11
On Sunday, Lowri and I flew into New York, where it was the February Spring Fashion Week, which I had not attended yet.
This is a nine day show, and Ellen had me walking on seven of those days.
On the weekend, I was walking twice on Friday, three times on Saturday, and no benefit from this show, twice in Bryant Park on Sunday.
This was not as difficult as it was last fall, as now I did know what I was doing.
And now, I had a handful of covers and was a known entity, not the new girl.
I walked every day from Wednesday until the following Wednesday, that is, eight days, twelve different shows.
And for walking these twelve shows, my fees would be around $350,000.
And that is if none of the images I had taken are used.
What can I say? I have written about this before.
You show up two hours early for hair and makeup.
You have ten to twelve changes per show.
You have two to three dressers, makeup, and hair dedicated to you.
And you walk, strip, dress, touch up your makeup, and walk again.
You do everything humanly possible not to fall.
If you are doing multiple shows, then you hang out in the models’ lounge, where there are recliners and day beds.
There are portable showers and a constant buffet.
You actually get to eat because you are out of the designer clothing.
If you are a fashion model, then you are given most of what you wear, which is classified as “used clothing” and has no value once worn on the runway. Silly, isn’t it? But that is life.
Some of the shows were casual, some formal, some a mix.
One was Bridal, and yes, I was featured again.
Cosmo printed the last dress on their cover, good for about 100K.
And you end up with features in all of the magazines from the runway and from private shoots.
Lowri learns a lot, as I do, gets exhausted towards the end, and is short on temper.
But we became a strong working team as she has figured out that this is the fun part.
This is where she can interact with fashion in real time, to make it happen, to be part of and included in the team that is fashion at places like Bryant Park.
But overall, a great success. Carmine flew in for the Friday through Sunday shows, and brought with her seven of the gals from the sorority; no cheer that week, apparently, and the plane seats eight.
I got them all the tickets. It was nice; my friends were there for the bridal shot that Cosmo used for the cover, and they got to see what it is really like.
I was also able to get them, along with Carmine and Lowri, tickets to both Friday night and Saturday night galas.
That blew their minds. Tickets to a genuine A list event with A list celebrities milling around.
And what really impressed them was how these same celebrities treated me.
It appears that top models in New York are A list themselves. And you so want to be photographed in some newsprint thingy with a supermodel if you can pull it off. Oh, that is the top of the top.
With covers, content, show fees, expenses that I charge to those using me, and other add ons, I grossed about $1.2 million for the Fashion Week; Ellen gets fifteen percent, Uncle Sam gets roughly one half, but I went home happy.
And we refilled the gown rooms. My girls emptied the stock at the Ellen Modeling Agency that would never be used, and this time, we decided to share the fortune with a charity auction.
The idea is that we would auction off the gowns to college students only from seven colleges: Slippery Rock, Clarion, Edinboro, Grove City, Allegheny, Westminster, and Mercer.
Only students with a valid current student ID could bid on the gowns.
And the money raised went into a fund for girls who could not afford a gown for an event.
I mean, like, why not? Of course, no one from my sorority had to bid.
I set a price on every gown that they were interested in, at what I thought they would bring.
This way, Rho girls all got a good opportunity if they needed one.
We raised about $150,000, and everyone was happy.
The Ellen Modeling Agency had a booth there, and Ellen was present and found a few new faces that she wanted to try developing.
Hey, you never know. What was interesting was that there was more than one male bidding.
Bidding was done blind; this was in person and online, so you pre registered, and the auctioneer only had a number.
And we think about a dozen guys bought. Now, not saying who was wearing what they bought. But hey, they have my total support.
And I did find out later that one of the LGBTQIA guys from Mercer was one of them, and he did wear his gown at a spring formal.
When I heard, I donated a pair of red soled heels.
He just happened to wear my size. Lucky him.
I was nice, only four inches. I thought about a five inch pair, but, well, we didn’t need an accident.
And then the day after we finished New York, Lowri and I were in a private 737 on our way to first London; we had a few folks like Byron we needed to pick up, and then onto Abu Dhabi.
