How exactly are you meant to react when a stranger sends you a message via social media? Do you delete it right away? Or do you pay it some of your attention by giving it a look?
Regardless of what you decide, there is no denying the ease of how they found you, and how you can respond.
“Hi, I work for a modelling agency and we like your look, could you maybe send us some polaroids?”
Case in point: when Ewa Wladymiruk was fifteen years old, she had received this message on her Facebook account.
Now flash forward to today – and she’s walking for some of the largest names in the industry (think Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and Alexander Wang). How did social media go from being a simple way to connect with friends to being one of the best mediums for good business?
The Internet is a tool more powerful than its creators could have ever imagined. In more recent years, social media has made its way to the top tiers of importance in the Internet world and has changed the way that we lives our lives.
In the fashion world, it has without a doubt reinvented the modelling industry.
If you were to ask the most famous models how they got their start, they will likely tell you a story about the place they were discovered at and perhaps what they were doing.
But that same question likely has a very different answer for today’s up-and-coming fresh beats – and we’d hazard a guess that it isn’t uncommon for many to have been given their start from a simple IM.
At the click of a button, agencies can skim through photos of people all over the world without having to step foot out of the office.
Those pretty faces that took valuable time and expensive travel costs to coincidentally run into… now only take moments. So what’s the effect of this?
Without a doubt it has evolved from an elite to an ordinary process. All of the time and resources it once took scouting a new face have all been cut down and combined into a simple digital format.
Now anyone with an Internet connection can easily discover anyone else at any end of the Earth. Because of this, the prestige of the process has changed significantly.
At the same time, agencies have the ability to be pickier. They might scrutinize the faces of the future a little more harshly than they did in the past due to how easy the whole process has become.
Modelling isn’t known for being the most relaxed profession, so with endless photos to look through, agents have the ability to make their choices wisely. This creates a higher echelon of standard for the industry, producing more cut-throat reactions.
In the past it was entirely up to whether an agency liked someone’s look before they reached out to them. Now an image of someone can go viral based on the audience viewing and “liking” it.
When you think about this in terms of its ripple effect – it’s pretty amazing. No doubt, this incredible feature makes agency’s decisions very safe.
Before they had to guess what kind of person the public would react positively to, but with the introduction of social media, they’ll already know. After someone goes viral on the Internet, it’s simply up to the agency to be the first to jump on contacting the individual.
What a super-power, eh?
Social media has without a doubt changed the way the modelling industry operates, yet at the same time it’s levelled the playing field a bit more. While it has made agencies jobs much more convenient, it has simultaneously empowered those being sought out more than ever.
Though we can’t say for certain how this platform will continue to change the industry, it’s clear that it has the capacity to evolve as quick as a mouse click.
