An Introduction to Professional Modeling

mykkal 07-13-2007, 02:02 AM

So You Want to be a Model!

If you are reading this page it probably is because you are interested in becoming a model. There are many kinds of models: fashion, commercial and glamour are the major divisions. These pages will not discuss glamour models in detail – that is a topic best left to others who deal in that specialty. We will focus here only on the majority of models in the United States: commercial models and, to a lesser extent, fashion models.
What does it take to be a model? Please follow the links below, where each highlighted concept is explained in more detail.*

• • 1. Location. If you aren’t where the market is, you won’t get work.
    2. Investment, of both time and money is needed. Becoming a model isn’t free, although it may be affordable. At a minimum you will have to have the Required Marketing Materials.
    3. Height and Body Type. It’s a lot harder if you are 5’2” tall or not slim.
    4. Attitude. Can make or break your career. Usually it breaks it.
    5. Looks. Sure, they are important, but look where they are on the list.
    6. “Being Discovered”. You think this is how it works?

And after all that, if you get to be a model it may not be what you think. Before you make all that investment you need to know all about the reality of Your Role as a Model.
* - “Agency” doesn’t always mean exactly that. See “A note on Terminology”for an explanation.


If she is a model and you know her name or you recognize her face, she is an "editorial fashion model." Seems simple enough, but it isn't.
"Editorial fashion models" work in New York City (in this country) for the simple reason that very, very little editorial fashion work is booked out of anywhere else. There are exceptions, of course: Miami in winter (but often using New York models), and sometimes Los Angeles or Chicago, but these are just that: exceptions. If you want to be a fashion model, you go to New York. There are lots of opportunities abroad as well (Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo . . .), but only one real one in the US.
If you want to be seen on the cover of a national fashion magazine, to sign a lucrative national ad contract, to become a "supermodel", or even to be a "fashion model", you need the following when you start:

• • 1. Be between 15-19 years old.
    
    2. Be between 5'9" and 6' tall.
    
    3. Be thin. Really, really thin. Something like 105-115 pounds, except for Plus models, who can be dress sizes 10-20 or so, depending on the market.
    
    4. Don't have especially large breasts (34C is generally the upper bound of acceptable), lots of stretch marks, tattoos, piercings or highly tanned skin. Dark skin is fine, lots of tan is not fine.
    
    5. Be beautiful. Not necessarily pretty, but beautiful. An interesting, beautiful face is at least as good for a fashion model as is an "all American" look.
    
    6. Have the right personality for it: a strong commitment to modeling (not just an interest in it), an ability to take rejection (something most beautiful girls aren't good at), a thick skin, not a lot of modesty (nobody cares what you don't want someone to see, we have a fashion show to put on . . .) and a lot of self confidence.
    
    7. Be willing to relocate to a major market, with New York City strongly preferred.
    
    8. Be willing to travel to strange locations with no friends there to support you, little money, little help, lots of opportunity for both good and bad things to happen to you.

If you have all of that, you are a very, very rare person, and you have one chance in a hundred of becoming an editorial fashion model. No more than that. If you are anything else, you need to think about some other kind of modeling.
Editorial fashion jobs are booked almost exclusively through "fashion agencies" - and those hardly exist outside New York.


Most agency models are "commercial" models - meaning that they appear on local or national print ads or television shows, in catalogs, work in local fashion shows and trade shows and similar kinds of work. They don't get huge fees (although pay can be very good indeed), national recognition or lucrative national ad contracts, but they are the backbone of the modeling industry.

Fashion models also work as commercial models, although the reverse is rarely true. In smaller market cities in the US, most agencies concentrate on "fashion print" or "commercial fashion" models, who tend to be tall, slim and beautiful in a more mainstream way. This is "commercial fashion", a subset of commercial modeling.
Very, very few commercial models make a living at it. It is not a career, it is something they do on an occasional basis while they do something else "full time". Outside of the major markets (New York, Chicago, maybe Miami and Los Angeles) it is doubtful that there is any city in America in which more than a dozen people make a good living at modeling, but in virtually all cities and substantial towns there are many, usually hundreds, who are in the modeling market, and who occasionally find work.

