Hindustan Times
Online Glamour
I am somewhat addicted to facebook. Can’t say the same about twitter though. Facebook for me is a good way to kind of relax, and if I find the right ones, make some new friends as well.
But, of late, I have also realized that it can be used as a means to further one’s career. Whenever fashion week dates are announced, I am inundated with requests from models, both males and females, from both India and abroad, to be part of the events. Same is the case with fashion designers as well. Young ones very often come online and ask for my advice on various matters and whenever I can, I try and help them out through the chat window.
The other day I saw a young model’s (or rather young aspirant) portfolio snaps uploaded on her home page… and in my inbox a message: “hey, I am so and so, will you have a look at my photos and see whether you could help me in some way?”
I was told my some of the fashion designers that they too have had similar experiences while getting themselves connected to this social networking site. Whenever I see that the girl/boy has some potential, I always pass their candidature over to the people concerned as I feel that we really could do with some real models.
Talking about our modeling industry, I have often talked about our tendency to use ‘imported’ models on Indian runways. That time I felt that there was no need to bring them in here as I felt that Indian models are good enough to carry off Indian designer creations. But that was a few years ago…
Then, at each show during fashion weeks, I have realized that some of our fashion models are so complacent that they never really took care of themselves and that resulted in them looking somewhat ill-fitted on the fashion runway – bad body structures and skin. Quickly, I retracted my old statement that there was really no need to have foreign models on our runways.
At the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai recently, after a show, my friend Saumil Patel who runs Inega Models introduced me to a Brazilian girl. She was a flawless beauty. In fact, I never have seen such a beautiful girl in person in the modeling industry. We started chatting and she told me her name was Giselle and that on the next day she was going to Brazil for a month.
I kept thinking that I have seen her somewhere… I told her the same and she just smiled without saying anything. Later, I told Saumil that Giselle is one of the very few that I had come across whom I think has immense potential. Saumil then told me that it was the same girl who acted in Love Aaj Kaal and that she had already signed up for another film in the lead role.
We need several such Giselles on our fashion runway. In a way, fashion weeks, by chance, have brought in some new faces – both Indian and foreign — to our runways. I think it proved to be a blessing in disguise when some of the senior models said no discounts on their fees for fashion weeks. Most of them were not fit anyway to be on the runway. This resulted in the introduction of young and fit models who were willing to work for much less at fashion weeks.
If getting the right ones at the selection level has been a problem (often at the jury level only a few good ones turn up), I think social networking sites may well prove to be a welcome respite when it comes to finding the right one for the right showing!
(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)
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