What a model does at the castings? She(he) goes in and register at the reception if there’s one, or put a name on the waiting list, or just line up. When a model goes in to see the client (photographer,stylist) she gives her book (portfolio) and answers a few simple questions. The clients look through the pictures and can ask where and when a certain photo was taken, ask the model where she’s from and how old is she, where she’s based and for how many years has been modeling. They also might ask whether she speaks local language (italian, french, etc.) and if she doesn’t then, not often but possible, they might bitch about her body, attitude, face while smiling at her. Clients are notorious for calling the girls elephants and stupid when they don’t understand. If the clients like the girl at the casting, they will take a few pictures of her and maybe ask her to try some of the clothes for the shooting to see how it fits and how good is her posing. If it’s a casting for a show, they will ask her to do the runway walk, change the clothes, do the same.

There are few appointments a day, between two and six normally. It’s hard to make plans sometimes as castings may add up during the day and from having originally scheduled two, I often end up doing four or five. But a great, really really great thing, about castings and modeling in general is that outside of busy seasons there’s really not that many appointments and so we do get a lot of free time! And sometimes even a day or two off during the working week. But that is balanced by the work on weekends which happens just as often.

I love this kind of life as it keeps the spontaneity present and I get to catch those precious moments where I can just hang out for a couple of hours during my window in between the castings and enjoy the beautiful weather. Or call up my model friends, and if someone is off too, go for a coffee and walk around the city. What’s even more awesome is that almost always I run into someone I know at the casting and it’s nice to do some catching up while waiting in line or go for a bite after. Castings are mostly fun for me as I love to meet new people. And what a world of talented and original people is that of Fashion!

In the MTR train, Hong Kong, on the way to castings taking a picture of my russian model friend who was very hangover

The waiting line for DKNY show casting in Hong Kong