According to what laws does the model business work?
Look At Media publications, in conjunction with adidas Originals, explore scenarios of popularity in four industries - fashion, film, music and science, as well as talk with people who, despite the laws of the genre, have chosen a unique path and reached their goal. Having dealt with how many people act and how few do, we will find out what the Superstar really does, if not glory, not money, and not professional recognition.
We are not perfect. This is not a secret to anyone, but for many people there is still a reason for stress, which the world beauty industry daily feeds. We convince ourselves that we can live in our conditional comfort zone without suffering from the incompatibility of the shining advertising picture, but the world around us still strives for an unattainable ideal. The flow of shots in Tumblr and bold promo campaigns with "non-standard" characters, beautiful women of age, advertising luxury cosmetics, shooting without retouching and numerous discussions about the success of the size-models - all this is so far more in demand in the media than in reality.
Millions of copies and successful sales are tailored to the patterns that most normal people dream of in nightmares. Unfortunately, they are their dreams.
It is important to remember that not everyone is obliged to meet the stated standards. All this is part of a specific, albeit very wide market, which exists according to its established laws. To exhale and relax, it is enough just to understand that model business is an industry, just like many others, uneasy and absurd in some places. At least minimal familiarity with the rules of professional casting contributes to this understanding.
Looking at any fashionable shooting of a large magazine or advertising another profitable tariff, it is easy to notice: we live in the dense context of well-defined standards of perfect appearance, which, although formed by historical standards not so long ago, have not changed dramatically over the past 20-30 years. Today, most products - from high fashion to yogurt - we sell well-groomed muscular men and girls with long legs, flat stomachs, perfect skin. Sometimes even without knees or nasolabial folds. The crime of retouching against anatomy, fortunately, is gradually fading.
Lena Bulygina and Lena Spasova
Bespoke Pixel Retouchers
"With the invention of Adobe Photoshop in the early 1990s, the retoucher got a tool with the help of which in minutes it was possible to achieve the same effect that they had previously worked at the photo lab for months. It is not surprising that the retoucher began to act like tourists who first came to Swedish table and sweeping food indiscriminately. Now it is changing, and competent post-processing specialists “blow away dust particles” from the nasolabial folds instead of smearing them. ”
Standardized beauty in gloss is needed not as an occasional caprice, but a key element for the smooth running of the industry.
Although the generally accepted rules of the profession of a retoucher are far from making concessions to the usual human appearance: for example, girls who do not correspond to typical model sizes are retouched by the same rules. So when Lena Dunam speaks in a non-typical streamlined manner about photoshop in an interview with Vogue, no one has any questions about such simple sophistry: the rules are the rules. In addition, do not forget that the stars and models that are ready to show their body without photoshop, rather a rarity, and not an ordinary case of gloss.
Nailya Sinitsyna
founder of Eight-Agency
“When we do fashion shoots, we don’t even ask the size of the girls, because all the models are usually about the same - skinny, flat and tall. I don’t need to give numbers, just say“ this is a model ”- and everyone knows what The parameters are in question. It is convenient: you understand in advance how this or that thing will sit on the girl. On fashion shots we never had a single model with any form, booty or chest. When it happens to work with the model even with some booty, the photographers are upset - they understand that the pictures have to retouch heavily.
I conducted many castings, and the girls do not change them at all. Those with whom the photographers themselves like to work are not so many - and they are very similar to each other. They all, for example, have a slightly androgynous appearance, almost devoid of femininity in the classical sense. In the field of advertising, the requirements for compliance with model parameters are not so strict. But here there are some nuances: the appearance of advertising models must be strictly Slavic, European - even if we remove the children.
It comes to the fact that customers send a brief with the ideal size of a child’s head, with specific features: plump eyes, chubby cheeks. Most products have special, very clear guidelines for the exterior. And there can be no hint of a conditional East in them. It always has been. I once received a brief in my life in which it was stated that we remove people of Caucasian nationality - this was an advertisement for the Azerbaijani mobile operator. "
Model agencies typically offer a wide range of narrow selection.
A separate study can be devoted to what exactly is shaping market trends — demand or supply, customer briefs, or the demands of society accustomed to certain patterns. The fashion industry prefers to play by the same rules of least resistance - and it has the same laws as in the broad labor market. For models, of course, there are very clear standards and a threshold for professional skills. Girls and young people, whose appearance does not meet the established canon, are unlikely to be able to realize themselves in this area - there are, of course, their exceptions here, but, as a rule, they do not depart much from the usual standard.
Svetlana Mart
Director of Russia Performance Style Model Management
"The generally accepted standard 90-60-90 has undergone changes a long time ago. World agencies now prefer girls with hips up to 89 centimeters, but, for example, Paris said last season the figure is 88. It’s just as hard to work with models that have hips 83- 85 centimeters means that there is still a standard: today it is 87-89 centimeters. To reach the world level, the model must work hard and formulate a specific goal for itself. If the agent is a professional and feels the market, the model will fall into the right direction. "
Ekaterina Evseeva
President Model Management booker and catwalk teacher
"Not everyone can be a model, just as not everyone can become Bill Gates or a car mechanic. First of all, agencies evaluate their overall appearance, then body parameters, but even with ideal data, the most important factors are experience, sense of purpose, tremendous desire and strong motivation - just like in any other business. In our time, the actual definition of a profession has become very vague, every second girl considers herself a model. However, if we are talking about building a professional modeling career, then this is serious th and hard work. One of the main stages - the passage of a model school or courses. No successful model agency will not work with the girl from the street, even if she is very beautiful. "
Like any business, the beauty industry is a race for sales and views.
You need to perceive it accordingly: all these images are not created in order to derive a formula of ideal appearance, but in order to attract the audience to a certain product - whether it be clothes, cosmetics or a certain lifestyle. There are a lot of indicative cases: the online lingerie store Adore Me, for example, is not limited to selecting the ideal girls for advertising underwear, but also conducting A / B testing for the most successful photo configuration. According to the results on the page of each product photos are published, which brought more real sales: models with arms folded over their heads sell bras better, especially if they have golden curls. This is a mathematical calculation that already has almost nothing to do with real life: no matter how beautiful you are, it still turns out that you are selling a product worse if your hand is on your hip. Knowing this, you can simply relax and understand - it makes no sense to be guided by these standards, of course, if you don’t sell underwear every day.
Although the standards of beauty sometimes come to the point of absurdity, they still affect our judgments and assessments - at least as far as ourselves are concerned. The more interesting when there are people who do not follow the general rules, but create their own. In 2014, Avdotya Alexandrova came up with the project LUMPEN - the base of portraits of people with the most non-standard appearance.
These faces fall out of the generally accepted template of beauty, but completely correspond to the ideas of the most beautiful Avdotya.
Such people she wanted to someday see on the screens and covers of magazines. Contrary to the laws of the fashion industry, many “lumpen” six months later became stars - today, European designers and photographers are inviting them to take part in shows and photo shoots. Watch a video interview with Avdotya on how she managed to make a non-standard a new norm, in April on Wonderzine.
