Bright lights and promises

Vivi­enne West­wood, Calvin Klein, l'Oreal Paris, Chanel, Adolfo Dominguez, Bimba & Lola, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Mango, Marie Claire, Oysho, Elle UK, Zara, Vanidad, among oth­ers. That also trans­lates as Milan, Madrid, Lon­don, Am­s­ter­dam, Stock­holm, Paris, Mu­nich, and a lengthy etcetera. And not to for­get five days on a lux­ury yacht in the mid­dle of the Med on a swimwear shoot, but that was in the mid­dle of a bit­terly cold Feb­ru­ary and you came close to catch­ing pneu­mo­nia. But you are 19 years old and you can do nearly any­thing and the world is your oys­ter. Or is it? So let's go back to the be­gin­ning.

You were walk­ing across plaça Catalunya in Barcelona and some­one came up to you and.... That re­ally hap­pens?

–I was with my mum and this woman gave me a card and we went to have pho­tos done, just for a laugh.

That was two years ago. Do you re­mem­ber your first job?

–A shoot for Stradi­var­ius. I was ter­ri­fied. I couldn't eat. My legs!

Had you thought about being a model be­fore?

–I have al­ways liked fash­ion and the idea sounded nice but I had never thought about it as a job. To tell the truth, at the be­gin­ning it was dif­fi­cult to take it se­ri­ously. I thought I would do a few ses­sions and noth­ing would come of it.

But it did. So, how do you feel about it now?

–I love it! You adapt, learn, and I have dis­cov­ered that I can do it. It's fun, ex­cit­ing, it has it's bad points, but you learn to ac­cept those things. One thing that you have to un­der­stand is that it's noth­ing like I imag­ined and I sup­pose noth­ing like what most peo­ple imag­ine. Noth­ing at all.

Ex­plain.

–Yes, it's glam­ourous at times and can be ex­cit­ing, but that is a very small part of it. Ba­si­cally it is very, very hard work. I never know what to­mor­row will bring. Things change con­stantly. On a per­sonal level, mak­ing plans is just im­pos­si­ble. I might think I am doing a shoot in Barcelona to­mor­row but in­stead I could be in Madrid for a week and halfway through when I get a call say­ing to go some­where else and that can hap­pen at any time, day or night, and that means drop­ping every­thing and going, and nearly al­ways, alone. For a while I was get­ting home at week­ends to see my fam­ily, now it's not that easy. Work­ing hours? They don't exist. Once I started a shoot at 8:00 in the morn­ing and fin­ished at 5:30 the fol­low­ing morn­ing; 21.5 hours. That's not com­mon, but it can hap­pen.

But trav­el­ling, see­ing the world?

–One part of that I like, one part I don't. Meet­ing peo­ple, going to dif­fer­ent places, learn­ing about them. That is so in­ter­est­ing. But once again, I am usu­ally alone and that means hav­ing to find my way around a new city, prob­lems with the lan­guage, or­gan­is­ing food, trans­port, the way things are done. There's not much time to see things be­cause I am work­ing all the time. Even when I am there for a long time. Lon­don Fash­ion Week, for ex­am­ple. It's fan­tas­tic, but it's to­tally chaotic. I've done two of them and I am about to do an­other. It's not re­ally a week, both times I went for a month. Rush­ing from one end of the city to an­other and 20-odd cast­ings each day as well as the shows and the shoots. Set­ting off at 7pm, get­ting home at 10pm, day in, day out. No breaks. Once there was a strike on the Un­der­ground. I didn't know. I had to be all over the city and I had no idea where I was. I pan­icked. That wasnt a good day, I didn't han­dle that at all well. My Eng­lish is an­other thing I know I need to im­prove. I need it all the time when I am away. But when can I find time to do classes? I can't pro­gramme things like classes, ever. Even get­ting time to relax. Lon­don again, I ar­rive home (well, where I was stay­ing) one night, ex­hausted. At two o'clock in the morn­ing the phone rings. I have a cat­walk show the next day and they want me now, yes, at two in the morn­ing, for a fit­ting.

And you still love it?

–Oh yes, re­ally! But I have to be re­al­is­tic. Peo­ple think it's a fan­tas­tic job, and that it is so glam­ourous, and some of it is, but as I said be­fore, it's just very, very hard work. The worst thing of all? Being alone. Most of the time a model is alone. One of the best jobs I did was in Al­i­cante. I flew to Madrid and met the crew and there were other mod­els, a big group. To­gether we trav­elled to Al­i­cante for the ses­sion. It was so won­der­ful and so much fun and I think for me that was be­cause I wasn't alone.

The agency, Uno Mod­els, how does that work?

–I have met mod­els from all over the world, and quite hon­estly, I think I have a good agency. I have a “booker”, Izate, like a per­sonal agent. A client will call with a pro­file for a job, she and the other book­ers will make a short-list and send that out or per­haps send a group of us to a cast­ing. I spend a lot of time in cast­ings! That doesn't mean that I get the job. It also can be that a pho­tog­ra­pher or a com­pany wants a par­tic­u­lar model, or that a com­pany like Mango is doing a cam­paign or sea­son shoot using the same mod­els. A mag­a­zine might ask to fea­ture a cer­tain model. Any­way, Izate sets it all up: the pa­per­work, travel plans, ac­com­mo­da­tion, every­thing. Then it's up to me. I trust Izate com­pletely, she's al­ways there for me and in some places, like Lon­don, we have sis­ter agen­cies and they or­gan­ise me and look after me. But that doesn't mean they are there to hold my hand.

I have the feel­ing that in two years you have come a long way.

–Def­i­nitely. The job changes you. I am more con­fi­dent. I can do things I couldn't be­fore. I am more re­laxed with it. I re­mem­ber when I first re­alised that peo­ple were recog­nis­ing me. There was a lit­tle girl in the metro star­ing at me and I felt un­com­fort­able. And then I saw that other peo­ple did the same from time to time. Apart from mag­a­zines I am on posters in shops and on bill­boards and peo­ple make a con­nec­tion. I feel OK with it now, but it was strange at first.

Look­ing ahead five years.

–Frankly I don't think about it. I love what I am doing. There are nice things ahead, such as 080 Barcelona Fash­ion, and after that Lon­don Fash­ion week again, and pos­si­bly a stint with our sis­ter agency in New York, The Lions. That's ex­cit­ing. But per­son­ally, what's im­por­tant is to con­cen­trate on the pre­sent. For the mo­ment every­thing is going re­ally well for me and I am happy. What makes it easy is that I have won­der­ful fam­ily sup­port, no pres­sure at all. If I de­cide to­mor­row that I want to call it a day, then I know that I can just close the door and move on to some­thing else. But first things first; to­mor­row morn­ing, Lon­don.

The day after the in­ter­view I texted Laura to thank her for her time. She replied from a far-off city. Of course, it wasn't Lon­don.