Unseen

by Reggie Yates

  I understood that the world these girls belonged to was a million miles from my own. Just like the models I dated, I earned a living in front of the camera, but their working world carried pressures bigger than I could even begin to imagine.

  As a kid, I saw the camera as my chance to show off; I’d pose for photos and gurn or smile on cue. Unluckily for me, just as my teenage angst and paranoia about my looks kicked in, I found myself front and centre during promotional photo shoots for the TV shows I was in. The zits and bad haircuts seemed to find a way on screen every time. By the way, this isn’t a signal for you to go looking for the archived proof. Yes, it does exist and, yes, it is horrendous.

  Thankfully, during the earlier years of my career, the photo shoots where I found myself under very specific direction were only a tiny part of the job. And I was never made to change my appearance, unlike some of the young girls I’d act or present with. Changing a hairstyle, minimalising the appearance of curves and softening an accent were just some of the demands I’d hear suggested by thoughtless execs. Considering the fact that I was still trying to figure out who I actually was, had I endured that level of scrutiny, I have no idea how I would have turned out, although I have a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t have been positive. While I was having the time of my life interviewing pop stars and seeing the world with work, the girlfriends I’d come home to would never want to speak about theirs. I always thought I knew why, but I was so wrong.

  When my team and I were in discussions about making the follow-up to Extreme South Africa, Russia in all its uniqueness was a perfect fit. I was positive about all of the potential episodes and stories we were due to cover, but part of me expected the Teen Model Factory film to be the least challenging.

  With two of the shows on Russia dealing with nationalism and homophobia, my worry was that a film on young models would be lightweight by comparison. Nationalism and homophobia are global issues that remain firmly in the public’s consciousness. The Russian relationship with both is well documented, and it felt like a certainty that we’d deliver a hard-hitting film on either topic.

  The Russian connection to modelling was something I was aware of, as so many successful faces had emerged from the country over the years. I’d always wondered what was behind the long list of talent finding its way onto the world stage. That being said, I initially didn’t place this film in the same league as the first two. I feared we’d be ending the series on a softer note. I knew there would be a wealth of new information to dissect, but didn’t think so much of what I’d encounter would speak to my upbringing and personal relationships with women.

  This project didn’t start anywhere near what was slowly becoming familiar territory. I’d left the massive cities of Moscow and St Petersburg and was boarding a tall metal train that looked like it went on forever. I was about to ride the Trans-Siberian Express – the famous railway that spans 9,000 km and crosses eight time zones. My destination was Siberia and it was somewhere I had never imagined I’d see in my lifetime.

  The train rattled and swayed its way out of the station and the endless blackness on the other side of the window quickly took hold. We were in the middle of nowhere headed to a place where, at the time we’d be shooting there, the temperature could drop as low as minus sixty degrees. I’d learnt a lot about myself during my time in Russia, but there was one thing I knew going in that only became clearer the longer I was there. I’m crap in the cold.

  The thought of sleeping through most of the journey made the prospect of three days on a train tolerable. As the first night wore on, the occasional stretches of well-lit track allowed for moments to take in where I actually was. The flat white expanse we spent hours cutting through appeared endless. At fifty times the size of the UK but with around half the population, Siberia is massive and predominantly untouched.

  Given our shooting schedule, the only real choice for travel into our destination was the Express. I passed people from every walk of life in the train’s endless hallways, fascinated by the prospect of their stories but unable to do anything about it. No matter where I was in Russia, there was a constant reticence to speak English, even if the person I was desperately trying to connect with understood my every word.

  It was like being on holiday in Paris, dealing with a snooty waiter annoyed at your pronunciation, only worse. Maybe it was the cut of my jib, or, given my most recent Russian experience, there was a good chance it might have been the colour of my skin. However, I chose to focus on those who did engage.

  There was a pack of men and women from around the world all headed to Siberia for the same reason. To find models. Packing the cafeteria carriage, a loud and upbeat international crowd of model scouts in search of new Siberian faces chatted up a storm. I met Tako from Tokyo (which sounds like I’m making it up but that was his name and where he was from, promise) who, in his short trip, was looking for girls with strong features and preferably someone young.

  As someone who started working as a child, being young and employed has never seemed strange to me, but in the context of the fashion industry, I’ve never totally seen it as the healthiest world for a kid. Tako was looking for girls as young as thirteen as, according to him, the fact they were still growing was a bonus.

  Model scout Kate was looking for young faces too as her Asian clients preferred that look. Their employers and audience clearly had different ideas to my own when it came to beauty. I’d been raised in a culture where the youngest models legally walking the catwalks of London Fashion Week were sixteen. Magazines might employ younger, but Western aspirations associated with beauty were tied to youth, definitely, not childhood.

  She can show her beauty, it’s part of her job

  Political prisoners were sent to Siberia to die during Soviet times, as it was a chunk of the country offering very little beyond endless cold. Decades later, things had moved on and my first impressions completely crushed my expectations. I’d anticipated mountainous snowy nothingness, what I found was a bustling city full of tower blocks and busy streets.

