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And when I am finished, I am called to Ellen's office.
She says as I am sitting down, “Well, they are really pissed, but agreed to the changes you wanted, Shannon. Make your calls. You are leaving Friday from Teterboro. The plane can not land at Grove City, it weighs too much,
so you are in the 8-seat to Teterboro and then basically refuel only to Tahiti, and you will be paid for 12 days, 10 of them are in front of the camera.”
And that is why I am traveling to Tahiti to do a travel fashion shoot.
Travel fashion is the fashion sold at high-end resorts and on cruise ships.
It is not related to real fashion, but a subculture of what rich women think they have to wear on vacation that they can never buy beforehand.
And why can they not buy it beforehand? Well, because then it would be discounted, and travel fashion is highly marked up.
Clothes are a huge money maker in the high-end travel world.
Did you know that in the 24-seater, whoever made it, set up the way this one was, that yes, you can easily edit your undergraduate dissertation flying to and from Tahiti. They even had a printer onboard so that you could produce a written copy and read the bloody thing.
I did not know that.
And they don't have a clue that they paid me about half a million to fly to and from Tahiti, and that, in essence, they paid me close to half a million to write and edit a college paper.
Now, yes, Ellen got her 15 percent, and Dad got to take an even bigger chunk for taxes. But I got paid what my education is going to cost for four years to fly to Tahiti while I wrote one paper.
Now, I do not know what world you live in, but even in my world, that is what I define as really cool.
About traveling with my own dressers, hair, and makeup.
For a show, like in Paris, Milan, or London, you expect, and you get, professionals who know what the hell they are doing.
There are limits to what you can put in my hair and what you can put on my skin; these are set in stone in contracts.
The makeup and hair folks know and understand that each model has their own needs, and all this is specified.
But this is random. It could be someone really decent out of Australia, but it could also be someone from Taiwan who has never done my type of hair or dealt with my skin needs.
So we tend to bring our own. The shoot can provide one to help, but that makeup artist can not touch my skin. And the same for dressers. I am trans. You hire me, you know that. But does your dresser know that, and are they capable of dealing with a talent who may be against their religious beliefs?
No, thank you, I will bring my own, and you will pay for them. What do you object to in my demands? Hawaii wants me also; I think I’ll do that shoot instead.
So my “entourage” was two security guards, Lowri, who travels everywhere with me now, one makeup artist who also does my nails; no one else is allowed to touch them.
Hair, and again, you touch my hair? I have a lawsuit.
Three dressers, and these three are responsible for all of my clothing when I am traveling.
They know what I have to wear and when. Remember, I make about $10,000 a day when on assignment, just in the payments I get for wearing clothing that I might, no guarantee, mind you, but that I might be photographed wearing.
And it is all laid out for me by my dressers.
I may have three or four changes in a day at times.
On the plane? One outfit loading, one for if I get off anywhere along the way.
That one is worth a lot less, but the biggest pay is whatever I am wearing when we arrive, as I assure you, there will be a lot of press.
It is one of the few times that I will be seen totally in public while I am on the Islands.
And that view alone can bring in 20K at the right airport.
And of course, I have someone from Ellen’s office to handle the technical side of the contract revisions that I will be asked to make.
This is knick-knack work. My contract has so many pages of specifics, and both sides try to maneuver me into what they want, but at the other side's financial disadvantage.
Hell, it is the business, and the part I care very little about.
Everything is contracted. Everything is predicted. Everything is scripted. I will be in three clubs this trip, but I will be in three safe clubs. That is scripted. And if there are photos taken, I get paid. If not, I get free drinks.
And the plane will be packed with clothes that I do not want or need, but have to bring home, because I am contracted to do so.
What I wear in the morning is headline news for someone by noon and changes the prices in stores by 4 p.m., and when the girls get off work, the local stores will sell out.
Yes. This is not exaggerating. And this is modeling at the top model level.
I can not imagine what it is going to be like at the supermodel level.
However, Ellen told me that I will most likely be classified as one by spring at the latest.
Ellen believes that I will headline the fall fashion shows in New York this fall.
And I will be paid more than I can imagine.
She is also warning me that I will be doing TV talk after New York, and that it pays very well, not by the talk shows, but by the designers whom I will be wearing.
And when we arrived in Tahiti, there were 30 to 40 photographers to meet the plane at the private terminal, and of course, I had been dressed in the required outfit.
I’m going to be honest, being a female for me does not mean that I, as in personal self-decision-making, I, do not get to decide what clothing I am going to wear.
I do not get to decide if I want to be paid to wear clothes on a certain day, and there will be someone else either setting out my clothing or dressing me.
But freedom of choice? That does not belong in a model’s vocabulary when it comes to clothing.
Now, do I get to decide the theme and style? Hell yes, as long as someone wants to dress me the way I want to be dressed for the day.
And that is why Byron hates me. Because I will grab the Princess Collection 90 percent of the time I am in public, and that costs him the big dollars.
So my standing order is that if Byron and the Princess Collection are offering something that I may even want to wear, take that first because I get to keep it. My rule is that if it is worn once, and KK Brands designed and made it, and it is worn clothing, it has no residual value.
The girls at Rho love the Princess Collection. They say, ready for this? Really? I mean, like this is really bad, but I can’t help myself.
They say it “makes them feel like Princesses.”
It is against the law to shoot the writer for a bad joke, OK? I know this. My father is a lawyer, and he loves me.