The Look

by Sophia Bennett

  “Hey!” she says, smiling. “You said lookbook without flinching, like you knew what one was. You’re talking fashion, T! And just think about the beach, OK? You’ll love it. It’ll be gorgeous.”

  Good point. Soon I’ll be modeling on a beach. Wow! She’s right: Even if I’m not getting paid, surely it doesn’t get much better than that?

  Wrong AGAIN.

  The “beach” in question turns out to be a gritty strip of mud beside the River Thames, not far from St. Paul’s Cathedral. For once this summer, the sky is drizzly and overcast. My job is to wear a black jumpsuit secretly pinned and taped into place so it fits me properly, and make it look interesting for a stylist called Linda Lucinda and her friend Greta, who’s testing a new lens for her camera. I spend a morning cartwheeling across wet, slimy pebbles while Greta plays around with “aperture sizes” and perfects her “depth of field.” Good news: When it’s all over, Greta shows me how her focusing gizmos photograph me in sharp definition while the “beach” in the background is vague and blurry. Bad news: My hands really hurt from all those cartwheels, and although the pictures are very arty, they mostly make me look like a demented spider.

  The artist project is very different. No cartwheels this time: Instead I have to sit extremely still for four hours while she glues pink tissue-paper petals to my tank top, arms, neck, and face, including my closed eyelids, and takes pictures of the results. This shoot could have been fabulous and relaxing, except that I had a large Coke before we started, and so I spend three hours and twenty-seven minutes desperately wanting to pee. And the results, though beautiful, aren’t ideal for my book, because the only part of me you can really see properly is my knees. They’re a lot better than my “fat ankles,” I suppose, but not necessarily my best feature. Although, to be honest, I’m still not sure what is.

  By the time I get to the new designer, my expectations are so low they’re scraping the floor. It’s not helped by the fact that the man in question, Azar Sadiq, doesn’t speak much English and relies mostly on hand gestures and some form of Arabic to explain what he wants.

  We meet in a studio on Curtain Road, which seems appropriate somehow, in the Shoreditch neighborhood of East London. My chaperone today is a woman named Beth, who settles herself down with a chick-lit novel, while various friends of the designer set about doing my hair and makeup and translating Azar’s hand gestures for me.

  At this point, the day starts to get more interesting. It turns out that Azar’s first collection involves transforming severe gray suit jackets by incorporating colorful old kite tails from Kabul, Afghanistan. They are absolutely lovely — completely original and unique. I can understand why he’s so excited about them.

  Gradually, as the shoot progresses, I forget that for some reason he wants my hair and face to be painted pale blue, and that I can’t understand half of what he’s saying. Using sheer enthusiasm, he manages to communicate his passion to bring Afghan culture into western tailoring. And the clothes are so enchanting that by the end I feel like one of those kites myself, floating high above the city, carried away by the power of his imagination. For a few moments, I even forget about how worried I am for Ava — all I can think of is telling her how I was Kite Girl later tonight.

  Afterward, we all examine the photos together on-screen. By some of my more awkward poses, you can tell I’m still learning what to do with my hands and feet, but the jackets look stunning. So do the billowing silk skirts I’m wearing underneath them. These pictures will look fabulous in my book, finally.

  The fun of that shoot carries me through yet another week of lining up and rejection, and in fact I’m trying harder now because I realize I’d love to be a part of something beautiful. If models could choose the work they did, I would work with people like Azar and his friends every day. Although it would help, of course, if they paid enough money to cover some decent sandwiches. Mum’s getting very suspicious about the amount of fruit I’m stealing from home to take with me, especially since I’m supposedly working in a restaurant. I’m not sure she believes my story that I need to draw it for art.

  By now, August is well underway and “the Italians are on holiday,” to quote Frankie, which means that most of the rest of the fashion world has to go on holiday, too. The flood of go-sees peters out to a drizzle. Of course, I’m supposed to be “at work,” so I still have to leave the flat every morning and go somewhere.

