This Year's Model -- Modeling Is An Attractive Business, And Plenty Of People In Seattle Are Interested

It's noon on a muggy Tuesday and in the past hour the anticipation in a windowless meeting room in one of Seattle's big downtown hotels has risen along with the temperature. They have been trickling in alone and in pairs since 11 a.m., and now that there are nearly two dozen young, tall women with creamy complexions and impossible-to-miss cheekbones wandering around in various states of undress, the room has taken on the bonhomie and excitement of a collegiate locker room before a big game.

They greet new arrivals as long-lost friends. There are kisses, hugs and shouts of "Hey, girl!" or "Hello, girlfriends!" They compliment each other on new haircuts while peeling out of jeans and T-shirts. There are jokes and laughter. The collective voice of the room has a distinctly feminine pitch, despite the six men in attendance, who, with combs and brushes in hand, or arm loads of shoe boxes, are men with missions, the trainers and coaches for this team of gazelles. The men appear to care not one whit that the women are in panty hose and very little else.

Some women are contemplative, planning their game strategies, preparing, rehearsing. One, transfixed by her image, practices her moves before a full-length mirror. It is a stylized strut, hips swinging like a pendulum, followed by a whiplash turn. Her thigh-hugging flares snap wickedly around her ankles. Others sit cross-legged on the floor brushing mascara onto their eyelashes with quick, practiced strokes.

At an average height of 5 feet 10 inches, the women are tall enough to be basketball players, though few would thud on a rebound. It's unlikely that any weighs much more than 130 pounds, most are closer to 120. Their legs go on forever. The largest among them have 35-inch hips; they are slimmer by many inches than most American women.

Of course these are not typical women. They're 24 of Seattle's top runway models, plus a diva from Dallas, a veteran of Europe and New York who can be trusted to float down the runway in fairy tale ball gown in the grand finale in such a way that women in the audience are briefly bewitched by adolescent Cinderella fantasies. The models are suiting up for Nordstrom's annual fall fashion preview, which is, these days, the city's most high fashion show.

Runway shows are glamourous and theatrical, and most models love working them even though the money is less than what they'd make modeling hiking shorts for Eddie Bauer catalogs or wash-'n'-wear tops for Lamonts flyers. Models earn between $1,200 and $2,000 for a day's worth of catalog work, while runway rates in Seattle are $100 per hour, plus $50 per hour for rehearsal. For this show, and the several hours of rehearsal that went into it, they'll make perhaps $400.

With 15 minutes to go, the pace has quickened. A squad of 12 dressers, all women, help the models slide into their first outfits - pulling zippers, handing them shoes, adjusting collars, pressing creases out of garments. There might be a whiff of royal privilege about the sight of lithe, young lovelies being dressed by handmaidens if it weren't for the brusque efficiency abuzz in the room.

Each model has a rack of clothes with her name on it, the outfits lined up and numbered in the order to be worn. Once the show starts the models will sprint off the stage, tearing off wigs and jackets as they run, change into new outfits, and get back on stage within three to five minutes. The frenetic pace means that at least one model usually misses a "change."

Helen Forland, Nordstrom's Washington fashion coordinator, has been orchestrating this show for a year. She has gone without sleep for 48 hours attending to last-minute details. A perky, perennially upbeat young woman with a chic cap of flame-colored hair, she shouts final instructions to the models, reminding them to wear black velvet gloves in a couple of scenes "or you won't be let out on the runway."

Nearby a half-dozen models stand in Claude Montana's latest gray and black styles, "Blade Runner" ensembles of leggings, big jackets and boots. They all wear black, Louise Brooks-style wigs and each carries a hefty police flashlight. The look is dressy dominatrix, like a squad of female cops who've crossed over to the dark side.

Jim Hagen, assistant to the store's corporate fashion director, delivers a pep talk: "Pump it up, Montana girls, pump it up. Hit the runway and be strong. Be fast. You're determined. OK. Have a good show."

The Montana girls and the Donna Karan girls assemble in the dark backstage. The tinkling of dessert forks and china coffee cups subsides in the ballroom in front of the stage as the 800 women and men in the audience sit back for the show. A machine billows fog over the stage while the models shift on their feet like fine-boned race horses pawing at the starting gate. As the first throbbing bars of music boom, the spotlights blaze and two models stride down the runway looking fabulous in clothes that would make at least half the women in the audience look like overdressed pears.

At a time when the proprieties of political correctness make it incorrect to judge a person by looks, age, size, skin color, or virtually any aspect of appearance, few professions are as contrary to the PC code as modeling, an industry that excludes most people because of their genetics. Yet never in the history of fashion have models been such superstars. The private lives and careers of international models like Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell are charted by news weeklies and television shows. And the gaggle of the world's top models - women under 30 who rarely have college educations - earn $2 million to $3 million a year, about the same as the best paid Fortune 500 chief executives.

