Anna Pelegri -
Cnce upon a time, it was a young girl’s dream to be stopped in the street like Kate Moss and be asked to model in a fashion show. Now, fame comes via a message on Instagram.
Last week, Leya Ljaz, a 17-year-old Pakistani-American who lives in Switzerland, jumped on a train for Paris with her smartphone and a dream of making it onto the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week.
Now here she was clutching her phone and waiting for her turn at a casting for Neith Nyer, the hip and edgy young label of Brazilian creator Francisco Terra. “Yesterday I did my first casting.
There were real models there, it was incredible. I am still waiting for them to get back to me,” she said. But come what may Ljaz is convinced that one day “I am going to end up in fashion,” she said.
“I grew up in New York and know fashion week — my mother loves it,” said the student who is sleeping at a friend’s place for free having paid her own way to the French capital.
The vast majority of the 30 models who were chosen for the show on Wednesday were like Ljaz recruited from Instagram, fashion’s social network of preference. The rest were represented by agencies. But casting director Leila Hassiba Azizi insisted all were paid the same.
Azizi works for several fashion brands and does most of her “street casting” these days on Instagram. That is where she came across photos of Leya. She liked what she saw and messaged the young woman, who had only ever modelled once before, in Geneva.
“Instagram is a incredible work tool,” she said. “It allows you to see things that you would not have time to look for in the street.
It is much more intimate — you find out much more about who they are. People show you their tastes, and a little bit of their personality,” she added. Azizi said she never asked the girls their measurements because she said she was looking for “a different kind of beauty than agencies do”, something more “real”.
When someone catches her eye, she messages them telling them that she would be interested in working with them and ask them to let her know if they are coming to Paris. As fashion week approaches, the e-mails begin to flood in, she said. Like the one from 23-year-old Belgian stylist Maud Van Dievoet. Short-haired and smiley, she lives in London and has already walked the catwalk there.
“Walking down the runway in a show is exciting, it’s the adrenaline, and when you love the clothes you are proud that you were chosen, and that you are getting them out there,” she said. — AFP
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