  The search for new faces began at our first stop. We were in the mining city of Krasnoyarsk and a large, soulless building played host to a huge open casting call. I walked into a lobby full of excitable girls buzzing around the room all lip gloss and selfies. The slightly older girls in their late teens looked stoic by comparison as they stood quietly, clearly more conscious of the scale of opportunity the day held.

  Supermodel Natalia Vodianova had an international modelling career and the bank balance to match. Discovered by the side of a Russian road selling fruit, her rise to fame became a modern Cinderella story and was a tangible example of what could happen to any one of the hundreds that had showed up.

  An equal mix of nerves and excitement, the girls stood in a long line for registration while those who had breezed through the process were measured and photographed. The totally awkward thing for me was that they were all stripped down to their underwear. Uncomfortable and desperate to escape, the last time I’d felt this awkward was the moment I saw my younger sister’s huge bra for the first time. For some reason, I believed she’d been frozen in time on her ninth birthday, but apparently she’d grown up, had boobs and huge ones judging by the connected tents hanging out to dry on the bathroom heater at my mum’s house.

  The girls stood shoulder to shoulder in a line holding a piece of paper with their measurements scribbled in marker. Catching the occasional uncomfortable look from the younger, still developing girls it was obvious how hard an experience this was for the younger and less confident. I’d never felt so out of place. It was like being in the ladies’ changing room at the local swimming baths with your mum and her mates from work. Everything inside was screaming, ‘Get me out!’

  Remember the guy on the train who had a name that sounded fake? Well Tako from Tokyo had already told me that he was looking for girls around the age of thirteen. For whatever reason, I’d neglected to really consider the fact until I’d seen it myself. T
hese young girls wore next to no clothes and high heels. Their tiny bodies looked ever more childlike as tiny frame after tiny frame partially covered in bad bras or swimwear gave the impression of a window into teenagers playing dress-up in their mother’s closet.

  The atmosphere shifted, suddenly chatter died down and all the girls were standing up that bit straighter. Tigran Khachatrian had arrived. Director of Noah Models, he was responsible for putting on the cattle call and clearly had a reputation as a man to impress. One by one, the pack of international model scouts from around the world shook his hand. He was a gatekeeper and everyone in the room knew it.

  I turned to see the outstretched hand of the guy in charge. Introducing himself with a softly spoken and warm demeanour, Tigran seemed to be pleased I’d arrived. I was unsure as to why he was so calm, as any camera crew in that room could paint an incredibly dark picture. Either he trusted me without even knowing me, or saw nothing untoward with the hundreds of half-naked kids I was reacting to for the first time.

  Of these hundreds who’d turned up, Tigran was expecting to find only ten to fifteen girls that really could stand a chance in the international market. He described the majority as having great potential even though he’d openly admitted a tiny few would actually make it.

  ‘Most Russian girls are like Ferraris with no engine, but when we start working with them, we put those engines in.’ The man didn’t come across as a creep; there didn’t even seem to be an element of wanting the girls for anything other than professional purposes, but even that began to trouble me and change my take on the process as a whole.

  There didn’t appear to be anything untoward with the casting or the adults taking on bright-eyed children as new employees. My issue was with the commercial expectation dumped on the excited kids who’d never worked a day in their lives. The glamour and money of fashion was an obvious draw, but no time was being given to explaining the realities of the job.

  I was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Everyone was there for business and nothing more. The children were told where to stand and when to speak, which they did without barely a mumble out of turn.

  It was a room full of children and young teenagers, but the people in charge didn’t seem too concerned about any duty of care. The occasional girl in her early twenties didn’t soften the blow of my realisation that the day was about business above anything and nobody was there to piss around. I eventually started being less freaked out by the amount of skin on show, but I continued to be shocked at the number of girls fourteen and under that had showed up to be discovered.

  The scouts watched quietly, scribbling away in their notebooks and taking pictures. Small two- or three-person teams from Europe, Asia and the US buzzed over Polaroids of their new discoveries. Strange as it sounds, there was a huge desire for the youngest girls from the Asian scouts. In their market, girls could work professionally from as young as twelve. They were entirely in their element, as one thing the room didn’t lack was baby-faced teenagers.

  Tigran described Asia as a nursery territory for those scouted, Europe as high school and America as the university. Based on how he framed the metaphor, I took the statement to be in reference to earning potential and not about fashion influence or work conditions for the girls. Clear in what he was looking for in terms of face geometry and proportions, Tigran had got selecting the girls who would find good work down to a science.

  The room was full of girls trying to get the job and in any other environment they’d be handing out CVs. Here, their bodies were their CVs. Their proportions and confidence gave them a better chance of being scouted and, as the day wore on, I could almost predict what scout would go for what girl.

  For the lucky few, every scout wanted them to work in their territory. For Yina, who’d brought her daughter, it was a dream come true. When she was a child, she too had dreams of being like the supermodels she’d see on TV but it never happened for her. She wore a full face of make-up and figure hugging clothes. Yina wasn’t shy, but her teenage daughter seemed to be.

