A Thread about my runway career
Raking over some old modelling memories.
I promise Threads of Conversation isn’t all about modelling. Admittedly, Season 3’s first podcast guest was a model, and if you’ve listened to it, you’ll hear me introduce myself as a “pretty-much retired” one.
So, today, if only to legitimize my claim, I thought I’d tell you a bit more about my past life. There are too many stories to fit neatly into a single newsletter (and too much tea to spill this early in my Substack career), so I thought I’d just cover the runway highlights.
My First Fashion Week
I started modelling when I was 21. I was working in a boutique in Sydney whilst at uni, and on my lunch break a woman approached me. “Are you a model?” she asked. I said I wasn’t, and she handed me her card. “Come and see me, I run an agency.” This is (some of) what happened next.
The Breakout
After a few months of modelling in Australia I got signed by Ford. They encouraged me to make the long flight from Sydney to try my first season at Paris Fashion Week. How it works is that you go to as many castings as you possibly can, your agents stay up all night negotiating and selling you, and then, hopefully, you walk some shows.
Your first season is really important - the epitome of the phrase “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” - so there was a lot of pressure. To note: I didn’t have a smartphone back then, meaning I would look up all my casting addresses on Google Maps at the crack of dawn, marking them on a little pocket map before leaving my flat.
On my first day, I was sent to see a young designer called Simon Jacquemus. We really clicked and he ended up putting me in his show. I think he liked me because I was excitable and fresh. At the time I had no idea how hyped he was (or would later become.)
On the day of the show he told me he wanted me to open and close, which is a great honour in the modelling world. The collection was called ‘La Femme Enfant’, and it was much more innocent and architectural than today’s sexy Jacquemus woman. He was very specific about the walk - bouncy and light, not a runway strut. Even back then, Simon knew exactly what he wanted. He’d also made dozens of gauzy hospital smocks for the audience to wear, insisting that even the likes of Anna Wintour had to put one on - a bold move for a young designer.
The One That Got Away
After the Jacquemus show, my agency called me in to see them. It sounded like good news. I’d had the Givenchy casting a few days before, the first time I’d seen Riccardo Tisci in the flesh. I really loved what he did at Givenchy, and had almost tripped over my 6-inch casting heels when I saw he was in the room. (To be fair, I almost tripped over them regardless.)
When I arrived at the agency after the Jacquemus show, there was a big white Givenchy shopper waiting for me. My agents opened a bottle of champagne - turns out I’d been booked for an exclusive, which meant that I wasn’t allowed to do any other shows til Givenchy a week later (an exclusive means the brand want you to be specially “theirs”. Some designers will keep models on exclusive for months eg. Nicolas Ghesquière’s first show for Louis Vuitton.) Inside the shopper was a green python Givenchy tote and a hand-written note from Riccardo. Emily in Paris could never.
The fittings at Givenchy were notoriously last minute - I was called for mine at 11pm the night before the show. Seamstresses were still working on the looks, and I remember meeting one guy whose entire job was embroidery and beading. I was entranced by this level of craftsmanship. One guy JUST for beading?! It was magic. Sadly, when they tried the look on me, it didn’t fit. I had been encouraged to lose a lot of weight, and the skirt hung loosely around my hips, its silhouette limp and sad.
The following morning, the head of the agency called me (the show was that evening). She told me I’d been cancelled. Later, I found out that this was common practice in the modelling world - sometimes the biggest houses cut models from the lineup when they’re backstage, about to walk the runway. It’s not about you, it’s about the clothes.
Au Supermarché
After the Givenchy debacle, I felt sad and a bit humiliated. It was like a rollercoaster - I’d been right at the top, clutching my fancy handbag, before plummeting downhill towards reality. The massive Givenchy shopper sat in the corner of my flat. It felt like a giant bag of failure. There was still hope, though. Traditionally, Chanel always shows at the end of Paris Fashion Week - an epic extravaganza staged in the Grand Palais. This meant that the show sat outside the exclusivity contract with Givenchy, so I’d been able to attend the casting.
As I sat wallowing in my puddle of uniquely privileged self-pity, my agent called again. They wanted me in the Chanel show, and my pre-show fitting would be the following day. By now I knew this was no guarantee (and was also coming to realise that most of a model’s career hangs on phone calls from one’s agent - a uniquely precarious kind of destiny.)