An axiom in the modeling industry is that it takes more than just a beautiful face and a perfect body to make a good model, and agents are full of stories about women and men with looks to kill who lacked the drive and personality to make their looks pay. "Dumb and pretty doesn't cut it," said Terri Morgan, co-owner of TCM modeling agency in Seattle. "There are a lot of pretty faces out there, but if they don't have the stick-to-itivness, savvy and ambition, they won't make it."

Still, the physical requirements to get a toehold in mainstream modeling are exclusive. Most agencies want women to be at least 5 feet 9 inches tall and have measurements that vary no more than an inch from 35-24-35. Men must be at least 5 feet 11 - some agencies exclude those under 6 feet - with 40- to 42- inch chests and 30- to 32-inch waists.

Chipped teeth can be capped, slightly blemished skin can be cleared by dermatologists, a few pounds here and there can be shed with diet and exercise, and slender women who lack cleavage can, and sometimes do, get breast implants. But a photogenic, attention-grabbing face is born, not made. Nobody has ever called modeling a kind industry.

"I'd say 95 percent of the young women who come in here envision themselves on the cover of Vogue," says Joanne Meyers, who with her husband owns the Seattle Models Guild, one of Seattle's largest and most established agencies. "But they might be 5 feet tall, have little tiny eyes and acne. I have to tell them no."

Yet for those favored few with the right stuff, modeling can be a heady mixture of glamour, fashion and money. And in Seattle plenty of women and men are interested. The Seattle Yellow Pages list two columns of modeling agencies and judging by the number of models handled by a half-dozen of the area's largest agencies, there are perhaps 500 adults in Western Washington who model at least part time.

Local agents have stories about big "discoveries." A lanky young woman discovered slinging sandwiches in an Idaho shop who has an apartment in Paris and is on the cover of major European magazines. A 14-year-old Seattle girl who makes $80,000 doing summer modeling in Tokyo.

Some of the area's locals who've gone onto the brightest careers include Karla Otis, raised here, who now lives in New York and routinely appears on the top runways in New York and Europe, and in the glossiest magazines. Doug Petrich, a former University of Washington football player, who shuttles between Los Angeles and New York and is often in GQ. This month he is also on the cover of International Male, a menswear catalog.

Then there's Charlene Short, who grew up here but left for New York where she has become a top model and has appeared on dozens of international fashion magazines. And Tom Grenon, a one-time logger from Victoria, B.C., who now lives in Seattle and models for such international companies as Brooks Brothers and for local department stores.

Models like them might not be in the supermodel category with Crawford, but those in the biggest demand can make several hundred thousand dollars per year.

Leslie Bereiter, owner of Team modeling agency in Bellevue, says she gets about one inquiry a week from European modeling agencies and photographers who want to look at her models' "books," the photo albums of fashion shots that are models' resumes: "Whenever agencies from Spain, Germany or France are on their way to Asia, they always stop in Seattle because they've heard so much about us."

Grunge music and the unkempt fashion associated with it has helped put Seattle on the international fashion map, local agents say, but the city isn't known for any particular "look" when it comes to local talent.

"I think we've become very metropolitan," said Eileen Seals, owner of a Seattle talent and modeling agency. "We might have been known once for outdoorsy models but now we do everything."

If you go to runway shows in Seattle, or watch the catalogs and advertising inserts from local retailers, or look at ads for department stores, it's hard to miss the women and men who are the "bread and butter" models for local agencies. They are the models who for various reasons work mostly in Seattle. Some lack the talent or ambition to go to bigger markets. Some don't like the faster, tougher fashion world in cities like New York and Miami and don't want the nomadic lifestyle that goes with modeling in that league. Some prefer to stay here with family and friends and juggle occasional modeling jobs with other careers or college study.

Staying here means less money. Local models in the biggest demand can gross $70,000 per year, though most earn far less and consider modeling lucrative moonlighting. All models typically pay 20 percent of what they make to their agencies; agencies usually collect another 20 percent in fees from the client.

At 27, Michele Estrada is a 10-year veteran of the business and one of the busiest models in town. She got hooked on modeling after high school when she joined her older sister, a model, on assignment in Italy. She spent the next few years shuttling around the world on fashion shoots, before working for a couple of years in the Hollywood film industry. She moved back to Seattle a year and a half ago and is studying communications at the University of Washington.

Like other models, she says the business is less glamorous than most people believe. On a typical job she might be required to arrive at The Bon Marche at 9 p.m. and stay till morning shooting a commercial.

