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Premier Model Agency's Carole White reveals what it takes to be a model


September 21, 2016
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#HFMFashionSpin

This London Fashion Week, HELLO! Fashion Monthly has partnered with Land Rover to produce a series of videos featuring lots of our high-profile friends of the brand - we'll be chatting to designers, make-up and hair artists, models, agents, DJs and FROW regulars as we drive from show to show! Keep up to date with the hashtag #HFMFashionSpin for the latest updates.

You may recognise Carole and her team from Channel 4's series 'The Model Agency'. A team of model agents responsible for some of the biggest household names in modelling, from Naomi Campbell to Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista! On her books this year are HFM trend star Leomie Anderson and the up and coming Luna Bijl. Watch the video to see what the founder of Premier Model Management says about London Fashion Week's changes over the past 30 years and how, to be a model these days, you need more than just looks.

Video Transcription

How busy is it for you right now? It's nearly the last day, I've worked all weekend and my poor team have been up until 2am getting everything done. 

You've had the agency for 35 years?A long time, yeah. Since 1981. It's been very successful.

Can you name some of your girls for us?Oh yes, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Tatiana Patitz, Christy Turlington.

We shot Leomie, one of your newer girls.Oh she's fantastic. What a character!

Who else is coming through? We have a fantastic Dutch girl that we're the mother agent to called Luna Bijl. She did the August French Vogue cover, and then really rare, she's done the cover of October French Vogue. It was incredible, we couldn't believe. She's got another couple of covers coming out - she's zooming.

What do you need to make it as a model?The first thing is you need the height, obviously you need the beauty, but you also need to have a personality. You need to have that drive. With social media you have to work at it, and we notice that a lot of the e-commerce girls have a huge following where some of the high fashion girls don't.

Maybe because brands like ASOS for instance, girls are on there every day and they get to learn the models' faces... Yeah, I think so.

What about LFW itself, how has it changed in the years you've been in the business?Oh massively. It used to be quite amateurish, it wasn't as big, and then in the last 10 years it became more professional, they got the locations right and started to control the designers a lot more. 

What advice would you give to aspiring models?I suppose one bit of advice for getting into modelling for me, would be it's a really great job, but it is a job!

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