How To Build A Successful Modeling Career?

How To Build A Successful Modeling Career?
By Conor Kennedy for Models Observer
August 2007

Conor Kennedy, owner of Muse Model Management in New York, talks about building a successful modeling career and outlines the challenges models and agents face.

An enormous part of launching a new model involves how to package her. This is a moment that requires lots of scrutiny. A manager needs to be a tough critic and anticipate the requirements and demands of most demanding client.

Is she in the right physical shape? Does she need to lose or gain weight in order to fit the clothes? Does she need a makeover for hair, eyebrows, or personal style.

A brand new model has the toughest job of the industry. She has to inspire photographers, designers and stylists. She doesn’t yet have a body of work; no campaigns or even editorial to show her range. She has yet to build relationships or establish recurring clients. This is a critical point for a great manager to help start her career. She needs to learn the basics of posing, as well as the skill of networking and sell yourself. A young model in effect goes on tens of what we would call job interviews every day. The ratio of jobs to rejection is overwhelming. The top agencies work with a few hand picked test photographers who have the skills to work with a new model and create inspiring as well as marketable images of her.

Managing a top model is often more about saying “no” than saying yes. Clients are calling for work constantly. It’s a manager’s job to map out a framework for a healthy, well-balanced modeling career. This phase requires extensive knowledge regarding the relationships between clients.

How do you choose between two options on the same day when both are for a prestigious magazine like Vogue Italia? How do you balance both the editorial (magazine) and commercial (catalog) aspects of a models career. A majority of the world’s high fashion models are based in New York and so her relationships with her foreign agencies (and clients) must be overseen. Is her London agency only calling in $ options and not successfully seeking editorial? Is Milan pushing to confirm an advertising client that will damage her image? Is her German agency underselling her?

At a high level a top model CAN work every day, but she shouldn’t. At this stage, there are very few actual go-sees and the portfolio is less and less important. She should be working with the right level of photographers, stylists and art directors. She needs to maintain her visibility and image and keep herself modern. A model’s career should be constantly evaluated to make sure is balanced. Is the book moving too commercial or too edgy? If she’s a swimwear model-is she doing editorials that also show she can do fashion? If she’s a great runway model, are people also shooting her for beauty? Does she have any covers that will help pave the way for a cosmetics contract?

There is an over abundance of talent to the point than many models cycle in and out of fashion faster than ever before. A simple glance at style.com from three years ago will invite more than a few “What ever happened to?” This increases the pressure on the agencies and models to push for as much work as quickly as possible. Where as in the past one might have turned down advertising for fear of over exposure, in this era it’s not uncommon to see the model of the moment in five campaigns. It doesn’t leave much work for the rest of the models, but in addition to the considerable amount of money, it creates the possibility that she will rise above the fray and reach the level of a Giselle or Karolina Kurkova.

Conde Nast Pays Models a Pittance In Trade for Prestige - Fashionologie

Conde Nast Pays Models a Pittance In Trade for Prestige
Fashionologie.com
Fri, 03/20/09 — 05:30:37 PM

It's no secret that modeling is hardly peaches and cream, but here's an eye-opener for you. Managing editor of Models.com Betty Sze asserts that when it comes to editorial work, Conde Nast (which means Vogue, Teen Vogue and the like) "pays $150 a day if you are a new model, after 1 year it goes up to $250. That means if you are Gisele [Bundchen] and work for American Vogue 2 days in a row, you would make $500. Many editorials pay nothing."

As she goes on to explain, this practice has nothing to do with the recession. "I was an agent for 10 years and I still talk to all the agents. In fact I just called one of them up to see if the rates had changed a lot. When I was an agent, 10 years ago, the new girls got $135 a day, now they get $150 per day . . . so it's increased slightly."

So why would anyone work an entire day for that rate? "Actually Conde Nast doesn't have to pay anything, I don't even know why they do. Girls don't do editorial for money! Getting editorials and covers of French Vogue for example, drives up your rate for everything else and gets you noticed by the huge money clients like Lancome and Estee Lauder. Simple. Editorials and covers are the path towards the real money."