  I like art galleries because they’re free, and so is the local library. The librarian’s getting used to ordering in glamorous books on photography for me, so I can learn about the fashion greats and pick up posing tips. When I’m not reading them, I’m often outside with Ava’s camera — which, incredibly, she let me borrow — learning how to find interesting locations and make use of the light. Nightmare Boy was right: It’s amazing what you can do when you try.

  When I was bored one evening, I looked up the website he gave me. It’s full of useful info. I’m still a beginner photographer, but I’m getting way beyond the Snoopy-on-head stage. Ava thinks my picture of a spiral staircase, looking like a sea-shell, is surprisingly good. In fact, she stuck a copy inside the closet door, next to her pictures of Jesse and Louise, and one of me posing for Azar. I don’t think she strokes and kisses it, unlike Jesse, but even so.

  Messing around with photography also takes my mind off the fact that more often than not, I’m hungry. There’s only so much fruit you can steal. I would have done much better financially if I actually had been waitressing.

  “Don’t lose faith,” Frankie says over the phone. “We might try you again at Christmas. You’ll be sixteen then. There’s a lot more we can do with you.”

  But I don’t want to be doing this at Christmas. I literally can’t afford to spend every holiday having my ankles criticized by women in ridiculous glasses, whose handbags cost more than my whole wardrobe put together.

  After five weeks of total failure, Ava persuades me to give it one last try. She does so from the bathroom floor, while waiting to throw up. Sometimes the drugs she’s taking to counteract the side effects of the chemo aren’t as powerful as the chemo itself. But still she carries on. When I see what she’s putting herself through, another week of go-sees seems only fair.

  This time Frankie sends me to a casting in a studio in Battersea for a stylist called Sandy McShand, who’s been asked to create high-fashion looks on a budget for a daytime TV talk show. I do my usual lining up. I remember my name, which is a step forward, but other than that, nothing’s different. Nobody smiles. Nobody nods. Nobody says anything much beyond “Hi,” “Turn around please,” and “Can you walk?” I go home as disillusioned as ever.

  But when I call Frankie in the evening, she says the magic word: option. Sandy wants me for fittings tomorrow! Somehow, without knowing it, I did something right.

  “Think glamour. Think hot. Think sexy. Think vamp. Think fabulous.”

  This is it. The start of my new career.

  It’s quarter past nine in the morning and I’m in a TV studio in West London where, in ten minutes, I will be seen by thousands of people who like watching fashion segments on daytime TV shows. OK, so it’s scary. After all those go-sees I got a bit carried away with the idea of doing it. The experience of doing it is slightly different.

  Sandy McShand is giving us his last-minute pep talk before he goes out to sit on the sofa and describe the looks he’s put together, based on the latest knitwear collections. It’s all very well, but I’m thinking: Five-inch red platforms. Wobble. Early start. Knitted bathing suit with detachable shorts and suspenders. Spaghetti legs. Where are Afghan jackets and billowing skirts when you need them? Not to mention the blue face paint, which made me practically unrecognizable.

  Dad gives me the thumbs-up from the corner of the green room. He offered to be my chaperone today because he’s always been interested in how TV programs are made. In fact, a pretty, blonde production assistant has offered to give him a tour of the studios. He looks really excited. He woul
dn’t be looking like that if he were wearing five-inch red platforms.

  I’m standing next to Sheherezade Scott. She joined Model City last year and has already done more jobs than she can remember. Whatever it is you’re supposed to have at go-sees, Sheherezade’s obviously got it in bucket-loads. She is all angles — angular bones, angular hair, angular eyes. Her skin is so pale it’s almost translucent, her eyes are golden, and her hair is almost waist length, frizzy and brown, cut to resemble a series of cascading triangles. She looks busy and distracted — she has two other jobs scheduled today — but she was brilliant during our run-through. I plan to copy her as closely as I can.

  She adjusts her suspenders.

