Choosing the "IT" Girl...

The selection narrowed down...

The above comp cards are the narrowed down results from my casting the other day for the beauty spec story I was collaborating on. I always stress the importance of being involved in the casting because, as much as people want to make it about something else, it always come back to the fact that it IS about the girl. Yes, you're also selling something, but, there is always a special tie in of how people relate to the bill of goods being sold, and that link is the model. Sometimes, you have the model prethought out, meaning, you already have the perfect girl in mind: the 'muse' lets say but now, you have to actually find her...Sometimes, you just go off of the energy and the inspiration that the girls give off at the castings...But then sometimes, you keep getting subliminal messages and it's up to you to take the hint. Enter in the last call in for packages...

It's kind of funny how we got such a great crop this go around as shows are still going on in Europe, so the pickings usually trend to be, and tend to be sort of slim this time of year. But, as shows pay less and less, and as model boards' newest faces tend to be the ones going overseas for the benefits of fashion week exposure et.al, seasoned girls who have paid bookings are usually the ones that stick around....
Surprisingly, out of all of the years that I've been doing this, these packages contained the most amazing black girls!!! One agency after another sent over e-books with 3 and sometimes 4 black girls each!!!! Folks, please know that this is a rarity, especially at boutique agencies. I only say that it's surprising as the amount and variety of black models both within the same agency and within the modeling business in general is highly disproportionate to other races. So, for all of these black girls to all of the sudden be available, when most other times of the year they wouldn't be, we jumped at the 'subliminal'. Who would not want hop at the chance????

We narrowed down our choices to 3 girls: Sonja, Nykhor and Nana. Sonja ultimately won out as she most embodied the protagonist of our story, plus, her availability fit our shooting schedule. Funny as I didn't realize that I had worked with them both before until much later. Nykhor reminded me that we worked together at Malan Breton's show the prior season for Fashion Week and Sonja, a few years back at the Jeremy Scott show....It was good to catch up with them...Nykhor and Nana, don't fret or fear: I'm coming back for you both!!! You're both too fabulous to be forgotten!

Top row: Sonja & Nykhor. Bottom row: Nana

I'll hopefully have a chance to post some outtakes and behind the scenes footage of what we did with Sonja within the next few days...Stay tuned, as I promise you, it's going to be cool...