A Model Has to Make the Picture Before the Industry Can See It

Agencies and casting directors book what they already recognize. Kate Upton, Tyra Banks, Beverly Johnson, and others made photographs that showed who they could be, and the industry hired them once it saw the pictures.

A model's career is shaped by the category the industry places her in, and the industry is slow to see past it. Agencies, casting directors, and clients book what they already recognize. A model who wants different work can't wait for them to imagine it. She has to take control of her own image and make the proof herself: the test shoot, the book, the body she refuses to change, the audience she builds. The industry follows the proof. The direction of the change matters less than who makes it.

Kate Upton is the clearest recent case. In February 2012, Sophia Neophitou, who cast the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, told the New York Times that the show "would never use" her: "She's like a footballer's wife, with the too-blond hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy." That same month, Upton was on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She kept working as she was. "I don't want to starve myself," she told Vogue that November. By June 2013, she was on the cover of American Vogue.

Norma Shearer Took Control in 1929

Norma Shearer made the same move at MGM in 1929. She was one of the studio's leading stars, and the studio saw her as wholesome. She wanted the lead in The Divorcee, a role her husband, MGM production head Irving Thalberg, did not believe she could play. Rather than wait for the studio to change its mind, she arranged a session with George Hurrell, then an independent photographer working outside MGM. Thalberg saw the prints and gave her the part, and she won the Academy Award for it.

Shearer needed the studio to see her as less wholesome. Upton needed the industry to accept her as she was. The directions are opposite, and the move is the same: each made the image the institution could not imagine, and the institution followed it.

Tyra Banks Shaped Her Image
for the Clients She Wanted

Tyra Banks did it by studying who was hiring and shaping her image for them. In Paris, she studied how each designer presented a collection. "Every single time I had an audition or a casting, I changed my hair and make-up in the alley in the back and I walked specifically for how those designers presented their collections," she said at a Forbes summit in 2022. When she gained weight and some designers stopped booking her, she and her mother listed the designers who worked with curvier models and the models with her build she could learn from, as she described at a Variety summit in 2018. Then she went after that market. In 1996 she became the first Black woman on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and in 1997 the first African American model on the cover of the Victoria's Secret catalog.

Six Models Who Proved It
Before the Industry Saw It

Other models have made the same move by other means.

  • Beverly Johnson. Her agent, Eileen Ford, told her a Vogue cover would never happen. Johnson left Ford for Wilhelmina Cooper, who fought to get a Francesco Scavullo photograph to the right editors. In August 1974, Johnson became the first Black woman on the cover of American Vogue.

  • Crystal Renn. At 14, she was told she could be the next Gisele if she took inches off her hips, and she lost 70 pounds trying. When a photographer booked her and then refused to shoot her as "too fat," she asked her agent to place her with a plus-size agency. Ford signed her. In 2004, at her natural size, Steven Meisel photographed her for Vogue, the magazine she had wanted since she was 14.

  • Winnie Harlow. "I started to build myself up by leveraging social media," she told CNN. She has said she had more than 100,000 Instagram followers by 18. When Tyra Banks cast her on America's Next Top Model in 2014, Banks told her, "I found you. I saw you on social media."

  • Paloma Elsesser. She documented her own style on Instagram and built a following. In 2014, Pat McGrath made her the face of her first eyeshadow, which launched her career. The runways came later. By 2022, Business of Fashion reported that she had walked more high-fashion shows over the previous two seasons than any other plus-size model.

  • Cindy Crawford. Her first agency, a small one in Chicago, told her to remove the mole above her lip. She kept it, even though some clients retouched it out, including on her first British Vogue cover. Richard Avedon photographed her for the cover of American Vogue in 1986, and the mole stayed in. After that, she told Naomi Campbell in 2020, it "wasn't an issue anymore."

  • Kathy Ireland. She was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model for more than a decade, and as she neared 30, modeling work grew scarcer. In 1993 a sock maker asked her to model its socks. She partnered with the company instead and put her name on the line. "I thought, 'I'd rather be the client,'" she told Forbes. Kmart sold 100 million pairs and then gave her a clothing line.

Cheryl Tiegs Guided Her Career
Before Sears Found Her

The hope of being discovered rests on stories like Cheryl Tiegs's. In 1980, Sears came to her with an apparel contract. Her own account shows how she got there. When a modeling agent spoke to eleven girls at her high school, she was the only one who went to see him. When Cover Girl asked her to work for it exclusively, she raised her day rate from $2,025 to $3,500. She turned down advertisements she judged to be poor work. "There really is a way to guide your career," she told Westlake Malibu Lifestyle in 2023. Sears came to her after years of managing her own career.

The Industry Changes Its Mind
After the Photographs Exist

Every model in this piece faced someone who could not yet see her: the Chicago agency that wanted Crawford's mole removed, the casting director who said Victoria's Secret would never use Upton, and the agent who told Johnson a Vogue cover would never happen. Each of those judgments was made before the evidence existed. Each changed once the photographs did.

Fashion photography follows the same pattern. Institutions accept new work after it has already proven itself. A model who waits for the industry to picture her will wait a long time. She has to make the picture herself: the test shoot, the book, the body she keeps, the audience she builds. The direction she moves matters less than the fact that she moves first.

Where This Comes From

Further Reading

Articles Main Page