College and Modelling: Student Models Walk the RunWay

Models.edu : College students sashay down runways and work it for the cameras between classes. It’s a tough life, being beautiful.
   
It’s inevitable. Whenever 19-year-old Samantha Olander goes out, she can expect stares, double takes and the question, “Are you a model?”

The embarrassed blonde-haired, blue-eyed junior at Baldwin-Wallace College usually answers, “sort of.” While many college students entertain the notion or delusion that they could be models, Olander is an exception: she balances the difficult life of being both a pre-med student and a professional model for a company in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.

But it’s not easy. Olander, a 6-foot, 1-inch runway model, says a fashion show is a major time commitment. Between travel time, hair and makeup styling, fittings, breaks, rehearsal and the actual show, almost eight hours have passed. Though she says “my work is my fun,” she knows she cannot afford to model full-time — school is her job.

“Being a model is being available,” Olander said. “It’s hard for an agency to book me when I put classes before them. Once you refuse jobs [so] much, they’re not going to call you anymore.”

Even though modeling assignments in smaller markets like Cleveland can pay as much as $300 a show, entry into the industry can be expensive. A portfolio of professional pictures can cost hundreds of dollars; and they must be updated frequently. “I didn’t have the money to put into it to get what I wanted out of it,” said Olander, who finances her own education with another part-time job.

She didn’t have the time either.

“Most girls in college full-time can’t really model because it’s a day job,” said Kristi McOrmack, a spokeswoman in the marketing division of Wilhelmina Models, Inc. But college students who model “do exist,” McOrmack said. They just attend school at night, defer college for a few months, or work during holiday breaks and the summer. “The downside is that they won’t be able to work as much,” McOrmack said.

Jose Ortiz, director of new faces at Boss Models in New York City, agrees.

“It’s a major disciplinary situation but it’s possible,” Ortiz said. Models go to class very early in the morning or at night so they can make their day appointments, he said.

“It didn’t hurt Cindy Crawford,” he said. “If you have something, you have it. Agencies will wait.” Crawford, a high school valedictorian, attended Northwestern University but never graduated.

Olander realizes that modeling is a risky and short-lived business. She also has personal reasons for wanting her college degree. “Neither of my parents graduated from a four-year college,” said Olander, who still plans to attend medical school. “I’m a smart person and I should take advantage of that. Graduating from college would be a great accomplishment.” Most modeling agencies encourage model hopefuls to finish college. “The modeling business is so highly competitive,” said Karen Fields, the director of a modelling agency. “I suggest they get a degree.”

“Pretty faces are a dime a dozen,” McCormack said, whose agency receives hundreds of pictures from aspiring models every day. “We’re firm believers in education — education comes first,” Fields said. “If you’re destined to be a career model, you have to be dedicated and do the whole thing,” even if that means putting school on the backburner to model in larger markets like New York and Paris.

That’s just what Justin Sakowitz, of Boca Raton, Fla. did. After being approached by a photographer and doing some print work about six months ago, he decided to finish his freshman year at Palm Beach Community College and move to New York City to pursue a modeling career with Boss Models Worldwide. He said he might go back to school in the fall but modeling for fashion moguls like Guess is too tempting.

“I can’t balance school and work now, but maybe in the future,” Sakowitz said. One ultimately gets compromised for the other, he said. “If a good job came along, I took it,” he said, recounting how he often skipped class, sometimes days at a time, to model. But Sakowitz felt the consequences. “A semester into it, my grades definitely dropped,” he said.

“[We] encourage [models], no matter what, to finish school,” said Wendy Ford, president of Ford Models.

“A lot of girls put off finishing school” because of the amount of money they can make, but “bottom line is we encourage our models to finish school at some point,” Ford said.

“It’s easy money,” Sakowitz admits.

“The money you can make is intriguing but the lifestyle is definitely not,” Olander said. “There’s a lot of arrogance, low self-esteem, smoking, drinking and eating disorders — I wasn’t raised like that. I don’t want to live that life and it makes me happy that I chose the college path.”

“College helps me step out of that world and helps me look at it for what it is and not get swept up into it,” Olander said. “It’s something I started and want to finish.”

For the summer, though, Olander started modeling again. Two weeks ago, she modeled in Oscar de la Renta’s fall collection fashion show and met the famed designer. It was the biggest show of her career so far, but Olander hopes to entertain bigger and better offers.

“I’m just trying to get my name out there, my face out there,” Olander said. “The cheapest way to do it is to send snapshots of yourself to the big agencies,” McCormack suggests. “You don’t need to come in person … and you don’t need to get expensive portfolios.”

McCormack added that the right timing and luck also play major roles along a model’s road to success.

“Whatever comes of it comes of it,” Olander said. “I’m not planning on being a supermodel. Then again, I’ve never put 110 percent into it, so I don’t know.”

After she graduates college, she might concentrate on modeling. Olander said she plans to take a year off before applying to med school. “It’s difficult to get in as it is and I’ll be 21, which is old for the business, so why not try it,” Olander said. Knowing she will have her undergraduate degree is the comfort she needs.

Sakowitz agrees.

“When you can’t do it [modeling] anymore, you need something to fall back on.”

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