Size Zero

by Victoire Dauxerre

  But it was a bit late to be asking such questions now. They greeted me warmly and enthusiastically, just like the last time we had met. Mathilde, Louis’s wife, was there too – a gentle and smiling presence. And also the adorable Quentin, a huge New Yorker who was very ‘oh my darling’, like all the people here. He was the one who handed me my schedule for the day: that morning, my first casting was with Alexander Wang and there were four others to follow in the afternoon. He was almost apologetic that things were starting so slowly for me, but promised that things would be picking up in the coming days. I very much hoped so, because that was what I was there for.

  Picking up on the murderous stares from Olympe and Madeleine, Seb decided that he would take all three of us there together by cab: ‘We’re going to stick together. You’re going to this morning’s casting on your own – he only wants ultra-thin girls. We’ll wait for you in the car. But you’ll all be doing the afternoon ones.’ I could understand why they were sulking: for a start, that sly little allusion to their weight (they’d lost weight since Paris, but not as much as I had) and then the fact that they would have to wait for me, as if they were at my service. That was hardly going to improve relations between us.

  The casting was in a very attractive former factory in SoHo, located in a quiet street. The concertina gates of the gigantic goods lift creaked as I shut them and then opened them again on the seventeenth floor, which was a huge space of brickwork and riveted girders. Through the large bay windows, the view over Manhattan was breathtaking. I really felt like I was on a film set. There were no other aspiring candidates in view. The place was completely deserted, apart from a small office in front of a window and a young woman sitting at a desk. Very thin and dressed entirely in black, she greeted me with a booming voice and a big smile: ‘Hi! What’s your name?’

  I advanced towards her on my 7-inch stilts. The uneven white floor was a maze of traps with all its holes and slits. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall flat on my face. I introduced myself to her and put my book down in front of her.

  ‘Where do you come from? Paris! OOOOhhhh! Paris! Can you walk for me please?’

  I turned away from her and started my parade, doing my best to follow all the procedures: relaxed shoulders, supple pelvis, no Playmobil hands … At the end of the line, I turned around and walked towards her with determination, staring at a point in the distance as Évelyne had taught me to do and trying not to be caught out by that damn floor.

  ‘OK. Once more, faster and stronger?’

  And off I went again. I sped up and took large strides as if I were in a hurry, turned around and bore down on her, silently cursing the bloody floor. She took a comp card, closed my book and handed it to me with a rather curt ‘thank you’. And it was all over.

  It was a very useful two-point lesson: first, I absolutely had to find myself another pair of shoes. These ones took too long to put on, they weren’t stable enough and my feet must have slimmed down too, because I didn’t feel well enough supported in my stately Balmains. Second, I had to learn how to walk more quickly. My tempo had evidently irritated her: too slow and too staccato.

  Seb agreed with me (for once!). We dropped the increasingly furious girls off at the subway – they would go to the afternoon castings without us – while we headed directly to Aldo on Fifth Avenue to find some shoes: 5½ inches of heel minimum, and maximum comfort. Fortunately we weren’t talking the same prices as at Balmain, because this time I was paying! I hunted out two pretty pairs, one beige and one black, which were elegant and comfortable and endorsed by Seb: $150 for the two. And then we went back to the agency, where I spent two hours walking around in my new acquisitions, listening to Quentin’s advice on how to walk at pace while remaining alluring. I now understood that everything moves faster in New York – I had to get with the rhythm of the Big Apple, and fast.

  By the end of the day, I was exhausted. And despite the stifling heat that pervaded the city, I felt cold. I hadn’t eaten anything since my morning Pink Lady, but I wasn’t worried about that. I just wanted to go home, take a shower and call Mum from my bed to recount my chaotic first steps. We’d been texting each other all day long, but I really needed to hear her voice.