The dream was back on! Up the rollercoaster I went, heart fluttering with nervous excitement (and probably too many coffees and cigarettes - I was really playing the part. Crrringe.) Arriving at Rue Cambon for the fitting, I was taken to a room for a hair and makeup test. Sam McKnight was there, a lovely English hairstylist and an industry veteran. He scraped my hair back and fixed an enormous hairpiece to my ponytail. It was made from a mixture of tweed strips, ribbons and fake hair, and it weighed a ton. Next was the makeup - they tried a few different cat eye colours before settling on orange.
Through another corridor and into a fitting room where I was put into a corseted bouclé dress and a pair of knee-high sneakers. Once dressed, a group of chic French women ushered me into another room, where I found myself face-to-face with Karl Lagerfeld. He was flanked by his muse, Amanda Harlech, and a couple of other advisors. Most astonishingly, he wasn’t wearing his trademark sunglasses.
I was beckoned forward and a stylist started to experiment with accessories, placing a chain-handled shopping basket in my hand and filling it with different bags according to Karl’s gestures. Eventually he nodded - the look was right. Looking me in the eye, he spoke to me for the first time. “You see ze purple beading?” he said in his German accent. “Zey are like ze frozen beetroot in ze supermarket.” I smiled shyly - I couldn’t decide which was more surreal, me chatting to Karl Lagerfeld, or the idea of him popping down to Carrefour.
Once Karl was happy, more elegant hands shuttled me through a side door. Another pinch-me moment - I found myself totally alone, standing atop Coco Chanel’s infamous mirrored spiral staircase. You know the one. I looked at myself in the fractured reflection. Profound thoughts only: “FUCCCCKKKKK,” went my brain.
Catching my breath, I made my way down the stairs. A photo was snapped of my outfit and then off I went, back up the rabbit hole, emerging amongst the pedestrians on Rue Saint-Honoré.
Show day arrived and the call time was 6am, for a 10am start. Backstage was busy - Cara Delevigne was there with her girlfriend Michelle Rodriguez, alongside Kendall Jenner (her first season on the show circuit) and the usual Chanel cast of supers and house favourites. Assistants rushed around holding brushes. Half made-up models lingered by the breakfast buffet, fingering miniature croissants. Eventually the show producer - an energetic and charming Frenchman - called us out to the set. He explained the concept of the show, that we would be walking in a giant supermarket. There were two lines, yellow and red, and we were to follow whichever we were assigned until we had completed the lap. Once finished, we were instructed to “browse” until the finale, when Karl would walk out and we would all proceed to the checkout together.
And that’s exactly how it went. Flawlessly executed, completely terrifying and one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life so far.
Naked Ambition
The following season I got to log a few more favourites, the first being Yohji Yamamoto. The fitting was very serene, held in a large airy room with a mezzanine overhead, in which a man was sat at a piano. I was dressed by a team in a side room before being brought out to show Mr Yamamoto. He murmured quietly to a tall gentleman, his right hand man, who then called out instructions to the dressers. They whisked me back to the side room to make adjustments to the outfit. Then, I was presented once more, and instructed to walk for Mr Yamamoto, accompanied by the pianist. When he was satisfied, Mr Yamamoto’s face broke into a wide grin.
As I left the fitting, the team were breaking for lunch. Instead of a speedy takeaway, a long table was set with porcelain bowls of steaming, freshly-cooked pasta. Given that this was the busiest time of year, the idea of the whole team taking a break together for an artfully-prepared lunch seemed impossibly elegant.
Backstage at the show, however, even Mr Yamamoto’s serenity couldn’t keep the fashion week madness at bay. Models rushed in from other shows, whilst Pat McGrath and her team quickly scrubbed off their makeup and began painting artful black inkings onto us (I had fish swimming past my clavicle). Eugene Souleiman was on hair, and he designed these incredible helmet-like gelled styles, adding in a slice of fake hair to create an asymmetric look.
