When up-and-coming model Isabelle meets talented but jaded photographer Milo, sparks fly despite their age difference. Their romance becomes the talk of the New York City fashion scene, fueling rumors and speculation about their scandalous affair. A...
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She knew what the audition process was like. You get in, early in the morning, portfolio in tow. Maybe you had a coffee on the way or maybe this is one of those smack in the middle castings, in between the 7 others you have to haul ass to that morning.
You know you've found the room when you look around you and there are all beautiful people. Girls, some of them with a slight resemblance to you. You beat the urge to have an existential identity crisis the third time that day, and once checked in, you sit on one of the chairs if you can get one and you wait.
Sometimes, the girls are friendly. Chatting, gossiping, and smiling amongst familiar faces (it becomes a small world early on in this world). Other times, the environment is much more hostile, akin to that of a hunting field, and everyone sits meditatively in their chair, facing the wall.
For times like these, Isabelle found it easier to bring a book with her. In fact, she never even considered her a great reader until she moved to New York to pursue this modelling thing. Because then she was usually doing 1 of 2 things. Modelling or waiting (reading!).
It helped kill the time, and avoid any side eyes from all the girls click clacking their fingernails on their keyboards, tablets and screens.
Isabelle - known as Izzy to her close friends - didn't mind the waiting so much when she learned she could teach herself to be immersed in a different world altogether. Funny, considering this was the world she longed for, for so long.
Today, was a combination of the two scenarios provided above. There were some girls that seemingly knew each other, talking as if they were the only ones in the room, disregarding the others ostentatiously. Leaving the other girls to stare at the wall.
Isabelle shrugged this off as soon as she saw what kind of room she walked into, found a corner, and dove her nose into a book. The Portrait of a Lady. Henry James. It was taking her a while to get through it, but she was in no rush. She was young. She had all the time in the world.
Isabelle was like your typical model-comes-to-new-york-city story, except she wasn't.
From a town in the midwest, she grew up the prettiest in her town. Her parents didn't seem to make much out of it, though they didn't seem to mind it either. Taking to acknowledging it as fact when somebody would compliment their young daughter, whetter at dance lessons or school.
She was very much middle class. Nothing special about her upbringing. Yes, her dad was a dentist, but her mom worked as an admin assistant at his practice. So they had money, but not a lot of extra of it.
When Isabelle got to high school, she became deeply confused. Her body had outgrown her mind, and her beauty became an obstacle rather than an advantage. For she did not yet know how to control this power she seemingly had.
Naturally quiet, after the popular girls in school gave her a try, thinking she would be a good asset to have on that survival team (cheerleading, parties, guys, smirnoff ices at sleepovers), they decided not to pursue her into their squad when they saw that she wasn't as willing to play along.
Her naturally shyness, and awkwardness led her to become a part of the middle-of-the-range social hierarchy high school kids. Not quite popular but not losers - overachievers and school council participants. Leaving that group in turn confused of why Isabelle was with them and not the popular kids.
But the truth was that she didn't quite fit into anywhere. She knew she had to choose side for the sake of survival, but she looked back at those days with a certain bitterness.
Especially when, the summer after freshman year she got recruited by the only local modleing agency in the vicinity of several cities to be on their roster.
It happened one day, when a few of her mother's friends had a get together, and an almost intervention, telling her mother that she must sign Isabelle up somewhere.
So after doing some research, and after getting Isabelle's hesitant approval, they drove many miles for a casting.
Isabelle was signed on the spot, and it was easy. In fact, so easy, that she had the impression that it was all going to be smooth sailing from now on.
But it wasn't.
It was beginners luck.
See, Isabelle knew she was pretty. But she also knew it would only get her that far. She had other things inside of her that couldn't be expressed and a pain and loneliness the came form nowhere one day and seemed to remain there in some capacity in her since.
Either way, she did not truly believe that this was going to be her life.
Yes, she fantasized about the girls in the magazines, and was herself surprised when she got signed. She mused about the hand of fate, and how only because she was tall and skinny she had this opportunity.
She didn't tell anyone at school. Because they knew what they would think: 'who do you think you are?'
She did her best to stay humble to avoid the risk of being ostracized.
She started getting jobs. Nothing special. Catalogues, tv placements. Local businesses (which she was always worried about in case somebody from school saw).
One day that summer, she was lying on the cool leather ouch, slowly eating a lime popsicle in the middle of the day, trying desperately to beat the heat.
It was the day after her 15th birthday, and she got a call from the agency.
Pack your bags. They said. You're going to Paris.
Paris, Texas?
France.
By some stroke of luck, an up and coming designer saw her in one of the international catalogues and decided she would be a perfect fit for the brand.
Paris! When she hasn't even been out East of the US.
She looked at her parents, her parents looked at her, and with a shrug let her go. Her mother was convicted it would be good for her character. Her father didn't understand the modelling business, but told her to be careful - just in case.
And that was it. Her break. After Paris, she signed on with a bigger agency in NY, on the condition that once she turn 18 she would move to the city and model full time.
But even before that, she had to start home school her junior year. After Paris it was Tokyo, and then Berlin and a variety of other cities that she provably would never have gone to if she stayed in the Midwest.
After Paris, something in her clicked. Once she had a taste of this otherworld, this intoxicating jungle of the underworld of glamour and models and beauty and youth...she knew she could never go back to her old life. She wanted this. Not her basic high school friends, not the life that was waiting or her after in that town. But this. The promise of something altogether bigger than her.