Source: Fashionologie

Designer Profile: Derek Lam in US Elle, March 2009

NYTimes: Prominent Magazines Lose Weight, Shedding Hearly Half Their Ads

Prominent Magazines Lose Weight, Shedding Nearly Half Their Ads

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

January 5, 2009

AT a glance, the covers of Allure magazine from January 2008 and January 2009 do not look very different from each other. The 2008 issue trumpeted headlines like “Mega Makeover Issue” and “Insanely Flawless Skin,” and 2009 has “Big Makeover Issue” and “Powerful Skin Care.”

Inside the magazine it was a different story: the January 2008 issue had almost 70 pages of ads, while the January 2009 issue had 41, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, a decline of 41 percent.

It was an ugly January not just for Allure, but also for Condé Nast magazines in general.

January issues tend to be thin even in good years, and most magazines posted a decline in ad pages. But the average decline across all monthly magazines was only 17 percent, and most Condé Nast magazines fared much worse, according to analysis of Media Industry Newsletter data.

Wired, which is usually thick with consumer electronics ads, was the worst hit, down 47 percent from a year ago to 43.6 ad pages. Architectural Digest fell 46 percent, to 63.2, from 116.8. Vogue and Lucky were both down about 44 percent.

Of the 10 monthlies with the worst declines in January, four were Condé Nast magazines: Wired, Architectural Digest, Vogue and Lucky. It was the only publisher with more than one title in the top 10. The other hardest-hit magazines were Boating, published by Hachette Filipacchi Media; Power & Motoryacht, published by Source Interlink Media; Everyday Food, published by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; Salt Water Sportsman, published by Bonnier Corporation; Texas Monthly, published by Emmis Communications; and Boys’ Life, published by the Boy Scouts of America.

Only two Condé Nast magazines did better than average: Glamour, which was down 15 percent, and Vanity Fair, down 5.9 percent. (W Magazine was down just 2.4 percent, but it is published by Fairchild Publications, a division of Condé Nast.) Condé Nast executives were unavailable to comment late last week because they were on vacation, their representatives said.

Condé Nast magazines casting wider nets for ads seemed to fare better. Allure and Glamour are both aimed at young women, for instance, but Allure carries mostly beauty and fashion ads, and Glamour carries those categories in addition to health, pharmaceuticals and food. And while Vogue features women’s fashion ads and GQ carries men’s fashion ads, Vanity Fair has both alongside ads for TV shows, cars and hotels.

Roberta Garfinkle, the senior vice president and director for print at TargetCast TCM, which buys and plans advertising placements for clients like Expedia and Sun-Maid Growers, said ads for Condé Nast’s January magazines must be submitted by October or November, which hurt the company this year, as there was so much financial uncertainty in play.

“January books with very early closes have always had a problem,” she said, “made worse this year by the fact that clients are slower to approve their budgets and that perhaps there are clients that are cutting back.”

While January issues are rarely bulging with ads, December issues are, as marketers try to reach holiday shoppers. But the Condé Nast magazines that published combined December-January issues, including Cookie and Condé Nast Portfolio, did not do well either. Cookie plummeted 45 percent to 93.2 pages, Portfolio fell 35 percent to 72 pages, Domino was down 26 percent to 60.9 pages, and Teen Vogue declined 29 percent to 105.4 pages.

“Some of the advertising they carry in luxury goods, certainly in the automotive arena, without being able to look at the numbers broken out by category, I think that’s why they’re hard hit. The fashion pages are down,” Ms. Garfinkle said. “Some clients cutting back on their budgets makes it that much worse.”

Unlike other publishers, Condé Nast is known for being inflexible on ad prices.

“The problem now is that some advertising agencies have come to realize that with the unnegotiability of Condé Nast’s titles, and the broader demographic group that are associated with the more mid- and downscale brands, you don’t have to buy Condé Nast,” said Steve Greenberger, chief executive of the advertising firm S. R. Greenberger & Associates. “You can buy Women’s Day, you can buy Parents. You can buy around it.”

But Jack Hanrahan, the former director of print at the agency OMD who is now publisher of the newsletter CircMatters, said that Condé Nast had a smart long-term strategy.

“In a negotiation environment, you’d be better off taking the hit now with regard to paging, but preserving your well-established, in their case long-term, pricing position of being equitable across advertisers and not really engaging in heavy discounting and widespread negotiations just to get a small schedule,” he said, using the industry term for an advertiser’s annual commitment to a magazine. “And you can do that when, one, you’re not a public company, and two, you have these larger bases of ad pages.”

