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In addition to editors and stylists, models have become street style stars in their own rights. Yet despite their glossy exteriors, many are taking a beating during the show season. One former runway model who had walked NYFW shows for four years spoke anonymously to Cosmo on Friday, running down a list of industry grievances that are by turn predictable and hair-curling.
The pain, apparently, does not begin with Fashion Week itself—instead, it starts weeks before during fittings and casting appointments, where casting directors freely criticize models' bodies for any apparent evidence of weight gain. During Fashion Week itself, the pain is more physical than emotional, with skin maladies due to the coats of makeup and multiple blisters from improperly-sized heels. After the jump, we've excerpted four frightful bits from her tale.
Fashion Week fittings are worse than Fashion Week itself: "You're expected to go all over the city to fittings and castings. There's no time to eat lunch. And you're so stressed out that you're not even hungry anyway. Yet, a designer will see an outfit on you once, wait until you leave the casting, and then call your agent and ask why you've gained weight."
Makeup artists can ruin your skin: "My skin is sensitive and I'd breakout almost immediately after they'd apply foundation. It actually got so bad that I started carrying around my Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua Foundation to each show, asking the makeup artists to use that instead, or else my face would start to burn and I'd get an inflamed rash all over. And — ready for this? — makeup artists set the makeup with hairspray (yes, they spray hairspray in your face), which didn't help matters!"
And your hair: "I wouldn't know the hairstylist and he or she didn't care how my hair looked after eight days of torture. They'd put gel in it and then brush it out, mess it up and have to redo the whole thing all over again, hairspray the shit out of it, pull on it every which way, until it was approved by the top hairstylist on the show. I'd look down and see all of my hair on the floor—in clumps."
Oh, and your feet get beaten up, too: "And if I didn't have blisters from running around to the castings, I'd get them from wearing shoes that didn't fit. Designers only order a certain number of each size shoe and whoever gets to the casting first, gets the right shoe size. The others just have to make the pairs that are left fit."
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