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And a few days later, after a stop in London and a chance to sign a few papers, we were back in Pennsylvania.
And I was back with Carmine, who took a few days off and joined me at the Stone Farmhouse.
Mom put us in the remote wing this time; she had actually had that part of the house remodeled into an almost apartment.
Something along the lines of “Well, none of my family is ever going to sleep in this building again as long as I am alive, and the two of you do need a more private space.”
Lowri, for the record, was given my old room. And with that, I was officially replaced…
OK, that was a joke. What Mom did was ensure that Carmine and I had the place to do, the place to be, with respect and privacy.
I think I know who my mother wants me to marry.
That message was rather clear when she said, “You know, within this house,” understand that the house is massive and rambling and very, very different from the typical farmhouse in this part of the world, “in this house, you really can share with your family and still have your own place.
Think about it, Shannon, here you have no responsibilities, no worries. But if you and Carmine took a place of your own, then you would have to add those issues to your school, your career, your decision (no pressure, Mom, nope,
none whatsoever) and Carmine’s school work and responsibilities concerning her mother.”
“And it’s free.”
Like Mom, telling a top model who can make 4 5 million in two weeks that something is free is an incentive? Come on, woman. You have a head on your shoulders, a bloody PhD; use it. Money is no longer an issue.
I assure you, I am not, I repeat, not giving up modeling. And I assure you, I am not, I repeat, not giving up Carmine. The rest? That is a variable.
But first, I love Carmine, and second, I love fashion.
There, I said it. I admitted it. Even if it is only to myself.
Kelley and Sarah were back with us, yes, even 24/7 bodyguards get a few days off. Well, they were off doing Kelley and Sarah things, and they still insist that they are not a couple. The two boys who joined us for the UAE were with us.
Carmine spent the week commuting from the farmhouse. She rather liked Mom’s gift to the two of us. But we also had commitments at the Rho house, and when Kelley and Sarah returned, the four of us drove up to Mercer, and I re entered life as a Co ed.
Lowri was assigned a different duty; my father bought an old auto dealership in Mercer about the first of the year, and this was being converted into a studio space.
The original showroom had about 20 ’ ceilings and was definitely tall enough for studio lighting.
And in the back, the service area was turned into workshops for the sets.
And as this dealership accessed the cars into the showroom from the service bay area, there was ample room to move the sets between construction sites and photographic sites within the complex.
There was also a basement under concrete flooring under the service bay.
Common in older dealerships as a place to keep the new cars out of Pennsylvania’s weather, this area was being turned into sound stages for recording studios. Why not?
The purpose of this project was to provide an alternative shooting location to New York, just a day’s drive from New York.
Spring, summer, and fall in Pennsylvania are glorious for on location shoots for fashion, especially for casual shoots.
And there are plenty of abandoned industrial sites that are hot in the fashion world about now.
Lowri was going to step into the world of setting this studio up.
Lowri had grown up in and around her brother Alex’s life, and Alex had been a fashion model, menswear, before he met Byron.
And once Alex and Byron were a couple, Lowri spent her summers in Byron’s studios.
That was a lot of why Lowri was assigned to me; she knows and understands the flow of fashion and can help maintain the flow patterns required for a good session more easily than most.
And I needed a friend I could trust.
So, Lowri was staying at the Stone Farmhouse, working at the new facility, and riding with my mother. The Appaloosas had arrived, and yes, I have ridden all three of them. And yes, against advice, I am inclined to take up barrel riding again.
Barrel riding is a women’s primarily rodeo sport and is held in the same physical locations that rodeos are.
But what it is about is that barrels are set up in a pattern, and then the rider is timed on a path interweaving that pattern around the barrels.
Horse and rider have to be as one. It is fast, furious, favors lighter riders on more agile horses, and is nowhere as dangerous as, say, bronc riding.
Technically, well, it is too dangerous for me. But I have to make at least one decision in my life, and my father has included barrel racing as a clause in every contract, as he damn well knows I am going to do it if I have a horse that can.
I am a thin reed apparently. Or he really knows me very well.