  But I was out of luck – Silent had invited us all out to a restaurant to celebrate our debuts! We just about had time to stop off at Chelsea Market to buy some fruit and then at the apartment to change. And then it was back in a cab and off to a packed and noisy restaurant full of people like us: this was clearly the big gathering of fashion week. We went over to the bar and everybody ordered white wine except for me – I went for Diet Coke. And then we waited and waited and waited. My nasty little voice kept on wondering how I would manage not to eat in this restaurant. ‘If you eat, you’ll get fat and you won’t be able to get into the clothes any more.’ Putting on an ounce on the very first day was unthinkable. I couldn’t understand why Louis, Émile, Mathilde and Seb, who expected us to be as thin as rakes, hadn’t thought of that. They spent their whole time ticking off Madeleine and Olympe for being too fat, and then they invited us to a restaurant!

  By eleven o’clock, we still hadn’t been seated and so I decided to go off to bed. I apologised to Louis, who couldn’t believe it: ‘You’re so professional, Victoire. Good on you! Get back safely.’

  And so I got a cab. It was too late, or too early, to call Mum. I felt both happy and sad, enthusiastic and discouraged, and disgusted and starving. I ate a little piece of honeydew melon which I’d bought at the market – it was a delight. So I cut off another piece, and then another, and then another. Soon, the whole melon was gone. What an idiot I was – no willpower at all. Before going to bed, I took three laxatives in the hope that they would compensate for my weakness. Before lying down, I weighed myself: I was finally bang on 47. Phew! But I wouldn’t feel completely at ease until I was given some clothes to put on. And I managed to get into them.

  Casting Hell

  I quickly got into the rhythm: get up, shower and have a piece of fruit while waiting for Seb, who was invariably late. When I asked him why we didn’t just meet at the agency, he replied, ‘Listen, Victoire, you’re not going to start doing your star act, are you? Go with the flow, that’s all you’re being asked to do.’ Olympe and Madeleine were delighted to hear him snapping at me. Things weren’t going smoothly between us. The reality was that I was doing three times more castings than they were and it wasn’t working out very well for them. You had to be blind not to see why: it was all very well them being slim and pretty, but they were distinctly more fleshy than most of the very thin girls in the queue at the castings. And the reason was simple: even if they ate light food, and not very much of it, they ate, and drank, a lot more than those of us who were on an extremely strict diet.

  Apart from a few rare exceptions, who seemed to be able to eat three light meals a day and never put on an ounce (and even then, I’d have liked to see what they were doing when they locked themselves in the toilets and what substances they had in their bags), we were all on the same diet: chewing gum and Coca-Cola Light to stave off the hunger and boredom, with a piece of fruit or a 0 per cent yoghurt from time to time.

  It didn’t bother me unduly. Mostly, I didn’t have time to feel hungry. The scales were always hovering around 47 and as soon as they looked like going up a bit, or when I’d nursed my evening blues with too many melons or nectarines, laxatives would fix the problem. They were very effective, though I did have to up the doses. It seems that the body adjusts quickly …

  I fully understood what was expected of me: I had to be a young woman who was fresh-faced and pretty, never moody and with no needs or desires of my own except to conform to the desires of those who were selecting me. And, above all, never stressed-out. Designers had the monopoly on stress: they were the ones whose career was on the line at the next fashion show, who were exposing themselves to rave reviews or devastating criticism and who were taking all the risks. All we had to do was be good ‘clothes han
gers’, as Karl Lagerfeld put it. Slim, efficient, a winning walk and a killer gaze. Next please!

  I’d also understood that when you were a model, eating in public was simply not the done thing. You absolutely had to give the impression that you weren’t interested in food, or indeed in anything at all except for fashion. Which suited me – I stopped carting around books, or even magazines, in my spacious bag, because I just couldn’t concentrate on a chapter, an article or even so much as a paragraph. It was as if my brain couldn’t digest anything any more except for Alex’s music, which was on a loop in my earphones. The ideal thing was to have the completely detached air of a girl who wasn’t interested in anything, least of all the other girls, or else only to make fun of them, as the Russian girls did. They always stuck together and seemed to spend their time trying to undermine the competition, looking us up and down, giggling and passing comments, all in a language we couldn’t understand.

