon, the girls - who now have their makeup on and their hair in rollers - have perfected the runway turn.
I, too, am wearing three-inch heels, which I'd picked out at the Eaton Centre: cheap black pumps designed by JLO. I get my best friend, Sarah Jay, who is a stylist, to borrow them for me because, realistically, I will not be wearing three-inch heels again. She teases me about my conservative choice, and we tape off the bottoms so she can return them after my walk. For my walk, I wear another black T-shirt and a caboose-accentuating pencil skirt. Stewart's mascara is still shellacked to my eyes from the day before. Plyley gives the standard tutorial: Shoulders rolled back, hips forward, I feel like I'm horseback riding. Plyley says I'm "a natural" and the girls applaud. The runway turn proves more difficult. Something about kicking out one leg and turning in the direction you're heading befuddles me. I start to glaze over. I'm a reporter, not a model.
The ante is upped during dress rehearsal, when a commanding German man sporting a headset barks instructions at the girls as they slip and slide on the runway - it has been taped over with brown paper so it doesn't get scratched before the finale. "Walk in the centre of the runway. It's about you. Work it. Chin up. Relax your arms. Good girl," says Hans Koechling, the veteran show producer. Dance music booms and everyone eyes the models, including a small man who wears an ascot and winces through his spectacles, appraising the girls as if they were racehorses. What are their prospects realistically, I wonder. Plyley tells me that a "14-year-old girl working full-time internationally" is not realistic. However, now that these girls have been groomed, they could start working for local designers to develop their confidence. Two of the girls wear braces. Is that a problem? "They don't have to smile on the runway," Plyley responds. In the evening, the girls join more senior models on the catwalk. Their walks are still stiff, and their blasé expressions can't hide eyes that are terrified. After days of grooming and being fussed over, the end seems abrupt. Shelby is the winner. The 15-year-old had walked the runway with perfect posture, her face porcelain and focused above crimson lips. Trained as a ballet dancer, she is 5 feet 10 and still growing. After she learns that she is the model who will represent Canada, she makes her way down the catwalk again: Her braces gleam under the blinding runway lights as she smiles. The other girls seem stunned, maybe because they never saw Shelby as the winner, maybe because it's over so suddenly. Judge Aaron Newbill - head of scouting for Ford in North America - had looked on approvingly from the front row, and later explained why he picked Shelby. "There was something about Shelby that seemed to convey more confidence in her beauty, and that's very important for any new girl. We thought we were seeing a really classic beauty, but with a bit of a twist. The career that she'll have is basically up to her." But, he added, Shelby's success will probably bubble slowly, after the braces come off: "She's a young girl. It's just about growing into her beauty. She should just take it as it comes: Finish school, do the things that a young girl does, look forward to the contest and then be available full-time." Modelling was not what Sandra, a Toronto-based life coach, had in mind for her daughter but admits she was impressed when Shelby walked the catwalk: "It almost feels like I wasn't watching my daughter but someone already in a great authority of herself." Now her only question is whether Shelby will go to summer camp like other 15-year-olds or stay home and prepare for a shot at being the next supermodel of the world.