Condé Nast is a private company, and does not report quarterly revenue, unlike Time Inc., Hachette Filipacchi Media and American Express Publishing, which are all part of public companies. Mr. Hanrahan said other publishers regularly offer heavy discounts to advertisers.

Condé Nast’s is “a fair approach to pricing and not this ‘I’ll do anything to get a schedule,’ which others do — and, I think, have paid for it,” Mr. Hanrahan said.

Q&A: Gwen Loo

Q+A: Gwen Loo
Fri, 19/09/08 - 12:41PM
By: Stacey Chia @ Tongue in Chic

It’s not everyday that you get to acknowledge a high-flying fashion model as your friend, but that’s what Gwen Loo is to me.

For two weeks in December 2005, Gwen and I developed a friendship, one based on being two of the few Asian models amongst a sea of European girls. Since then Gwen’s career has sky rocketed. Gwen, who hails from Penang, is anything but a typical Asian model. Sure, she possess the industry’s favoured Oriental eyes and porcelain skin, but distinguishes herself from the rest with her jet-black short crop.

“I used to think that a model has to have long hair because it’s more versatile and easier to style, but I decided to break the stereotype that Asian models should have long black hair with bangs and show that short hair works on me too,” she explains. According to Gwen, making the decision to model full-time was not an easy one as there was no guarantee that venturing abroad to model would reap results, given that the modeling industry is always fluctuating.

“The tingling desire towards modeling grew as I started to taste the fashion and modeling world,” she confides.

“In the end I decided to leave my comfort zone and pursue modeling full-time as modeling part-time is too stressful and I really wanted to concentrate on this exciting career,” Gwen adds. But it was a decision well made. Now based in New York, she has been photographed for Bazaar Espanol, Deutsch Magazine, Diva (Austria), Wound (UK), D Magazine, French Biba, French Glamour, Vogue Taiwan, Elle Accessories, and Cosmo Girl; just to name a few.

In addition, she secured campaigns with Macy's West, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and GO! Target.

So how did the former quantity surveyor become Asia’s next top model? TiC asks Gwen Loo the specifics on getting the glamourous life many girls can only dream of.

Q: How did you get to where you are today?
A: I started modeling in the middle of 2005 and at the end of the year I won Elite Model Look Malaysia. After winning the competition, I started modeling full swing, I secured a contract with Ave Management in early 2006 and during my first season in the Singapore Fashion Festival, the Director of Elite New York scouted me.

Q: What is it like living in an apartment with so many other models? Living with other models is just like living with other human beings.
A: They are my companions when I’m away from home and sometimes I take care of them when they are in need.

Q: What’s a typical year for you?
A: On average, I spend about seven months in New York City, three months traveling in Europe and Asia and two months back home. I was back in Malaysia in June for a beauty campaign and a print job for P&Co (by Padini group).

Q: And a day in New York? It’s hectic!
A: Castings start in the morning and go on till evening. I spend most of the day underground connecting trains or navigating my way through New York in search for the place I have to be at. At night, I usually stay in front of my laptop and chat with my friends online and reply emails.

Q: Which fashion capital do you enjoy most?
A: I love Paris. It’s such a beautiful and calm city. However, there is not as much work for me in Paris compared to NYC.

Q: After so much talk of Asian models breaking into the scene, are they really more opportunities for Asian models these days?
A: Yes and no. The demand for Asian models is greater in US, but not so much in Europe. I hope Asian faces will get more exposure in the Western countries.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: The thing about me is that I do not plan. I just follow my heart and do what I love.

Source: Tongue in Chic

WSJ: Marketing Model

Marketing Model: For Some Agencies It's in the Cards

by Elva Ramirez, Wall Street Journal
September 3, 2008

Elaborate fashion show packages can cost thousands of dollars; part marketing, part ephemera.

About three weeks before fashion week starts, the offices of casting directors, stylists and designers are flooded with show packages containing cards of models that agencies want to promote for the bi- annual runway shows. Model cards are meant to provide basic stats on available models for hire: A typical card features photos of a model, his or her measurements and contact information.

In the last few years, the show package has evolved from a simple informational tool to an industry art form. Competition for fashion week bookings has ratcheted up such that the packages, which were once no different from the basic set of cards mailed throughout the year by agencies, have become elaborate, twice-yearly productions, that can cost modeling agencies thousands of dollars. Subtle details such as custom fonts, hand-stamped wax seals and bespoke boxes are crafted into meticulous displays of aesthetic.