"The crew spends a lot of time setting up shots and moving cameras to different departments so the models sit in the women's bathroom - luckily they have a real nice one, like a lounge - and do our homework or read," said Estrada. "Around midnight they bring us some dinner. Then we go out and they shoot a ton of footage and sometimes I can barely even find myself in the commercial."

With her Spanish/German heritage and sultry looks, Estrada considers herself a chameleon who isn't easily typecast. But it's hard not to think of Kelle Kleingartner, another of Seattle's busy models, as a fresh-faced, dimpled girl next door, a Grace Kelly of the runway.

"I'm not one of the thinner models," says Kleingartner. "I have a reputation of being more voluptuous and I'm doing a lot of maternity these days. I think they like me for maternity because of my round face."

There was a time a few years back when Kleingartner, now 24, spent a year in Italy and Germany building up her book. Europe has more fashion magazines than the U.S. and it is a rite of passage for young American models, female and male, to spend time there getting experience and "tears" - the tear sheets from published fashion layouts and magazine covers. But a week in New York after she returned from Europe convinced Kleingartner that she'd rather live in Seattle, where she now studies part time at Shoreline Community College.

Except for the stars who get multimillion-dollar contracts with cosmetic and apparel firms, models are essentially freelancers. They get paychecks only when they work. Models who arrive late, are moody on the job or who look lousy after a long night on the town don't get asked back. Says Morgan of TCM: "I constantly tell them that they're only as good as their last job."

So models promote themselves, even to their agencies. Kleingartner checks in once or twice a day to see if hers has lined up work and to chat: "It's funny. My booker is practically like my mother. I know it sounds weird but we talk about how things are going, even if there isn't a job that day." Models sometimes get several weeks' notice of a job, sometimes a few hours. Leaving town, or even leaving the house, can mean losing work.

"Finance for models is a real interesting thing," said Kleingartner. "It's not like every month I can have a budget. I pay my bills ahead of time whenever I can because I don't know when I'll get paid again."

Models say there are stereotypes about them that aren't true. For starters, they all don't live on lettuce. "It's basically just a body type," said Sue Perry, who works many local shows and is a favorite for informal in-store modeling. "Some people are just born thin and it's not that amazing."

Perry says she works out six times a week to maintain her slim shape - most models do work out and count calories - but she finds it irritating when people who know she's a model chide her for eating potato chips. "They think I shouldn't be doing it or something."

Models also don't have closets of designer clothes, says Jan Eberle, a Portland model who frequently works in Seattle. "People think we get to keep them. Of course, we don't. I've had two kids to support. I wish I could afford some of those clothes."

Then there's the beautiful-but-dumb stereotype. Though supermodels are too busy jet-setting and becoming millionaires to go to college, plenty of the rest do, albeit sometimes not until their late 20s. Most realize that they need another profession to fall back on. One young woman in town is using her modeling fees to help put herself through the UW dental school. Others have used their modeling earnings as a grubstake to start businesses.

Still, Eberle, 37, a 16-year veteran whose classy, grown-up looks get her plenty of work, says unflattering assumptions about models make her reluctant to divulge her profession. "It's amazing what people think. I used to teach a little modeling, so I'd tell people that I was an instructor, leaving it vague. Then I'd change the subject."

What the fashion industry wants in a model can change with as little logic and as much regularity as skirt lengths. In the '60s, models were gawky, doe-eyed adolescents like Twiggy. In the '70s, the industry wanted models with Northern European features and bodies like Southern California beach gods and goddesses. In the '80s, women models were glamorous amazons and mixed-race and African-American models were sought after. Men who made it in the '80s were often swarthy, southern-European types; if they looked like handsome hit men, all the better.

Now skinny, teenage "waifs" are back. Even more in demand is an elusive and hard-to-define "interesting" quality, which can mean having a prominent, aquiline nose or an off-kilter smile. Witness the meteoric rise of superstar Kristen McMenamy, an androgynous-looking woman with no eyebrows, a choppy, childish haircut and a square-jawed face usually set in tough sneer.

"Plain pretty doesn't make it these days," says Bill Heffner, owner of Heffner Management, a large Seattle agency. "Interesting is what people want. Beautiful, but interesting."

Seattle model Marc Smith, a 36-year-old African American, understands the industry's fickle nature better than most. When he started modeling 14 years ago, he quickly discovered that although modeling in Europe is routine for young American Caucasians, there wasn't much market for African-American men. He also didn't fit the beach-boy mold. But in the '80s he shuttled between San Francisco and Chicago and found plenty of work as clients broadened their views of what models should look like. These days the sluggish economy and budget-cutting retailers and apparel manufacturers means fewer modeling jobs anywhere, and Smith holds down a couple of part-time jobs. A singing major when he attended the UW, he has performed with the Seattle Opera and has soloed with the Seattle Symphony. When he models, he is often cast as senior executive, a plum role that would have been unlikely for an African-American 20 years ago.

