`I BELIEVE in inner beauty,” says Tarryn Meaker, 17 years old and winner of Cosmopolitan’s Supermodel 1996 competition held at Carfax, at Johannesburg’s Newtown precinct, last week. She’s won a place in the annual search for the International Ford Models Supermodel of the World competition to be held in Los Angeles later this year.
The venue was an inspired choice, a perfect setting for the streetwise suffering from late-Nineties angst. Models jostled with stylists; photographers charged with bringing back pictures of black guests pestered TV presenter Gerry Williams and her boyfriend Alex of pop duo MarcAlex endlessly among the sea of white guests. Finalists sat under lights and make-up artists made the beautiful even more so. But were they truly supermodels? “I’d never sleep with someone just to get to the top,” said Janine, a ravishing 15 year old and so unlike her international peers.
Today it’s hard to imagine life without Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, but in 1980, the concept of a supermodel did not exist. That all changed when Ford’s Supermodel of the World was launched in the early 1980s. “We started it to give the models status,” says Bill Ford, in South Africa last week to judge the local entries. It was a brilliant marketing strategy, giving status to the agency in its long rivalry with Elite, as well as a lucrative contract to the winner.
Ford’s relationship with Cosmopolitan spans both generations of Fords and Raphaelys and there is a real friendship between the two dynasties. Bill Ford is the son of legendary Eileen and Jerry Ford (“She scares me shitless,” said Twiggy of Eileen, aka the Mother of Modelling). Bill’s laid-back East Coast charm belies a shrewd eye, great business sense and a stellar quality fashion radar. Any plans to open in South Africa? “Nope. Not enough money in it.” What’s he looking for? “It’s that something that makes people turn their heads when a girl enters the room. It’s indefinable.”
What’s the current “look”? “We’re looking for the person that epitomises Generation X: tattoos, piercing, pallor, streetwise. The girl must reflect the way the kids are feeling: quite harsh, very urban. It’s the Calvin Klein look. Personality over straight beauty … What’s wanted now are girls who can act a little.”
To the uneducated eye, Meaker fails to match up to this definition. Instead, she combines Vivien Leigh’s hauteur with Rita Hayworth’s voluptuousness. It’s a face which harks back to the past. Cosmo editor and judge Vanessa Raphaely calls it movie- star beauty. “She has it all: the beauty, the professionalism, the glamourous good looks and the potential to be a world-beater.” But does she have the balls?
>From Durban, Meaker is as pure as the driven snow. She’s as unlikely to go topless as she is to indulge in body piercing and recreational drugs.”I don’t think my beauty gives me power; personality is more powerful than beauty. I got into modelling by accident when I entered a school beauty competition. I’m studying psychology through Unisa.”
A born-again Christian, she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage, won’t do underwear, no nipples. She doesn’t believe nudity should be part of advertising and would refuse to model for Calvin Klein. “Money is not as important as what I believe, and money never made anyone happy.” She was, however, ecstatic when informed that the title brought with it R20 000.
Author Michael Gross starts his book Model by calling the model system a factory that feeds on young girls, and bluntly concludes 592 gripping pages later: “The model business remains as it always has been, a seething morass of beauty and money, grace and envy, sensuality and lust, yearning and backstabbing, glamour, greed and glory beyond measure.” And, at the end of the day, models are there to sell clothes.
Meaker is gorgeous, but one does wonder if she will cope. Having never been overseas, citing her favourite designer as Levi Strauss (she says she’s never even heard of any of the other international names), it does raise the question: at 17, isn’t she a lamb to the slaughter?
Boss Models of London has just added an office in Cape Town to its branches in Miami and New York. London spokesman Brad Parsons baldly states: “No one is interested in your brain in fashion. It’s down to how you look. But the fashion world is a reflection of society; it encompasses every type of person, those with deep religious conviction and those who want to party.” But, as Eileen Ford once growled so devastatingly: “Inner beauty doesn’t sell lipstick.”
That the world of the designer catwalk is just the fabulous veneer on the rag trade must not be forgotten. Designer Marianne Fassler knows models are essential to the business: “One is trying to create an illusion, a fantasy. Unless you are Jean Paul Gaultier, you can’t get away with using real people. They don’t sell clothes. A beautiful girl with a wonderful figure does.”
This year, Gucci used young, unknown British girls in its new campaign; pierced Stella Tennant replaced Claudia Schiffer as the Chanel girl; Jodie Kidd emerged from nowhere to shock the world with her skeletal frame. It’s been called a Sixties revival, a style revolution that has put Lolita back on to centre stage. So by choosing ingenue Meaker, Cosmo and Ford are in fact entirely in step with the times.
Art director Fiona McPherson of Camera Culture last week worked with a model who picked up a cheque for R28 000 after two days’ work. She remarks, “They’re young because advertising is about selling dreams; 15 year olds looking like they’re 25. A 25-year-old model looks 35 under the camera in make-up …
“We’re in a fast food culture. Kids of 15,16 and 17 want everything: glamour, money, status. They’re physically, sexually and mentally sussed. If they can make it as models, then why not? Sex comes with the territory.”
In her 50s, Catherine Deneuve can be the face of Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics in Europe, but in South Africa she’d be on the slag heap. Ebony fashion editor, Yes Models associate and former model Nakedi Ribane says she’s well past her sell-by date (early 40s) when it comes to modelling here: “They want new faces, for which they will only have to pay a little. When they’re young, there’s a bigger chance that they’ll be exploited. I worry about the young girls; they need constant surveillance when they’re working abroad.” Rose Buthelezi of Look Ahead agrees; her Nomsebenzi did not make it to the Cosmopolitan finals: “She was too old at 24.”
Earlier this year, the nearest we have to a supermodel — Dahli Shezi of Bon Models — won the Edgars Club Fashion Model 1996 award. Part of the prize was a contract worth R100 000 with Boss in London. She is still in South Africa, waiting to hear if she has a work permit. “There’s a lot of raw talent in South Africa,” opines Parsons from London, vague on the subject of work permits. “They’re very healthy and body-oriented, and with the mixed race there are great features and combinations.” Sounds a bit like he’s talking about dumb animals, doesn’t it?