  “Are you ready to vamp?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  It would help if I knew what vamping was. I get most of my vocab from Dad, and he’s never mentioned it. Is it something to do with vampires? Am I supposed to look bloodthirsty? Is it even possible to look bloodthirsty in knitted shorts? In the run-through, I was concentrating on walking, stopping, turning, and not falling over. Also not staring into the camera, because we’re supposed to pretend it’s not there. Sandy McShand kept calling things out in such a strong Scottish accent that I couldn’t understand most of them. “Stop shaking” was one, definitely. But right now, I feel as though I have no control over my body at all.

  “Relax,” Sheherezade says. “It’s fun. Go for it.”

  Her name is familiar and suddenly I remember why. She must be the girl that Nick Spoke broke Rule One for, by getting involved with her. Model City can’t represent two Sheherezades, surely? I seem to remember Frankie saying she “messed him up.” How? He certainly seems messed up: resentful, surly, and anti-modeling. Well, it certainly wasn’t because she was ugly.

  At this moment, she gets a nod from a man in headphones, someone pats her on the shoulder blades, and off she goes. I watch her on a monitor as she does her walk, then hangs around for a couple of minutes while Sandy explains about the inspiration behind her outfit. It’s not Victorian bathing machines, as I’d imagined, but Diaghilev, an impresario from the 1900s who founded the Ballets Russes. I’ve never seen anyone try to do ballet in knitwear, but the talk-show hosts nod seriously and look impressed.

  Sheherezade thrusts out one hip, making sure she’s diagonal to the camera. She told me that if you face it head-on it makes you look loads wider. She looks cool and distant. Is that vamping? I decide to try it anyway.

  With a minute to go, they position me just out of shot. I wonder what Sheherezade would be like as a girlfriend for a would-be artist. Did she pose for him? Was she the girl in the magazine pictures Cassandra showed us at my first test shoot? She was head-banging, so you couldn’t really see her face, but the hair was similar. It crosses my mind that if Nick Spoke likes girls with waist-length hair, I’d never stand a chance. Not that I did anyway, of course.

  The man in headphones nods to me. Sheherezade saunters off and gives me a cool smile. Another man with a clipboard shoves me in the back, a lot harder than I was expecting. I start my wobbly walk and head for the blue X on the floor where I’m supposed to stop and turn. When I’m halfway there, one of the hosts calls out.

  “And the shoes, Sandy. Tell us about the incredible shoes.”

  What am I supposed to do? Do I keep walking like I was supposed to, or start hanging around so they can admire the platforms? I stop dead and swing myself forward with one hip, like Sheherezade did, twisting my body around so the camera doesn’t make me look enormous. What was it Sandy said? I remember vamping, but there was other stuff, too. “Hot” was possibly one of them. I’m increasingly hot under the studio lights, so that’s not difficult. I think of Kristen Stewart — she was a great vampire. Maybe I could look like her: pale and sulky. I give it a go.

  Sandy’s saying something. I’m so busy doing my Kristen Stewart impression and trying not to wobble that I can’t hear him properly. He does a gesture, swirling his hand around. He wants me to do the twirl. So I do. Then I remember I’m in the wrong place, so I walk forward to the mark and do it again. Pretty well, I think. Now a different man with a clipboard is waving at me. He’s waving me backward. Wow, that went quickly. I breathe in, and try to do my coltish saunter off the set.

  Five minutes later, after a superfast change that took a lot of rehearsing very early this morning, we do it all over again, side by side. By now, I think I’m getting the hang of it. Apart from one major wobble on the platforms, I’m pretty sure I’m vampish all the way through. It’s even starting to be fun. I can hardly understand a word Sandy McShand is saying, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I look Twilight-ish and vaguely undead. Sheherezade links her arm through mine and smiles a dazzling smile. I grin as happily as I can. It’s almost a shame when I realize it’s over.

  “Not too bad, was it?” Sheherezade asks, already slipping carefully out of her suspenders as we reach the changing area.

  “No, actually. It was —”

  Her phone chimes and she cuts me off.

  “Hi, Sam,” she says, changing rapidly. Somehow she manages to strip, get dressed, and hold a conversation with her booker at Model City about whether to take a job in New York or go to a party in Dubai. I’d been hoping to talk to her about it all, but there isn’t a chance. As soon as she’s dressed, she’s gone.

