IT’S TOUGH out there for today’s young model, clutching her book of Polaroids en route to yet another casting. Competition in the post-supermodel era is global — the face to front an English store’s ad campaign could as well come from Siberia as Stevenage — and a merely pretty face may not be enough to catch the eye of an industry tastemaker. And that, nowadays, is what every model must strive to do.
Enter Topshop, whose advertising campaign can propel an unknown to star status overnight. You may not yet recognise the names of Lily Donaldson, Lily Cole or Robyn Connor but their faces have certainly had an impact on the industry at large, lining them up for further big-budget campaigns for Jil Sander, Moschino and De Beers, and for Cole the accolade of Model of the Year at last year’s British Fashion Awards.
“If you used an unknown model seven years ago, people often assumed that you had no budget, not that you actually wanted someone new,” says Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, creative director of RCN and the driving force behind the Topshop campaign. But it is this risk-taking attitude that has given the store such prestige in the industry, making it one of the handful of British campaigns that can launch a model on to the international arena. “You have to remember that a lot of brands are still really cautious,” says Newhouse. “They will only use models who have already appeared in the right editorials or shot with the right photographer. That’s not our philosophy.
“The bottom line is discovering a girl who makes the clothes look great, but it’s also about finding someone to whom the customer can relate — I like to think that when they see the girls in the ads, they feel that if they ran into them they would be able to have a conversation.”
Sarah McManus, who works with Newhouse on campaign production, adds: “Normally when you work with a corporation as big as Arcadia (the parent company of Topshop) there’s so much red tape that by the time you get the OK your original idea has been diluted beyond recognition. Topshop realises that it needs to lead the market rather than emulate what everyone else is doing, or it could end up like any other chain store.”
Yet Topshop is not alone in daring to turn its back on the flock. At the opposite end of the market, the London-based casting director Russell Marsh has spent the past ten years working with Prada to ensure that the Milanese fashion house finds the very best new faces. “Now that there are more models on the market than ever before, it’s a process of casting, casting and more casting,” he says. “We look at virtually every agency in every country, then we do a casting of 150 girls before whittling it down to the 15 or 20 we use for the show.”
Marsh’s diligence has paid off. A girl who may have spent months pounding the pavements on go-sees can become an instant commodity after 20 minutes on the Prada catwalk. “It’s because we don’t use a generic approach to defining what’s beautiful,” he says. “Miuccia (Prada) has a specific idea of what she wants to say about beauty each season, and that extends beyond the clothes to a kind of character in the girls.”
In fact, Marsh’s discoveries have done incredibly well. He is credited with kick-starting the careers of the Australian model Gemma Ward and the Ukrainian-Canadian Daria Werbowy, who have both bagged virtually every major campaign, and Vogue covers, over the past two years.
“I remember seeing some bad runway shots of Gemma from Sydney Fashion Week and thinking ‘this girl’s got something special’,” says Marsh. “We flew her and her mum over and signed her up straight away.
“One thing that struck me immediately was her attitude. Even though it was the first time she’d been to Europe, she was relaxed and professional — amazing for a 16-year-old.” Weeks later she was the face of Prada, not just on the catwalk but in its ad campaign, too.
As the fashion cycle has increased in speed, today’s top model, unless she is extremely versatile, can reasonably expect only two or three years at the top before she is replaced. But don’t pity her too much — she can probably retire on the proceeds.
For those who want to increase their longevity, though, Marsh and Newhouse agree that a good attitude is paramount (as, indeed, anyone who witnessed the catfights in Channel 5’s recent series Make Me a Supermodel could testify). “I’d say that attitude is now about 50 per cent of the equation between success and failure” says Marsh. “No one has time for histrionics. There are so many models that if you’re not professional and nice to have around, people will quickly lose interest, regardless of whether you’re a great beauty.”
Lastly, no feature on models would be complete without mention of the master Svengali of them all, the reclusive American photographer Steven Meisel, whose work for American and Italian Vogue has set the benchmark for fashion photography over the past 15 years, although he has never published a book of his work and rarely grants interviews. “If Meisel starts using a model, then chances are that she’ll go stellar,” says Newhouse. “Italian Vogue is where you can use more quirky editorial models but when a girl features in American Vogue, that’s when the big money comes knocking. Financially, the right editorial can eclipse everything else.”
So, you have the looks, the right attitude and a body that makes a £40 dress look like the proverbial million dollars. Where next? For Robyn Connor, who has just completed her second Topshop campaign plus stints on the catwalk for Burberry, Prada, Miu Miu, Jil Sander and Vivienne Westwood, the future looks bright. “Robyn has a look that can work internationally,” says Newhouse. “She’s elegant, which is what the market seems to want at the moment. Marsh agrees: “In the two years that she’s been working, her look has become increasingly sophisticated. There’s a trend for aristocratic-looking girls right now, which she should capitalise on while she can.”
Not bad for a schoolgirl who was spotted at the Clothes Show Live exhibition three years ago and is only just old enough to vote. No wonder Robyn has put off university to concentrate on such a lucrative career — she has passed modelling’s equivalent of the Oxbridge exam, so she might as well reap the benefits.