This is taking me to mental places I do not want to travel right now.
The second week of March, Ellen this time booked me in Paris for the final winter fashion week of the winter season in Paris.
This was perhaps the biggest show that I could be doing outside of New York.
Lowri, of course, accompanied myself, along with my father.
It seems that he has really started enjoying working with Ellen and with Byron, who, of course, was using me as KK Brands had several shows.
We arrived, along with Kelley and Sarah, of course; I went nowhere without them now.
And I found that Byron had us in a penthouse suite in a major hotel not far from the site I would be working at.
And it is the same everywhere. You start early with fittings and evaluation, you are wanted, but you are also an unknown, never having walked the runway in Europe.
They know that you do and can, but there are still questions, always questions.
And for the record, this is not gender specific, but appearance specific.
A designer only wants his clothes on the girls who he feels best reflect what he sees.
And until you are at least once seen in person, photos and video only tell so much.
There is something about a runway that requires that you have or you do not have.
Carmine, for instance, is stunningly beautiful and is a fantastic studio model for what she does, product placement.
But Carmine, and I say this with the utmost love, does not have what the runway wants.
It is not so much beauty, it is control of that beauty.
How you, the model, interact with the clothing and the setting.
Each show, each design within that show takes a different approach.
Either you sense it instantly, or you never get it.
And when you are doing ten to twelve pieces in a typical show, you do not get to figure this out ahead of time.
When you do two to three shows a day? You have absolutely no clue what you are going to be dressed in in five minutes from now.
But you need to project that design with perfection and confidence.
That does not photograph. That is required of every model.
That is what my week looked like. Mornings in Paris were meeting with designers; they have my sizes, they have a virtual body scan of me, and can have a 3 D model of my body made, and most do nowadays.
But draping is different as it depends on muscle movement as you move.
So it is a fast “try this on” for the pieces that matter most.
Now, not all of the pieces you will wear, but the ones that the designer is most concerned about.
And then, in the early afternoon, you have your shows. And the long dead time between shows. No one schedules back to back shows. You need time to decompose from one designer’s work and reset your mind for the next. Swim into the wedding? Not a chance in hell, and really not even the same day.
Now three shows for Byron? At his top three levels? Not a problem. Same fashion house, same concept, different market focus.
Paris is eight days, Tuesday to Tuesday, and this is traditional.
And the final Tuesday is the big day; this is the day that the stars of the modeling world are on the runway, and the most prestigious designers and design houses are showing.
I did three shows on that final Tuesday.
None for Byron; KK Brands is casual, but the final day is anything but casual.
And it is not a wedding that finishes on the weekend.
This is couture; this is when the clients in the audience are not the commercial buyers, but rather, the individuals at the shows are looking for themselves.
And this is the day that covers are found.
Not shot, believe me, in a single walk on a Paris runway, you face perhaps one hundred cameras.
And each one shoots at least forty images per walk.
And you do at least ten walks per show. That is how many images per show? And for how many shows a day?
Digital photography radically changed how a runway is photographed. No question that with digital, after a few years, there are millions of photographs of you in existence.
And thank God for Lowri. She is my savior. Always there with what I need, even before I need it. But most importantly, she is there with a smile, a laugh, and a joke.
Lowri makes this possible.
And does it pay? Well, my base fees for the fourteen shows I did were about 500,000 euros.
The last Tuesday shows were the highest, of course, and the bonuses bumped that up to about 700,000 euros.
Now, that is without residuals, covers, and use of images for this show.
All of it together, my take was about $2,300,000 for the eight days.
Now, I am one of many who were paid at that level, and I was definitely not at the top of the food chain. Close, but not at the top. Those girls doubled, or perhaps tripled, what I got.
And I should add that that did include two Vogue covers, a number of minor covers, and one hell of a lot of attention.
In other words, I had arrived. Whether I liked it or not, I was now an international runway model with a top model rating who was seen as a future supermodel.
From this point forward, my team Ellen, Byron, and my father were selecting what I would do, because there would be many, many, many options.