For September's show season, Elite Models spent $40,000 on 1,000 21- card packages, which were inspired by a vintage 1970s surf poster. Ford Models's package features a stack of floral-collaged cards with custom-made ribbon font, sitting atop dehydrated moss. Only 250 copies will be printed; each will be hand-addressed and hand-delivered. (Ford declined to reveal its show-package budget.) Women Models invested around $80,000 for 500 silk-covered binders with fold-out cards. By contrast, Elite estimated that ten years ago, it spent $500 for its show packages.

"If you don't make that really strong impression, you really could be setting the girl up to have a bad season," says graphic designer and former modeling agent Mac Folkes, who designed Elite's packages last year.

Show packages can take between two to six months to complete. Yet their lifespan lasts only a few weeks; after the fashion weeks in New York and Europe are over, they are often thrown away. "In many ways, we are crafting the careers of talent in the same way that designers are crafting their looks," Ford CEO John Caplan says.

Before the era of 1990s supermodels such as Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista, models primarily did either runway work or editorial work. But starting around 2000, models began to be marketed aggressively for both venues. This push propelled agencies to start getting creative to grab the attention of casting directors.

The show package "promotes the image of the agency as a whole," says Neil Hamil, director of Elite North America. "We're really marketing for the shows: something new and different each time. It's always about who's new, who's fresh. This is another reason why this becomes necessary."

Last year, Mr. Hamil hired Mr. Folkes to create Elite's Spring 2008 package. The theme, A Gathering of Swans, was based on a phrase by Truman Capote. Elite commissioned the creation of short poems for each its 24 models to be displayed on their cards. "Double-barreled and in full bloom, she lashes out against a nasty and somewhat demeaning minimalism enforced over the past decade," read the ode to model Coco Rocha.

Paul Rowland, president of Supreme Models, has sought to turn his productions into collectibles. Recognizing that the majority of show packages are thrown out as soon as runway shows are over, Mr. Rowland published a bound coffee table book as his show package this season. The book intersperses drawings and images from young artists with pictures of Supreme models shot in nature. (A loose set of model cards is also included so casting agents don't have to rip the book apart.) "Honestly, this is more of a promotion to give image to my agency," Mr. Rowland says.

Supreme's show package budget this year was $50,000. "For me, it's worth it," Mr. Rowland says. "In fashion, image is everything." In addition to the 400 books and model cards that he will send out, Mr. Rowland published an extra 100 copies, which he's hoping to sell to consumers.

Rocket Garage, which represents models and musicians, has taken it a step further this season and has produced a short film as its show package. Shot over three days on the streets of New York, the video aims to provide a glimpse of personality that the cards can't provide. It was uploaded to Rocket Garage's Web site the week before fashion week kicked off. "Fashion is no longer about just the printed page," says managing partner Lance LaBreche. "It's becoming more than that." (See the Rocket Garage movie.)

But some packages are so creative that they lose their functionality. Agencies have been criticized for sending out cards with models' backs to the camera or that have their hair obscuring their faces. Casting directors also often complain of cards being unwieldy or unreadable. Agencies "forget the purpose of the show package, which is for casting directors to see what these girls look like," says casting director Jennifer Starr. "It frustrates me that this is how they use this."

TIME Magazine Style & Design Fall 2008: Color Lines on the Catwalk

Color Lines on the Catwalk
By LING WOO LIU / HONG KONG

In many ways, this year's competition for Ford Supermodel of the World was like its predecessors. Gorgeous models from around the world gathered in New York City in January for the modeling industry's biggest event. For one week, contestants were mascaraed, moussed and molded into fearless divas on the runway. But this year's winner, 20-year-old Hyoni from South Korea, underlined a change in an industry that has been notoriously slow to embrace diversity. Hyoni, whose real name is Kang Seung-hyun, is the first Asian winner in the 27-year history of the competition. Since her victory, which earned her a $250,000 contract with Ford Models, Kang has walked in nearly 20 shows and shot ads for Benetton and Lacoste. "Fashion is changing," she says. "Many designers know Asian girls can be high-fashion models too."

