About Me

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Born in Toronto, I began dance training at an early age starting with ballet which eventually progressed into a main focus of jazz. Starting at the age of six I began my constant flip flopping of living in England and Canada. When in Toronto I attended the Interplay Dance School. In England I attended classes at Bodywork Studios. After alternating between living in England and Toronto with my family, I graduated from the Bethany Hills School near Peterborough, Ontario, to attend George Brown Dance with their foundation program. After George Brown I flew back to England for the third time in my life to attend the Cambridge Performing Arts College for three years, my major being dance, but discovered my true calling was the fashion industry. I have worked as a freelance model for three years and a stylist for just a year, also freelance. I put a lot of what I learned from my years of performing arts study into my modeling and into my styling, on occasion have actually had to model as a ballerina or style for dancers. I have worked with many prestigious people in the fashion industry already.

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Log Six- Delayed Post of Task 2d Inquiry Task

 What in your daily practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about? Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic? I find that in my daily practices in the modelings industry which makes me really enthusiastic to find out more about this aspect of my life is the uncertainty of getting jobs. This is such a cut throat industry and sometimes you never know why you initially did not end up getting a certain job. The competitiveness and constant search for perfection is what drives me to find out more on how to succeed in this world in a healthy way. I want to delve into the business side of the modeling industry and almost break the rules, change how people really perceive beauty and almost prove something. One person who has been brought to my attention is Ben Barry. Ben Barry is a graduate of Cambridge University from Judge Business School with a Masters in Innovation and Strategy. He owns his own modeling agency here in Toronto with "unconventional" models. Every size, age, ethnicity, etc and is changing the way Toronto sees fashion models. Several of his models (some being 60 years old and over) walked in several shows at the last Toronto Fashion Week. It is so hard to break into the fashion world especially in this city as model but Ben Berry seems to have the upper hand. I would love to learn more about how he has achieved the success he has so far gained. He is a real inspiration to not just models but women every where.  http://benbarry.com/

What gets you angry or makes you sad?  Who do you admire who shares your feelings or has found away to work around the sadness or anger? What makes me angry and/or sad is also again the uncertainty. Like I said before, sometimes you never know why certain photographers or designers won't ever work with you or why you didn't get a certain call back. You aren't given feedback so readily in the business. It's not the rejection that hurts, it's the lack of information which makes it so frustrating, can play on your self esteem and make you draw your own conclusions. One model from Canada, Jessica Stam, said something that really brought light to this situation and I always try to think about whenever I am upset. She said,  "With modelling, you are judged on your looks. It’s easy to take that personally, but you have to realise that it’s only your appearance that’s being judged, not you as a whole. If you didn’t, you’d be destroyed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Stam

What do you love about what you do? Who do you admire who also seems to love this or is an example of what you love? What I love about the modeling is several things. A lot of people see this as just a way of getting quick and easy money by looking pretty in front of a camera. It is not! Especially the fashion side, it is hardly lucrative. You really have to love this and I do, to me it is another way of expressing art and raw emotion. When I am in front of that camera I take on a completely different form and personality. I realise emotions I never felt before or couldn't express for the audience to admire and make their own interpretations. Here's an example from my spread in http://votivemag.com/.
A great example of this is an old high school classmate of mine, Kelleth Cuthbert, who also models and I have been watching her career inventively.  She is very successful and every time she shoots her personality is completely different from what she is really like in person and she seems to do it so effortlessly. She really inspires me with her modeling. Here's an example.

 What do you feel you don’t understand?  Who do you admire who does seem to 
understand it or who has found a way of making not understanding it interesting or 
beautiful, or has asked the same questions as you? What I don't understand is again why I don't get certain jobs or castings, what really is "beauty" and why people refuse to give feedback. I haven't come across anyone in particular that I admire who has asked the same question. Nearly every model I have encountered has asked this. It's just unfortunately one of those aspects of this business you need to deal with, move on and keep going till the next job and/or casting. Sometimes you can't learn from your mistakes because no one will tell you what they are or there were none, they just had their own issues.



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1 comment:

  1. Paula Nottingham19 February 2012 at 07:01

    Victoria, these starting points are very good to reference in this module - I think that there are many that you could develop into a professional inquiry. In discussions with others it is clear that the inquiry includes both 'philosophy' - those that are about thinking ideas and well as 'practical' elements - those that might be directly job-related.

    You seem to have a firm grasp of the practical implications of modelling and are beginning to think about the philosophical. For example, in your first example of achieving success in using differing strategies to address the business side of modelling? You mention some ideas... can these ideas in turn be related to wider concepts of business? or identifying the concept of beauty in each generation in order to lead fashion? What do you think? You mention the training ground for Ben Barry's ideas - can you think of other influences that successful practitioners have used? How have other models or people who work in the fashiop industry used the ideas of their generations? What are the ideas of this, your generation? in Canada? Your knowledge as an insider-research will be interesting to find out about.

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