The requirements for being a commercial model are very different from being a fashion model. It certainly helps if you look a lot like a fashion model, but there is work available in most markets for many other types. Models can be older, shorter, heavier and need not be pretty or beautiful - "interesting" often will get work, and “generic good looks” is the most common look required. Commercial models are asked to play roles in pictures: “young mom”, “active retiree”, “Doctor”, “executive”, and they look like idealized versions of these roles. In most of the markets we have surveyed the hardest demand for an agent to fill is for middle-aged men!
Things that help a commercial model are acting ability, an outgoing personality, easy availability for jobs, and good self-presentation skills.

The great majority of commercial jobs are booked through agencies, except for those that are given to friends or members of the client's family.


There is a common misconception among many aspiring models that a "glamour model" is one like they see in the pages of "Glamour" magazine. Sorry, those are fashion models or commercial models.

A glamour model may do many kinds of work, but all of them are based on the fact that she is pretty and attractive (unlike a fashion model, who may not be pretty, or commercial model, who may not be either pretty or attractive).

Some of them do promotional work: things like appearing in a bikini at a boat show, or in bars or special events to represent a liquor distributor. Some do "cheesecake" print work, such as appearing in magazines which appeal to a male audience, adorning the product which is the subject of the magazine (such as cars, motorcycles and the like) or appear in calendars. Many do nude work in magazines, videos, for artists, or in the growing field of web site content.

The market for non-nude glamour models certainly exists, but it is rarely something that a model can make a living at, and generally does not pay as well as other modeling work. The vast majority of glamour models who do not do nudes will have no more than a very few appearances in print, and virtually all of them are in New York, Miami or Los Angeles.

The requirements for being a "glamour model" are different from being a fashion or commercial model - generally any attractive woman with an appealing body can qualify. Preferred age varies by the type of job, but is generally from 18 until the late twenties. Some glamour models have successful careers into their thirties, but they almost always became known prior to that.

There are a very few specialized agencies which handle glamour models, but they exist only in a small number of cities. Very few glamour model jobs are booked by agencies. Some agencies do handle promotional or trade show assignments, but other types of assignment generally are booked in other ways: through personal contacts, direct advertising and hiring by the client or photographer, and more recently, through the internet. It is very common for a model to get such jobs through self-promotion of one sort or another, direct to magazines, clients or photographers. A growing number of them also are getting work through the internet, using on-line model referral pages or modeling forums.


This is the single most important thing needed to be successful as a model. You need to be where the jobs are!

It’s possible (remotely possible, not likely) that you may be flown to a job at client expense some day. It happens. But it only happens after you have been selected for the job – and that takes place where the client and the market are. For "fly to" jobs, that is almost always a major market city like New York or Los Angeles.
Here’s how it typically works:

Clients call agencies and tell them what their requirements are for upcoming jobs. The agency matches those requirements against the people in their files, and selects the models they think are likely to be chosen for the job. The comp cards or portfolios for those people are sent to the client, who then selects the models that he actually wants to see – and those people then go on a “go-see” or “casting”. Sometimes the first part of this process is omitted, and agencies simply have their models “go see” the client. There can be as few as one and as many as hundreds of models at these go-sees, and usually a considerable majority of them sent out by their agencies won’t be selected for the job. This is a competitive business, with lots of competitors and, at any given moment, few winners.

You don’t get paid to go to castings, go-sees or auditions, so a great deal of a model’s time is spent on things like go-sees that don’t actually make them any money. And nobody pays your expenses to get to these things, either. That may be OK for someone that lives in the area and can afford to take time off from whatever else they do for an hour or two. But it is simply impossible for someone who lives in Ohio, Texas or even Maryland to commute to these things hoping that they will get a job. The economics don’t work.