A few years ago, Kang's chances of winning would have been slim. The clubby world of international fashion rarely called on Asian models, unless there was a geisha theme to a collection. From Twiggy to Claudia Schiffer to Gisele Bündchen, the supermodel archetype has always been skinny, white and blonde. But today, Asian models are starting to change the world's definition of beauty. Last December, part-time model Zhang Zilin beat out 105 other women to become the first Chinese contender to win the Miss World crown since the pageant began in 1951. Rising stars such as Du Juan from China, Korean-American Hye Park and Eugenia Mandzhieva, a Russian of Asian descent, are breaking into the industry, walking runway shows for big names like Dior and Oscar de la Renta, and landing advertising campaigns with Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana and Moschino.

Asian models have appeared before, but the numbers never reached a critical mass. The ones who shot to fame in the 1980s and '90s, including Filipina Anna Bayle, Korean-African-American Kimora Lee Simmons, Eurasian Devon Aoki and Siberian Irina Pantaeva, were of mixed-race heritage or had extreme features that the industry embraced as exotic. "The fashion world was not ready," says Pantaeva, who pounded the pavement in Paris for two years before being discovered by Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel.

But the industry is ready now. No longer is it just well-heeled Europeans and Americans who are scooping up $800 handbags and $2,000 jackets. Japan and China, the world's second and fourth largest economies, have become forces that luxury brands can no longer afford to ignore. Spending on luxury goods in China is expected to grow 12% a year and total $44 billion in 2016, according to figures from MasterCard. By 2015, China will make up 29% of the global luxury market, putting it on track to overtake Japan as the world's biggest luxury market, according to research from Goldman Sachs. At top fashion houses like LVMH, Asia already contributes a third of total revenue. Luxury-goods purveyors want to cater to Asian tastes on the runway, and more and more have started to use Asian faces to do so.

The face leading the Asian wave is Du, a 21-year-old ballerina from Shanghai. One year after winning Model of the Year at the China Fashion Awards in 2004, Du became the first Asian to grace the cover of French Vogue. Now the Yao Ming of fashion walks an average of 50 runway shows a season and has appeared in advertising campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint Laurent. "When Du Juan came out, people sat up and took notice," says Joanne Ooi, creative director of Chinese luxury brand Shanghai Tang and one of the first to recognize Du's potential. "She's a very important de facto ambassador of China."

Du never dreamed of being a model, much less one of the first Asian supermodels. For 10 years, she studied at the Shanghai Dancing School, an élite institution known for producing world-renowned talent like Yuan Yuan Tan, principal ballerina at the San Francisco Ballet. But when Du reached 5 ft. 10 in. (1.78 m), she began to tower over her male partners, and it became unlikely that she would ever succeed as a professional ballerina. Though many Chinese, including her own mother, didn't consider Du particularly beautiful, her parents and teachers suggested she try modeling because she was so tall. She started out with odd jobs for a Hong Kong fashion event in Shanghai, the Shanghai Auto Show and other trade shows that took her to France and Brazil to model traditional Chinese costumes. Most of those irregular gigs paid no more than $250, which meant the 17-year-old had barely enough money to cover her rent and basic living expenses. Fast-forward five years, and the former car-show model is now reeling in $5,000 to $10,000 per runway show, $30,000 to $50,000 a day for catalog work and even more astronomical rates for advertising campaigns.

The success of Asian models like Du is part of a larger movement within the fashion industry to reflect more diversity on runways and in ads. The trend "has reached a critical point," says Bethann Hardison, a black former model who has lobbied to build awareness of the dearth of minorities on runways. The world of high fashion has long been rife with institutionalized stereotyping and racism, based on the increasingly wrong-headed notion that everyone in the world wants to look like Kate Moss. Though black models started to make inroads three decades ago, only a handful of black models today, such as Chanel Iman, Jourdan Dunn and Noemi Lenoir, are regulars on runways. The fashion industry has often cycled through ethnicities, from black models in the 1970s to Brazilian models in the 1990s to Russian and East European models in the past decade. White faces, however, have always been in vogue—not surprising, given that most of the decision makers in the industry are white.

Changing Ways
Some designers pin the responsibility for racial homogeneity on their casting directors, who are responsible for hiring models. They also blame modeling agencies for not sending more ethnic models to casting calls. But agencies are reluctant to recruit and cultivate ethnic models if there's no demand for them.