  Yina believed the high praise her daughter was receiving was not only an achievement, but also an opportunity. I’m not a parent, but I found it difficult to watch the clearly uncomfortable younger girls stand in a room full of strangers wearing just their underwear and a pair of heels. I must have been missing something as Yina beamed with pride. Her daughter beat a room full of competition, but to do so in these conditions I still found a struggle to witness.

  I had to ask about her allowing her child to wear so little in public and Yina didn’t even flinch. ‘She can show her beauty, it’s part of her job.’

  I met one of the oldest girls in the room, twenty-year-old Anya Sosnovskaya, who’d been cast by two agencies including Tigran’s company Noah Models. She’d found a corner with some of the other girls and thrown on a sweater.

  Some were beginning to show signs of tiredness, but for the room full of novices, it was just the beginning. Walking the line, Tigran sized up the new row of girls. Stopping the minute he spotted potential, he called forward a thirteen-year-old. Asking her to smile, he pounced on her teeth instructing her to get them fixed. She smiled and nodded but even from a distance I could see her heart breaking and her cheeks reddening with embarrassment as the entire room was watching.

  I expected a drill sergeant, but Tigran wasn’t barking instructions at the room of hopefuls, his style was gentle and softly spoken. He presented himself as a wise older friend, an adviser not a boss, and it worked as the scared girls softened in the palm of his hand. Explaining he’d got into the business to help young women, Tigran saw himself as some sort of facilitator. He spoke of the spiritual benefits and pride he felt in seeing his girls go on to find success (though he neglected to mention his improved bank balance that came as a result).

  Okay, I really sound like the snarky British cynic right now but give me a break. I’d spent the day with a man who was clearly doing well for himself with a business that had become the go-to agency in a climate of minimal competition. His company Noah Models was huge and no other agencies came close to his reputation or ability to launch new girls. It would be remiss of me to ignore the reality of financial gain built on the tiny backs of his selected children. This was a business that worked and one that made good money for Tigran, even if in the long term, the industry as a whole didn’t do so for all of the models.

  Standing to make thousands in commission, for any of the scouts the signing of a model was a win. For girls like Anya, who I’d met earlier cowering beneath her huge sweater, this was exactly the sort of opportunity she’d fought for, regardless of the cut she’d lose should she make it. Tigran didn’t appear to have any intentions for the girls outside of business, but my paranoia couldn’t shake the chances of things not being so above board for his chosen girls once they were working alone all over the globe.

  If there’s an opportunity to earn, why not?

  Anya had agreed to show me her life at home, so I ventured just an hour out of town to find snow-covered mountains as far as the eye could see. Anya lived in the vast and snowy version of Siberia I’d expected. Ovsyanka was the tiny village fenced in endless forestland she called home.

  Anya had strong opinions on the benefits of her rural upbringing. She believed that living so far from any real opportunities could only strengthen one’s character. Fully aware that there were more opportunities abroad, Anya now saw a better future and better life for her family in her travelling for work as a model.

  Siberia is a place where doctors would make just over £400 a month, why wouldn’t she want to escape and have a better life elsewhere? Anya’s true passion was art and her painted canvasses covered her bedroom walls. However, she viewed a life as an artist as a dream that was out of reach. By contrast, modelling was a profession that gave her an opportunity.

  ‘If there’s an opportunity to earn, why not?’ Fell from practical Anya, as I stood thrown by the sudden cynical take on her future. She’d decided what sh
e truly wanted wasn’t possible and I couldn’t tell who was more jaded, the idealist in me or pragmatist in Anya?

  Anya’s mum put on a spread and the small centre table was stacked edge to edge with every kind of cake imaginable. We settled into the couch for my favourite past time of tea and a chat – unfortunately my focus would occasionally drift due to the selection of jams.

  Home was a one-bedroom flat where mum slept on the couch and the little money coming in barely covered expenses. Anya’s home may have been humble, but she was driven. Seeing her mother make the best of what little they had, I could understand why she wanted to only make the best for her family, as I too had the same oil in my engine when I realised how much my talent could do for my loved ones.

  Back on the Siberian Express, I settled in for the next leg of the modelling tour that took me a further 800km to Siberia’s capital city, Novosibirsk. My home for the twelve-hour journey was a small brown cabin with a fold-down bed and small night-light. It was hardly the Ritz but it would do.

  Tigran’s company Noah Models ran the scouting tour and Anna Yuzhakova was his eyes and ears on the ground at every stop. It was a night train and not long after boarding, almost everyone had locked their doors and I began what was a fruitless pursuit of sleeping on a long-haul train. Running the tour for six years, Anna knew the detail and I wasn’t letting her occasional yawns and clunky hints that she was tired get rid of me any time soon.

  Fascinated by the idea that Siberia appeared to be the source of an endless stream of beautiful girls, I pushed Anna on what was in the proverbial water. She put it down to roots. The Ukrainian, Baltic states and Asian parts of Siberia all had left their own footprint on every family tree, leading to some of the most interesting features in the world. Anya went on to describe the common thread being height, good skin and incredible hair conditioning. Almost every girl at the first casting call had shiny thick hair down to her waist. Anna saw the mix of ethnicities as responsible.