If you are going to be in the commercial or fashion modeling business you have to live within a reasonable commuting distance of the marketplace. We generally advise no more than 50-60 miles away, and even that makes pursuing a modeling career very difficult.

If you want to stay home, and home is more than 100 or so miles from where the work is, an agency can’t do much for you.


Modeling is a business, and like all businesses requires investment by you. These investments may be in time and effort or in money, but you cannot hope to be successful as a commercial model without making them. At a minimum, you will need to invest in the following:

• • 1. Pictures The single most important thing you need is good pictures, in the proper style, to represent yourself. You may find qualified photographers who will shoot you at reduced or no cost, but that is by no means assured. Generally, models must be prepared to spend several hundred dollars at the beginning of their career, and to invest more on a regular basis to keep your “book” or “comp card” updated. Some models (typically young women) may find that they can get pictures done free or for greatly reduced rates, but all models should be prepared for the likelihood that they will have to pay for pictures. Often what you get for free serves the needs of the photographer, not yours. It is relatively rare to find a good photographer who is willing to shoot commercially useful pictures for free.
    
    2. Comp Cards/Headshots Your agency will need photos of you that they can send to casting directors – and they won’t get them back. So you must have printed “composite” cards (for commercial and fashion models) and/or “headshots” (for actors/actresses). “Comps” may run $80-$200 or so; headshots should cost $50-$100. A model can start with only a printed headshot, but a comp is much preferable as soon as enough good pictures are available.
    
    3. Self-presentation skills We discourage models from taking “modeling classes” – they are not required and often are counter-productive. Still, a model should have a good basic understanding of makeup and wardrobe, and may require some guidance on posture and other self-presentation issues. There are a variety of ways to get these things, some relatively inexpensive, and some costing in the hundreds of dollars.
    
    4. “Bag of tricks” Even though many assignments will have professional makeup artists and stylists to prepare you, some will not. You must have the materials and skills to do your own makeup in a variety of styles, and a wardrobe and shoes appropriate to basic modeling situations. You can reasonably expect that these things, if you do not already have them, may run to several hundred dollars or more, depending on how much you wish to invest in flexibility to easily take a wide variety of assignments.
    
    5. Modeling Skills Although we do not recommend “modeling schools”, agencies and clients do want models to have extensive experience in front of a camera. The best way to get this is, quite simply, to do a lot of shooting. Ideally this should be with a photographer who is skilled at working with models in commercial or fashion style shots. Still, any kind of experience is helpful, and even shoots with relatively new photographers often help you gain self-confidence and posing skill.
    
    6. Advertising You need to get your pictures in front of photographers, art directors, casting agents and others that make hiring decisions. It used to be that your agency would assist you in this by including you in the agency headsheet book that is mailed to such people. Now it is more common to use an agency website as well as promotional mailers. As is customary in the industry, agencies must recover its costs from you for these promotional items. Depending on the degree of promotion of you that the agency does, the cost to you may run from $75-$700 per year. Each agency has its own policies on these services and costs.
    
    7. Communications This is a fast-paced business. If your agent can’t find you quickly, you may well lose a job that could pay you thousands of dollars. There are a variety of solutions that models use: cell phones, beepers, good answering services – but one or more of these is necessary to a successful modeling career.
    
    8. Living Near the Market This is a very expensive item, but also a critical one. Fashion models often must relocate. We do not advise commercial models to move just to be a model – but if you aren’t within an hour or so of the market city, it is very difficult and expensive for you to compete for jobs.

In all cases above your model management company should be prepared to help you decide what you may need to do to be successful and to advise you on appropriately qualified vendors and sources. A true “agency” may not in some cases – it’s outside the scope of their duties.

To read the rest of this NewModels.com article click here...

mykkal Administrator Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: United States - Georgia Age: 33 Posts: 1,623 Thanks: 15 Thanked 21 Times in 19 Posts Show Printable Version Email this Page