  With no other jobs to dash off to, I take my time getting changed. In my head, I’m replaying my final coltish walk and wondering if it looked as good as it felt. When I’m ready, I sling my bag over my shoulder and try to locate Dad again so I can ask him. Somebody says he might be outside, getting some air with that production assistant he made friends with. They point to a door at the end of the corridor and the next thing I know, I’m standing outside, in a parking lot. Dad’s nowhere to be seen, but Sandy McShand is wandering up and down with his back to me and talking very loudly into his phone.

  “She was fabulous! Amazing! She had this stop-start walk. Perfect to open Christopher’s show. I can’t remember her name, but can you get her for him? He needs to see her. Seriously.”

  I stop dead, stunned. He said “amazing.” And “stop-start walk.” Is that coltish? I can’t quite bring myself to believe I was that good, but maybe …

  Sandy’s still facing into the parking lot, listening intently now.

  Of course, if this Christopher person (Christopher Bailey at Burberry? Christopher Kane the Scottish designer?) wanted me for a catwalk show, I couldn’t do it because I’m not old enough yet, but I would be soon. And designers need models for other things. He could use me for a lookbook for fashion buyers if he wanted to. Or for an advertising campaign. I mean, normally I wouldn’t be seen dead in stuff like knitted suspenders, but for an advertising campaign I’d be prepared to make an exception.

  “There were two of them. Yes, that’s right. Oh, you saw it? No, not her. She was very nothing. The other one. Long name. Frizzy hair. Yes, her.”

  He ends the call and turns around to go back into the building. I’m in his way, because even though I want to disappear, I’m stuck to the spot. He looks at me for a split second, then right through me. He doesn’t register me at all, and why should he? I’m not amazing after all. I’m “not her.” I’m the one who was “very nothing.”

  When I finally get back inside, Dad’s waiting for me in the hall.

  “All done, love? Ready to go?”

  I nod. I’m so ready to go.

  The job came with a chauffeur-driven car. It seemed so glamorous at six o’clock this morning when it arrived to pick us up. (Dad told Mum he had to meet a friend at the airport; I sneaked out with him.) Now I feel all wrong sitting in a limo. As it wends its way slowly back home through the morning traffic, Dad’s phone rings. It’s Mum.

  “Ah,” Dad says. “Really? Are you sure, love? I don’t think it could have been, because she’s waitressing, isn’t she?”

  There’s a lot of shouting down the phone. Dad winces and holds it away from his ear. Now he knows how it fel
t for Ava when he called her after my first test shoot.

  “Actually I am. Sorry, Mandy,” he says. “We’ll explain when we get in.”

  He turns to me.

  “Your granny phoned her. She’d got a call from a neighbor who was watching. Didn’t think of that. Mum said I’d better be with you, or we’re both in more trouble than we could ever imagine.”

  This was not how I imagined telling Mum.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, gasping for breath, as soon as we get in.

  She’s sitting on the sofa, with the TV still on the same channel that featured Sandy McShand. Ava must have brought her the glass of water sitting beside her, because it’s clear she hasn’t moved for ages.

  “Wasn’t she grand?” Dad says, still hoping for a miracle.

  Mum doesn’t even look at him. She’s staring at me.

  “How long?” she asks, her face drained and pale. “All summer?”

  I nod.

  “All by yourself? Oh my God — what have we done?”

  “Well, not by myself,” I point out. “I had chaperones. There were lots of people around.”

  “Every day, you’ve been doing this?”

  I stare at the carpet. “Most days. But not working. Just trying to get work.”

  Mum looks helplessly to Dad, then back to me. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “When I got a job. A good one.”

  “And appearing on national TV didn’t count as a good one?”

  “Well … when you put it like that …”

  She sighs so deeply it sounds as though all the breath is coming out of her. I was expecting her to blaze with fury, but she’s beyond blazing. This is almost worse, because there’s panic in her eyes. Poor Mum — spinning further out of orbit, and I’ve put her there.