Part of the problem comes from Asia, where luxury has traditionally been associated with Western brands and faces. In Singapore, fashion-and-beauty magazines for women featured Western models in 73% of advertisements, according to a 2004 study published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. Similar magazines in Taiwan showed Western models in 50% of ads. But people in the industry say things are changing. Since its launch two years ago, Vogue China has featured a balance of Chinese and Western models on its covers. "It's not an issue to think of Western or Chinese models," says Vogue China's editorial director, Angelica Cheung. "Our readers just want somebody who makes a fashion statement."

Now that so many Asian women have the funds to make that statement, they're starting to love the way they look. In 2006, Japanese cosmetic giant Shiseido worried as its hair-care line began falling behind its competitors, and so it took a radical marketing turn. Despite its long history of using Caucasian and Eurasian models, Shiseido executives launched a new advertising campaign featuring top Japanese actresses and models with the slogan "Japanese women are beautiful." The aggressive strategy, complete with an original pop song, helped Shiseido's Tsubaki shampoo move into first place; it racked up $155 million in sales in Japan in its first year.

Other companies are taking similar steps. Shanghai Tang, which sells high-end clothing and accessories based on traditional Chinese culture, has used a balance of Asian and Caucasian models since it was founded in Hong Kong in 1994. But creative director Ooi has decided that henceforth the company should use predominantly Asian models. "Asian women's confidence has risen astronomically in the last 10 years," she says. "We're looking at a huge cultural shift."

That shift has led some Asians to fight back—with words and even laws—against the domination of Western beauty in Asia. In October 2007, the cover of Vogue India's inaugural issue featured Australian model Gemma Ward flanked by two Bollywood actresses. The use of a Caucasian model prompted some angry readers to vent their frustrations on Web forums. "The message this cover puts across to readers is quite aristocratic, fair-skinned empowerment," wrote a reader.

Malaysia's government even wants to legislate against what it sees as advertising's subliminal cultural imperialism. In February 2007, former Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin announced a plan to reduce the number of "pan-Asian" or Eurasian faces on television and billboards. The country's two state-run television stations already restrict the number of mixed-race models in commercials. "We have beautiful Chinese, beautiful Malays and Indians. Why not use them?" he said at a press conference. "Why must we use someone who has European features to persuade our people to buy a product?"

Today the shots are increasingly being called by Asians, including top designers Vivienne Tam, Anna Sui, Derek Lam and Phillip Lim. "In the past, when I tried to use Asian models, people thought I was crazy," says Tam, who launched her label in New York City in 1994. Her casting directors were concerned about the market, "but the perception is changing now," she says.

One label that has never shied away from diverse casting is Baby Phat. In February, at its show during New York Fashion Week, more than half of Baby Phat's models were black or Asian. Says company president Kimora Lee Simmons, the Korean-African-American former model: "People say, 'We couldn't find any [ethnic models]. Nonsense. If you're not interested in doing it, then sure, it won't happen."

Powerful modeling agencies are starting to get it. IMG Models, which handles such runway stars as Du, Naomi Campbell, Alek Wek from Sudan, Ujjwala Raut from India and Sonny Zhou from China, readily admits the industry's shortcomings. "It's more challenging to sustain a career when it comes to ethnic models," says IMG senior vice president Ivan Bart. "But we're willing to do it because we should represent women who have a global appeal in various markets." IMG opened an Asia-Pacific office in Hong Kong in 2005 and has since launched fashion weeks in Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Homegrown modeling agencies in China are blooming as well. In 2004, Singaporean Web designer Yen Cho quit his job and moved to Shanghai to launch 180 Models, an agency that now represents more than 200 Chinese models. "This industry is in a crazy stage," Cho says. "It's a growing pie, so everyone has a chance." Cho estimates that there are 20 to 30 other agencies in Shanghai alone, most of which opened within the past five years. Says Liu Jianfeng, an instructor in Donghua University's fashion-performance department in Shanghai: "It's just a start. We'll develop more models like Du Juan. It's like Chairman Mao's saying, 'A tiny spark can set the steppes ablaze.'" It's unlikely that Mao Zedong had fashion in mind when he uttered those words, but Liu makes a point: the biggest market for Asian models is open now, and there's no turning back.

During New York Fashion Week, Du spent her third Chinese New Year away from her family. The first two years were lonely celebrations, but this time was different. "There were lots of Chinese models this year, so we all ate dinner together," she says. With the door to China's luxury market swung wide open, it looks as if Du will have plenty of company in the years to come.

Source: TIME Magazine Style & Design Fall 2008