thisiswhereIamgoingtowriteanentirelineoftexttomakesurethereiswhitespace
Did I really eat all these Riesens? Why, yes I did. Clearly listening to an hour of This American Life alone in my apartment with nothing to occupy my hands was a poor life decision. And a delicious one.
Peter’s parents escaped the Midwestern icefuck that is December and spent a weekend here on the left coast. Given Peter and I are both overeducated, underpaid downwardly-mobile youngsters contending with the coming recession and the joke of a dollar and the “credit crunch,” I can say that this weekend’s visit felt just like when your parents come to your scuzzy college town and buy you food, in that his folks paid for everything. (I for one cannot wait to get under the nice, cushy wing of a deep-pocketed agency again, and not have to worry about finding money to spring for new light bulbs. And I keep on suggesting Peter just cast his lot in with some rich old lady with a bunch of cute dogs, but he loves me, so you know.)
Our other solution is to only shop here from now on:
thisiswhereIamgoingtowriteanentirelineoftexttomakesurethereiswhitespace
I swear I paid Target at least $4.99 for that lime-green hanger bundle when I went off to university. I should’ve waited three years and hangered my wardrobe for a buck.
The dollar store on Mission St. sells all kinds of awesome loot. There are scented candles, big bags of beef jerky, socks, soap cakes with oats in them, and pet chew toys. As well as these:
thisiswhereIamgoingtowriteanentirelineoftexttomakesurethereiswhitespace
And enough styling gel to coiff every overly tanned, khaki-wearing, overpaid, Dave-Matthews-Band-listening frat boy in the Marina. And make them funky.
One thing we definitely will have to cut out of the budget is pimp gear. Unless I can felt it, knit it, sew it, or leatherwork it with my awl and mallet, there will be no shiny, extended-vamp shoes and co-ordinating feathered headwear in our future.
I snapped a picture of the door to some kind of a halfway house on 16th near Valencia. The sign above reads “These premises are under court order not to be used for the sale, giving away, use, or manufacture of illegal drugs.”
12 responses so far ↓
Shelley // December 17, 2007 at 6:27 pm |
Merry Christmas!
So, deep-pockets = NY agency?
photojenna // December 18, 2007 at 12:32 am |
It actually costs a lot of money to start a model — there are plane tickets, photo tests, living expenses, composite card costs, etc. to pay. Maybe she needs new clothes, or a haircut with regular colour maintenance now that you’ve decided she needs to be platinum blonde, and either way she definitely needs a whole bunch of painstakingly retouched pictures printed out in high resolution really big on fancy paper. And that adds up, especially over the 1-3 years it can take to really establish a model and build her book. The industry is structured kind of like in music, where artists depend on big corporations and their capacity to absorb risk. It’s like the recording industry, minus the indie counter current, of course. A model without an agency is just a photogenic woman.
So to a certain extent, in a long-winded way, I guess I’m trying to say all agencies have deep pockets. They make it back in spades later on, if all goes well, and they make a business of being right about an unknown girl more often than they’re wrong.
But yes, I am hoping NY will be my next market. How did you guess?
Shelley // December 18, 2007 at 6:42 am |
thanks for that!
NY just seems to be where all the money jobs are. I just saw an interview with a Paris agent saying that the campaign decisions are largely made in NY. I would have thought Paris was just as good.
The best NY agencies get the lion’s share of the work it seems.
Mum // December 18, 2007 at 3:42 pm |
Jenna,
Something is wrong with my last three or so messages on your blog– the photos have gone mad and seem to be wherever they want to be– covering text!!
Alluring as the photos are, can you stick them down so they aren’t covering your messages?
Thanks,
Mum
photojenna // December 18, 2007 at 10:13 pm |
Yeah, New York City is definitely considered the “money” market of the main fashion centres. Paris is the prestige market, what with every edition of Vogue making its bookings there, and London and Milan fall somewhere in between. Just as fashion and editorial work pays poorly because of its high notability factor, you can kind of tell how much cachet a market has by what its standard agency commission is: Paris knows models have to go there if they want a hope of doing anything major in fashion-world, so it takes 70%. Milan takes 50%, I don’t know off the top of my head what London’s is, but in NYC agencies take a mere 20% commission.
If you’re really interested in money, however, what you’d do as a model is work in a so-called secondary market — anywhere that’s not in the big four. Catalogue and other commercial jobs (which always pay better than high-fashion work) are big business in Germany, for instance, and I’ve heard you can make a lot in certain Asian markets, such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore. There’s supposedly a big divide between fashion and commercial work — the jobs are even handled by different kinds of agencies, and if you book something high-end, there’s no guarantee that the brand won’t balk at your having done an ice-cream ad three months ago — but in reality, most fashion models do a bit of both. I felt like I was the only model in Paris not occasionally sneaking off to Berlin to do a cheap-and-cheerful commercial job.