One of my outfits was a complex swathe of maroon fabric, literally like a giant shawl. To arrange it, the stylist had to tie a single thin string around my waist (whilst I stood naked aside from a pair of gloves and boots). From there she wound and draped the fabric, until it became a sort of gown. Standing backstage in nothing but my nude thong, none of the dressers knew what to do. As I saw model after model exit onto the runway, the producer started giving me a worried look. It was nearly my turn, and at this stage I’d have to walk out in my pants. Just before my exit, the woman from the fitting appeared, deftly swirling the fabric around my body, and placing my gloved hands into a clasped position. Frantically, I was hurried to the runway entrance, where I stepped out onto a large empty square, bathed in white light and piano music. The hysteria backstage immediately felt like a million miles away - this was Yamamoto’s magic.
Long Live Dame Viv
The experience of walking a Vivienne Westwood show was the polar opposite of Yohji. The fitting was like a late night dressing up club - brightly-coloured clothes strewn around, trying on bonkers outfits, Vivienne being pure Vivienne. At one point, I remember someone passing her an iPad. She looked at it like it was a dog poo, handing it right back and muttering something along the lines of: “I don’t know what the hell this is.”
The show was soundtracked by a live rock band, and gold streamers hung down the runway. I was placed in the line up next to a woman even taller than myself. Making polite conversation, I joked that we should get a model apartment together and raise all the surfaces to accommodate our height. She laughed, tactfully not mentioning that as Gwendoline Christie ie. Brienne of Tarth, her budget and roommate status might be rather different to mine. (I later realised my error when a swarm of GOT fans surrounded her post-show.)
I had two looks, both totally wild. My hair was crimped within an inch of its life and I had a spiky monobrow scrawled across my forehead. The finale saw a male model dressed in a bridal gown march down the runway with Westwood’s then-muse, Paz de la Huerta, followed by Vivienne and her husband Andreas Kronthaler, who gave each other a passionate snog at the end. It was raucous and chaotic and electric and I loved it.
A New York Minute
Although I lived in NYC for a few years, I felt like the industry out there never quite knew what to do with me. In America, they liked you to pick a side - edgy and editorial, or a commercial babe. I was tall enough for runway, but smiley enough for commercial work, and thus they couldn’t figure out how to package me up. Still, there were some cool New York-based brands that appreciated my bipartisan style, one of which was the (sadly now defunct) Creatures of Comfort, a downtown favourite.
I really liked this show because they hardly did any hair and makeup. Everyone was really friendly and it felt like they actually wanted my personality to infuse the clothes, rather than transforming me into a poetic ideal. Again, I got to close the show, so it felt nice to get this honour from a brand I admired.
So there you have it. A small slice of modelling life from the mid twenty-teens. There are so many more things to say about this period in style/ fashion/ my own personal history - good, bad, inspiring, cynical, problematic, funny and embarrassing in equal measure. Most of all, I feel so grateful for these memories and the opportunity I had to meet so many different types of people.
It’s also interesting to observe how this past season saw a return to the cult models of this era/ the early Nought-teens. My penchant for nostalgia is as heady as anyone’s (see above, doh), but it bears mentioning how thin and white the runways were back then. Social media was in its infancy and models were faces, not voices. Just as I can revel in my memories from that time, I’ve also learned from them. I hope that as an industry, we don’t let the ghosts of yesteryear pull us back.
Threads of the week
My attempt to grapple with the onset of a spring/ summer wardrobe as someone who feels much more at home in the fall/ winter zone. Give me swimming-in-layers, thick, tactile textures, sturdy boots and gigantic jackets over breezy dressing any day. Here’s me just-about coping with the mid-zone.
Loose Threads
Gobbling up Lauren Sherman’s Puck newsletter. Previously Chief Correspondent at Business of Fashion (and guest on the Threads of Conversation podcast), Lauren has a razor-sharp view on the machinations of the industry and isn’t afraid to tell it how it is.
The Balenciaga Harry Potter AI TikTok is too good. I know we’re supposed to be scared of AI’s nefarious powers for evil and human obsolescence, but so far I am enjoying the memes.
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Discovered your newsletter today, and subscribed because of this post. I am surprised it didn't get enough likes and comments. I live for a fashion insider story rather a fashion insider reported by a journalist. And I think that's why I prefer Substack to magazines nowadays.
Thank you Emmanuelle! I’ll do another post about my modelling/ fashion career soon.