  Seb even had a go at me when the other girls told him that I was ‘too nice’ at the castings and that I engaged in ‘conversations’ with models from other agencies. ‘Be careful what you say to them, Victoire. The others don’t need to know what’s going on in your life. We’re your family, not them.’ But of course you are …

  Fortunately, in the midst of this horde of rivals who were all a bit on edge (and it has to be said that the pace was frenetic – I was doing between twelve and eighteen castings a day, so I was very careful that nobody jumped the queue in front of me), you did meet a few nice girls who it was pleasant to spend some time with while you were waiting for your turn. To start with, there was Ludmilla and Tania, the two other girls from Silent, who were a bit older and more experienced and who were always very considerate and maternal towards me. I would have loved to share an apartment with them.

  And then I met Kate, an adorable Canadian who was always pleased to bump into me so that we could speak a bit of French amid this sea of Anglophones. Pauline, who was a very sweet Belgian, walked me through the whole complex history and politics of her country. Céleste, a sublime and very sweet-natured blonde from Holland, dreamed like me of one day becoming an actress. We were the same age and had a similar background. A lot of models are between 14 and 16 years old and it’s not often you meet slightly more mature girls with an education whose ambitions extend beyond being selected for a fashion show or an ad campaign! Céleste and I quickly became friends. She’d been on the circuit for a year and already had the impression that she’d seen everything this little world had to offer. And she hated it. When she confessed to me that the hardest thing for her was the loneliness, I felt less lonely. It was a very strange feeling – I spent my time surrounded by loads of people, always ready with a ‘my darling’ or a ‘honey’ or a ‘sweetie’, and yet I had never felt so isolated.

  I used to shiver with cold and loneliness from morning to night, despite the crowds and the New York heatwave. It was so hard, and I don’t know how I managed to stick it out. I’d cry in bed every night. Fortunately Mum was there at the other end of the line.

  She would console me, encourage me and give me the strength to hold on for that little bit longer. Sometimes I felt like going home. She persuaded me to stay, at least until I found out if I was going to be chosen for a few shows. ‘After all, that’s why you’re there. Castings are a pain and they’re dull, but if they choose you for a show, it’ll be fantastic!’

  Louis had warned me that they always made up their minds at the last moment. We were informed the day before, two days at most – it was unpredictable. ‘But if it works out, you’ll see – it’s like a fireworks show!’

  In the meantime, I scurried from casting to casting, criss-crossing New York without ever seeing anything beyond what I could glimpse through a cab window. When I could, I walked. It was good for my figure and I could get some fresh air. Thankfully, we’d had time to look around a bit as a family and so I knew a few of the landmarks and I also had some happy memories.

  Something horrible happened to Céleste. She had suffered so much from being alone during her first year as a model that she had got herself a really cute little dog that she used to travel with – her very own Yùki, except hers was alive! But at the beginning of the week, he got sick and nearly died. She had to miss almost a whole day of castings, including one very important one, to take him to a vet clinic for treatment. And it cost her an arm and a leg into the bargain. She later found out that the two Russians from her agency who she was sharing an apartment with – ‘You know, the type of girls who are capable of tripping you up and making you fall down the stairs so that they can get your job?’ – had been stuffing her dog with sweets so that he’d fall sick and she’d miss that really important casting. They were out of their minds! This profession was full of nutcases! Céleste got her revenge as best she could: she got hold of the two girls’ make-up brushes and patiently rubbed them in the dog litter. Two days later, their faces were covered with spots – the score was even …

  Even though my relationship with Olympe and Madeleine wasn’t getting any better, we fortunately hadn’t reached that point yet. They really weren’t nice towards me, but, deep down, I sort of understood them. My model pupil side must have irritated them, but I couldn’t help it. Whatever my scales might have said, I lacked lightness. I was so scared of not doing things right that it made me anxious. And one of my ways of dealing with that anxiety was to do the best I could, the absolute best, which made me come across as a goody-two-shoes. I could see that it exasperated them. They might have realised that it wasn’t directed at them, if only Seb hadn’t kept on comparing us: ‘Look at Victoire – she’s not eating, is she? Look at Victoire – she goes to bed early, doesn’t she? Look at Victoire – she …’ If I’d been in their shoes, I couldn’t have stood it either!

