Spotlight on Ohlone
Sammie Smith on model behavior
By Andrew Le, Staff writer.
Thursday, April 24, 2008 — Monitor.
Sammie Smith, student.
— Photo by Andrew Cavette.
Sammie Smith is down to earth, devoid of eating disorders, lacks a trendy drug habit and is the antithesis of the modeling stereotype.
Currently a student at Ohlone, Sammie is dropping her classes and moving to New York to further her modeling career.
In Manhattan, she’ll be paying $1,000 a month to share a two-room apartment with “five to seven other models”.
Her parents uphold her decision, “but they’re kinda freaking out because it’s New York.”
When questioned about how she was going to finance her living, she admitted that, “models don’t make that much money, unless they’re Tyra Banks status.”
Smith expects to have to get another job to support herself.
“The amount of models,” she added, “that actually make a good living off of being a model in New York I’d say is about 15 to 20 percent.”
Sammie Smith, model.
— Photo courtesy of Sammie Smith.
“Models don’t get paid much at all; like for the cover of Vogue, it’s $200.”
With a standard five to six hours spent “standing in awkward positions for a really long time” per shoot, modeling pays less than most people expect.
Furthering Smith’s difficulties is the modeling ban prevalent in most of Europe restricting runway models to ones with a BMI of over 18.
As a result, Smith is for the most part restricted to work within the United States.
So far, she hasn’t been getting much work due to her novelty to the industry.
However, she “just did this big convention in LA for a week [with competitions] and there’s a lot of agencies from all around the world.”
“It doesn’t seem real yet,” is how she sums up her feelings about the whole thing.
As for her future plans, models are usually considered “too old to model by 25.” As a result, if modeling “doesn’t work, I have school to fall back on.”
Originally, she was hesitant to tell people she was a model, due to some unrealistic and less than pleasant assumptions the average person may make about the job.
Those assumptions, she firmly believes, aren’t true; at least not in her experience.
When asked why she was willing to put up with all these struggles she explained that fashion “becomes your life. If you don’t love it, you just won’t do very well.”
And on the bright side of things, since designers sometimes let models keep the clothes, in the worst case scenario, at least she’ll come out of her experiences with an “awesome wardrobe.”
