03/12/2026
Unless you’ve worked backstage at a fashion show, you’ll never truly know the intricacies that happen behind those curtains. Part of what makes our show successful are our models. In order to walk in you have to have professionalism, poise, care for your craft and be ready to walk.
A perfect walk doesn’t happen overnight, so we start off the year with some castings to find models that will make the show pop. We’ve even hosted some model boot camps in the past and will again at no cost to our models that are booked for the show. And yes we do also pay our models, in order to see real growth in the Chicago fashion industry we understand that the model (no pun intended) has to be a hybrid of hiring and education.
Diversity is so important in casting, as a woman and poc it is important to me that I book models from all walks of life. What I see in my shows are what I see in my world, especially in Chicago. We book agency and non-agency models in order to bridge a gap in the model industry, and we’re happy when we see non-agency models join one because there are benefits to having an agency.
Do you want to hear more thoughts on how modeling is integral to building our fashion industry here in Chicago? Let us know what you’re curious about, we get so many DMs from aspiring models, we decided we’re going to start being more transparent about what we know
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