  Things reached a climax the day he found some sweets hidden in the kitchen. He used to regularly rummage through their stuff to check that they weren’t eating anything they weren’t supposed to, as if he were their father and they were 12 years old. And he made a right scene: ‘How do you think you’re going to succeed if you eat all the time? And then you’re surprised when you don’t get booked for any shows! Even at the castings, they’re not interested in you any more. What’s the point in being here if you just get rejected everywhere you go?’ I felt so sorry for the poor things.

  The next day I found myself alone with Seb between two appointments and he took me to a salad bar for lunch. He loaded up a huge plate and devoured it all in front of me while I nibbled at three spinach leaves and a mini-portion of chicken without sauce, pushing the croutons and parmesan shavings to the edge of the plate. ‘You’re a genuine pro, Victoire. That’s what I try to make the girls understand, but the message won’t sink in.’ I seized the opportunity to ask him to stop making these comparisons all the time because it was making my relationship with them difficult. Naturally, that very evening he decided it would be a good idea to have a go at them for that as well. The guy was a real jerk.

  Hallelujah, I can get into the clothes! Some of the designers would get us to try on a few of their designs during the castings. The first time that happened to me (it was a pair of silky trousers), the little voice inside my head was screaming, ‘You’re too fat, you’re not going to get into them. If you carry on eating, you won’t be able to get into them.’ I got into them, and with ease, even. If you wanted to be sure of things fitting, 47 kilos was the right weight. So long as I didn’t put any weight back on, I’d be fine.

  Apparently, I was going down well and Louis and Émile were delighted; they told me they’d had some excellent feedback, that more and more directors were calling to invite me to castings and that I was definitely going to be chosen for loads of shows. I hoped they were right and that I wasn’t putting myself through all this for nothing.

  Castings are very tough. There we were like a herd of cattle, trussed up in our skinny jeans and tops, perched on our high heels and waiting our turn to be judged from head to toe in sw
eltering heat. Generally, you went on in the order that you arrived. There was an itinerary every morning and Quentin would indicate in red which appointments I had to prioritise. I tried to be among the first to arrive to cut down on the waiting time as much as possible, but it didn’t always work out like that. The casting director, the all-powerful god, was the one who decided how things proceeded. Sometimes we would wait for hours on account of shambolic organisation or because the big chief wanted to revel in his power.

  One day, I waited for an eternity in a very strange space of about 300 square metres, which was rather dilapidated and completely empty. There was a red carpet that ran from the entrance and crossed the whole apartment as far as a very large room down at the end, where it turned at a right angle and passed in front of some completely overexcited guy who spent the whole time yelling, ‘Yeah! OK! Walk, walk! I love you, baaaabyyy!’ At the entrance, a woman was taking the books and the comp cards and getting us under starter’s orders: ‘Your turn! Go!’ Off I went, walking at the New York pace beneath the light from the huge projectors and a barrage of shutter-clicking, courtesy of the three photographers present. The closer I got to the yelling guy down at the end, the more agitated he got. I don’t know what drug he was on or what mental illness he was suffering from, but it was frankly scary. I came out of there feeling like you do after seeing a horror film – completely dazed!

  On another occasion, I had to resist the urge to retch when a very thin designer came over to adjust the pins on the outfit he’d asked me to try on. He smelled as dirty as he looked. He was clearly also on something pretty strong – he was constantly running his fingers through his hair and vigorously scratching his scalp, dislodging clouds of dandruff which then settled on his black shirt. He spent ages yanking the cloth of my dress every which way, and I really thought I was going to vomit.