The industry's once unforgiving age restrictions are changing, too. Though male models who age into handsome executive types have traditionally worked into their 50s, the work for women over 30 was for decades nearly nil. Now retailers and fashion companies believe that the way to sell to aging baby-boomer women is to show them in ads. Every agency in town has a success story about women in their 40s and 50s who never modeled before who're now getting as much work as they can handle.

Slim and 5-foot-10-inch Midge Kraft, 51, had occasionally modeled for informal shows at the Washington Athletic Club. With her youngest child finally in college, she screwed up her nerve and walked into a local modeling agency on the same day it got a call from Nordstrom looking for a mature women who could model a size 10. Kraft got the job and now does runway and print work for department stores. She's also done a television spot for swim wear. She says she's having a great time and intends to keep modeling "as long as they still have work for me."

It's certainly not fair and it's sometimes not glamorous. But those bitten by the modeling bug say it's addictive. They talk about how they got the flu modeling summer shorts outdoors on a bone-chilling December day, or the hassle of having to constantly update their hair styles and books. But most say they love the work.

"I have so much fun that sometimes when I go to work I feel kind of guilty," said Karen Deichman, a 26-year-old with strapping, blond, ski instructor looks. She especially likes the thrill of the runway. "It's that moment in the lights. Your 30 seconds of fame. The crowd gets going with you. Even the shy girls get on the runway and just get going."

Smith, whose ups and downs with the modeling industry give him a more skeptical attitude than some, nevertheless says he'd love to be doing more modeling work: "It's not curing cancer. But it's great money and if you get to work with people who are at least nice, it can be quite enjoyable."

---------------------------------------------------- Kelle Kleingartner, 24

A native of Prosser, Kleingartner started modeling professionally at 18, moving to Seattle after high school to pursue her career. She later spent about a year modeling in Europe and recalls walking out of her apartment in Milan, Italy, one morning and seeing her face plastered all over a magazine kiosk because she was on the cover of a fashion magazine. She also attends community college.

Marc Smith, 36

Smith got into modeling at 22 when he met a model who suggested he give it a try. By the 1980s, he was working continuously in Chicago and San Francisco, and these days he appears in local runway shows and ads. A trained singer, he holds a couple of jobs besides modeling (including singing opera) and advises anyone interested in modeling to have another career to fall back on.

Tom Grenon, 39

Grenon, a former logger from Victoria, B.C., settled in Seattle three years ago after a nomadic modeling career that included five years in Europe and three in New York. His patrician looks make him a favorite model for companies such as Brooks Brothers, and he was recently featured in a fashion spread in Forbes. Still, he describes his preferred lifestyle as low-key and casual - he owns no suits.

Michele Estrada, 27

Estrada got the modeling bug after high school when she followed her older sister, a model, to Italy on a fashion shoot. These days she does lots of local work and some national commercials. A University of Washington student, she says she tries to be realistic about modeling: "You have to keep working at keeping your look current. It's an ebb and flow and it's freelancing to the 10th degree."

Hashmareen Daniel, 20

Daniel started modeling at 14, then quit to concentrate on school. She now has a year of community college under her belt and works most local runway shows. A quiet person, the Sri Lanka native says she loves the theatrical aspects of the business: "I love the runway because you come on stage and don't have to say a word and I can take on the role of my clothes and come out of my shell."

Karla Otis, 26

Raised in Seattle, Otis modeled here briefly before moving onto the runways of New York and Europe, where she is a top model and a favorite of such designers as Yves St. Laurent and Givenchy. She has appeared in countless high-fashion magazine layouts, including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and now shuttles between New York and Los Angeles.

Karen Deichman, 26

At 14, Deichman's parents enrolled her in a charm course because they were worried that their extremely athletic daughter was turning into a tomboy. Soon she was modeling in the Tri-Cities and Seattle. After a stint in Europe, she moved back to Seattle, where she now works runway shows and catalogs and attends art school.

Doug Petrich, 28

A former University of Washington football player, Petrich's first modeling job was in college, when he modeled for a local designer as a favor. After graduating he spent a few years living out of a suitcase modeling in Europe and Asia. He now shuttles between Los Angeles, New York and Seattle and frequently appears in GQ. Petrich hopes to eventually work behind the camera in the film industry.

Midge Kraft, 51

After her youngest child left for college, Kraft looked around for part-time work to keep busy. She walked into a modeling agency the same day a call came in for a slim, middle-aged woman, and Kraft has been working ever since: "A lot of women come up to me after shows and say, `I'll never be tall and thin but at least it's nice to see somebody in my age bracket doing the modeling.' "