Another long-winded semi-answer! God I can just type and type sometimes.
photojenna // December 18, 2007 at 10:15 pm |
Mum,
Can you tell me what browser you’re using? Those photos are in the same format, and sized the same, as all the pictures on this blog.
Love,
Jenna
Shelley // December 19, 2007 at 10:03 pm |
Thanks so much for all the info!
Isn’t the commission so high in Paris because the gov’t makes the agencies hand over the (high) taxes on French income as if models were employees? I hope the models get some back on their French tax return.
We pretty well have to go somewhere overseas to line up the tears for a US visa (not American). Lots go to Tokyo. I guess it’s better if your agent wants to send you to Milan though. And Paris is the best, but so competitive?
Shelley
photojenna // December 19, 2007 at 10:20 pm |
That is part of the reason the commission is so high, because of France’s overall high taxes — but I think the main thing is they just know they can get away with it. You have to go to Paris if you want a hope of booking a Really Big Job or Becoming Famous. You can make money elsewhere, but it’s the Mecca of fashion, and they know it.
You can get some of your French taxes back, if you can prove that you lived the majority of the financial year outside of France, and that you paid taxes in that other country. I can’t remember off the top of my head what portion of the French tax is refunded, but from memory, it’s not high. Which sucks, because it means some French person is going to live off my contributions to their national retirement fund some day, whereas Social Security is gonna be broke by the time I’m what, 30. I suppose that means I’m definitely retiring in NZ.
I’m curious, what do you do?
Shelley // December 19, 2007 at 11:43 pm |
I’m a computer consultant, but more to the point, the mom of a very tall, very thin and apparently photogenic 14-yr-old. We just went to the agencies to see if she could get some part-time local work. Turns out that is not what they have in mind. Nothing is as I originally expected.
So I am trying to find out as much as I can, to figure out if this can work with school. We live in Canada.
Shelley
photojenna // December 20, 2007 at 9:48 pm |
That’s really cool. My advice would be to find agents you trust absolutely, and even then to take a strong hand with them. It’s tricky because you want the agency on your side (bookers do not work equally as hard for every model they represent), but agencies tend not to be very understanding about things like the need for an education. There are so many really young girls in modeling who’ve completely given up on school and have no parents in sight, and it’s depressing as hell. Yet many agencies have no real objection to it.
That being said, I think it is possible modeling would be of benefit to your daughter — I modeled in high school back in New Zealand, and found it mostly a lot of fun, a good way to earn money, and a nice way to travel and learn things. A responsible agent is going to be interested in the long term, since it takes so much time to start a model anyway. I would recommend starting local, or in a nearby secondary market (and if agencies you’ve talked to have pooh-poohed that and pushed travel before you or your daughter think that’s appropriate — screw them, go somewhere else).
Local work, or work in a nearby city, should be possible. For the occasional job, it might be worth it to take a day or two off from school, but the experience is what you need to build — getting used to the casting process, taking the criticisms and the fulsome praise that fizzles into nothing. Then when she’s ready, and prepared, maybe a summer in NYC — or maybe Toronto first.
Mother agents are kind of an interesting issue — sometimes they can cost you money in the long term, but if you have a great one, they make all the difference in the world. If you can find a mother agent who can formulate a plan for your daughter that you can get behind, someone who has contacts, who will really protect your and her interests, and who will occasionally advise you to say no to a seemingly good job that doesn’t suit that endgame, then that mother agent is worth their weight in gold.
Anyway, it sounds like you’re doing your research well. Newmodels.com has some good information, and the forums on models.com can also be useful (just make sure you have pictures up when you post there, otherwise they will not be very nice to you. Seriously. The boards are often filled with people who are 5′2″, have grainy, self-taken MySpace pics, aNd WhO tYpE lIkE tHis!!!!1111!, so the people who actually know what they’re doing get a little cranky). I wish you both good luck — it’s not impossible for a model to have a good career and not miss out on education and all those other things that are fundamentally so much more important than modeling.
Shelley // December 20, 2007 at 10:27 pm |
Thanks, again, your blog is great! And especially thanks for pointing out Signe Chanel on Youtube! I love the dedicated seamstresses, the trim maker and the shoemaker! Not to mention “Monsieur Karl”!
Also, from an earlier post referring to a “tony neighbourhood”, the “ton” is an antiquated British term for the upper classes (obviously you don’t read Regency romances). (Sorry, I can’t help myself- from Wikipedia “Ton comes from the French word meaning tone, as used in the phrase bon ton – good manners and fashionable style.”)
photojenna // December 20, 2007 at 11:02 pm |
That is so interesting. I had a hunch that word was British English in origin — I looked in an American dictionary when my friend Erin asked about it, and of course an American dictionary would say it’s an American term.
Loïc Prigent is a genius. That’s all I have to say. He has a weekly show about fashion on French TV (where he rolls out his “Anna Watch” segments) and it’s just delightful. Don’t you just want to reach through the screen and hug that seamstress after she spends days and days trying to keep her silver panne velvet staying still long enough to sew it, and Karl nixes the dress?