"Get out of the mud and mud": How I became a model in 70 years
This year, the focus of the fashion industry has shifted even more. on "non-standard" models, in particular - age. Women who are over fifty and even sixty years old become the heroines of advertising campaigns, are removed for the covers of magazines and open shows, as it was at the autumn show Vetements. It seems that the world is slowly but surely moving towards accepting a variety of beauty.
We talked with Olga Kondrasheva, who became one of the first age models of the Russian agency Olduska, about what it means to work in the industry at seventy-two years. In her portfolio - shooting in an advertising campaign for a network of hairdressing Birdie, photo shoots in the magazines Glamor and "Poster", as well as several shows at the Moscow Fashion Week.
From biofak to cinema
I graduated from the faculty of biology of Moscow State University and worked at the faculty for eighteen years. At the same time she worked on the "Mosfilm" in the crowd - I do not remember who brought me there. They paid little, but still it was very curious. I looked at everything with wide eyes, I wanted to show some kind of activity - what if they take me to the frame? But then I realized that this hinders the process and you just have to do what the director asks.
Later, I went with my husband to the Far East and worked at the local Institute of Marine Biology for thirty years. There the shooting stopped. But while I was a zoologist, I went to different expeditions. It turns out that Vladivostok has spent almost the entire life - I returned to Moscow in the early 2000s, on the threshold of retirement. My father died, and in the capital there was an elderly mother who needed help. To earn money, I had to get a job in the clinic in the registry. It was very hard work: every second - the phone, every minute - someone in the window, I - to break. I had enough for four years.
Sometimes agents who had my cards were invited to act. The photos behind the back usually recorded the necessary information about the actor: parameters and contacts. Therefore, when the director was looking for a certain contingent, the agents showed him the right cards. For example, Yury Grymov found me back in 1996. And I starred in his video: it seems it was “Charging” - they showed a whole month on TV. The husband saw in Vladivostok, and it was a great joy. But the video was played at six in the morning, so hardly anyone else caught it.
On other shootings I met Albina Stanislavovna Yevtushevskaya. She was already a famous actress then, so Igor Gavar (Founder of the agency Oldushka. - Approx. Ed.)first came out on her, and Albina Stanislavovna already recommended me. I was seventy, and besides the rare filming I didn’t do anything - I was deeply retired. Moreover, diabetes that started during this stagnation period has left its mark: you sit at home, you don’t do anything, you are sick and you die. The girls who ran for the shooting every day really earned money, but I am not such a person: if for others, I will get through, but I will do little for myself.
Model work
The first photo session in the framework of the agency was for the magazine "Poster" - shooting with fur. I remember, I came to the hairdresser before that, asked to lighten my hair, and they began to offer me: "Let's try this and this." As a result, she came to the shooting of the redhead. Igor knew me only as a gray-haired woman, and the clothes were selected under my natural hair color. Such an incident came out.
All my life I was sandwiched, not like everyone else, in fact - the black sheep. And on the set, suddenly revealed - thanks in large part to photographer Alyona Chandler. When she was shooting me for the book of Cyril Gasilin, she asked me to move. And how to move without music? We included one, second, third and finally found a composition that would not beat the rhythm. And that's all: when the melody began to play, the emancipation came, the bziki evaporated, and what held me with a steel hand over the gills, lower back and limbs, was gone. I suddenly found freedom — and not like that when you are crazy and do what you want, but when you can express yourself. Then you do not sleep all night and you think: “It was necessary to do it differently! But no, everything was fine!”
Of course, I was scared to shoot. I am a pensioner who lay at home on the couch in front of the TV, and then suddenly came to the site without preparation. I was so shaken in front of the camera that I could not loosen my teeth. It was scary from everything: where and why I was brought, and what if I could not cope and they would refuse me? I'm afraid of my fake movements. Usually, the action itself takes place: the body becomes at the right points, at a certain angle - and it seems that it pierces me, and I rejoice because it turned out perfectly. And sometimes you do not even need to see yourself from the outside in order to understand - the movements are false. I don’t know how, but the body itself speaks about it.
It is terrible because you can feel bad at any moment. When they call you and say that tomorrow is a show, an interview or a shoot, you have to be like a cucumber: the heart beats, the vessels work, and the legs go. When you do not work for three months in a row and lead a sanatorium and resort lifestyle, it is difficult to keep yourself in shape. There are things you cannot influence. For example, when with a screech you stretch your narrow shoes and get up on high studs (obviously, shoes for the elderly should be comfortable). Or imagine a seventy-year-old eye: it is watering from makeup and it is already difficult to restore its condition.
That is why the age model plays a difficult role, because a person depends on his painful or good condition. This is hard work, but the good results literally inspire. I remember that for Kirill Gasilina we filmed seven hours - all this time I was dancing in front of the camera, and Alena had already used all the flash drives she had. And at the end they suddenly ask: "How are you? We have the last dress left here ..." And I say: "Of course, drag!" This is a joyful fatigue, from which I, however, departed for two weeks.
It is difficult to say how far I am ready to go at photo shoots. For example, I would not like to act in underwear, but at the same time, each proposal should be considered separately. What is my dream to take a picture, so it's in a lush white dress - my childhood dream. In a magical way, like a fairy godmother from the Soviet “Cinderella”, where Ioannina Jeimo played.
The work of the age model is inconstant, at least for me. Sometimes filming has to wait for weeks, or even several long months. There are bureaucratic difficulties. Once, when I was filming as a folk model in a television program of one of the federal channels, the organizers sent contracts for filming to a pension fund. And those, in turn, sent documents to social protection, where they considered that I was a working pensioner, for which they deducted the Moscow allowance from my pension. That is, from fifteen thousand rubles, it has decreased to almost eight. The fact is that the contracts were for single shots, and not for whole months of work, so I cannot be considered a working pensioner. Yes, and how to live on both of these amounts, not earning money? Before I was given a part of the surcharge, I had a long time to figure it out.
It is difficult to overestimate what the work of the model gave me - it is overcoming fears and discovering many new things in yourself, meeting people and movement, a reason not to be lazy. And you grow up in your own eyes: not in the sense that you feel pride in yourself - you get out of the mud and slough in which you lived all my life. The only disadvantages I find are that it is scary and very responsible.
Cover: Cyrille Gassiline