Ellen was with us, as was my father. He wanted his hands in this world.
Of course, our security was with us, with two men along for good measure.
One team, a man and a woman, was assigned to each of Lowri and myself.
We were not allowed into a bathroom alone. Not allowed out of our rooms alone.
I felt like I was a prisoner.
We were flown by a very large helicopter to a resort island in the Persian Gulf.
The resort was officially closed for the week.
Now, this is high end of high end, and it had accommodation for about forty at tops.
This was the $3 5K per night per guest type of resort.
There are many in the region, and no, they do not advertise.
If you can afford one, then you know how to book one.
OK, there is an entire world like that. Get over it. It is not fair, it is not equitable, but it exists, and I earn a significant amount of money servicing the needs of models for that world. And if I did not do it, someone else would.
The cabin I was put up in was… well, I do not know if I will ever be in a more luxurious place in my life.
Now, I am not an expert on luxury, but Byron is.
And he said that his cabin was the best he had stayed in, and mine was twice what his was per night.
There were five bedrooms in our cabin. Lowri and myself took one with two kings in it.
Not one king, two kings. My father took one with a single king, as did Ellen.
Our security detail took the other two; I never did know what the sleeping arrangements were in them.
Food was a chef in your cabin for breakfast, and that was the start of the day. Hours? Hell, it is fashion. You start at 7 a.m., and you finish at 7 p.m. if you are lucky.
We had our own dressers, hair, and makeup.
Now, this is the fun/funny part. There are so many religious restrictions that no one was allowed to touch my body, as it is “unclean” in their cultural world.
So, they paid us to touch my body, meaning we provided hair, makeup, dressers, etc. And once I wore or touched an item of clothing, it was “unclean” and offered to me for proper disposal according to my religious beliefs.
Why? Because they love, love, love the way I look, but I have a few extra parts between my legs which makes things so interesting from their perspective.
Now look, I am not religious; I do not care about religion, except when it interacts with my life.
I grew up around the Amish; I know what it is like to live in a world where different moral codes coexist.
And if you want to pay me what you are paying me, I am not going to tell you that you are wrong.
Besides, I do like the clothes; I will gladly dispose of them for Prestige.
Now, other than that and the no touch part?
I could not, I repeat, I could not have been treated better by anyone.
Everything I asked for, I was given almost instantly.
When I wanted or needed a break? Never an issue.
Bathroom? You know, with all of their rules, at the resort, they did not care at all.
And get this, the resort was absolutely dry, not a drop of alcohol.
Other resorts do allow drinking, but not on this island. And we worked, and we worked hard.
Modeling is modeling. I talked you through an on location shoot, I believe. Identical to this one, once we started, no one was allowed to come or leave. Every day, at least two helicopters arrived, and they carried only supplies and food. No one got off, no one got on.
This is the way to control a shoot. You know who is there and what they are capable of doing.
And that means you, the model, and the photographer in charge control the shot.
Two people have to be happy: the talent, that is me, and the photographer.
I do not look happy when I have to pee, damn it, anyway, and the photographer needs to see what he needs to see.
Everyone else is to keep the two of us happy.
And if we are, the work gets done fast, and you finish a day’s shoot at 5 p.m. Then you can go swimming in the Gulf. Yes. Or the private pool, fresh water. But watch the tan lines.
The worst two days were the swimwear. The energy is wrong for them.
You know that you are working very close to taboos, and for some, crossing taboos.
Some of the staff on the island refused to work on those days for religious reasons.
Not all, but we are talking housekeeping, grounds, cooks, those types of people.
The photographer wanted to push the line a bit.
And I was cool with what he wanted. I had done far more for KK Brands a few weeks ago.
However, the art director was Arab; you really never know which country they are from, and it really does not matter.
But there was some bad crap between the two.
Hey, I am the talent; I do not care. I felt safe; it was well within my comfort zone.
But there was that line in the sand, and in this part of the world, there is one hell of a lot of sand to draw a line in.
They finally compromised, and to be honest, the photos were better than the way the photographer wanted to shoot them.