Boy Model Search Winner

Congrats, Christian!

Age: 5   Height: 3’10″    Size: 5/6T
Based in NYC
Seeking Representation

Christian Lawrence looking like he’s ready for a Ralph Lauren campaign!

Stay tuned on this dapper dude. I bet an agency will snap him up quickly!

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Model Search Update

Drum roll, please . . . I’ve had so many great submissions in the last few months that I’m going to start posting winners in various categories! Look for FOUR posts this month showcasing a different beauty or cutie. I still have more models in my inbox that the world should see, so expect multiple winners next month also. If you’ve submitted in the last few months, YOU STILL COULD BE A WINNER NEXT MONTH OR THE MONTH AFTER!

Child Model – Boy – Winner

Congrats, AJ Vaval!

I had quite a few super dashing young gents in my inbox this month, but this adorable toddler wins for the first spot in October. (Expect to see a few more boys posted in November!)

• Amari James “AJ” Vaval
• Brooklyn, New York
• Clothing 18-24 months, 2T
• Shoe 6, 7
• Height ~35″
• Weight ~30 lbs
• Seeking Representation

AJ Vaval, October Model of the Month 2018, Child Model – Boy Category

Child model AJ Vaval

Irresistible AJ Vaval

AJ Vaval, going places!

Enter the Modeling Mentor Model Search!

British Model Lilli-Mae Lacy

Lilli-Mae Lacy

Height: 5’2″    Age: 12    Size: 4-6

Based in Devon, England

Seeking Representation in London

Lilli-Mae Lacy—stunning selfie!

This beauty jumped out of my inbox with her luminescent skin and perfect features! Simply stunning. While this age and height can be tricky (she’s growing out of child modeling and has yet to grow into the women’s division) an agency should snap up Lilli-Mae now while they have the chance! She comes from a long line of leggy ancestors (including an aunt and grandma both giraffe-y at six feet!). 

Remember, your submissions are still eligible for next month!

Don’t forget to “like” the page of your favorite Model of the Month

Lilli-Mae Lacy

Ashlyn Tracy, shot by Debra Somerville

Ashlyn Tracy, shot by Debra Somerville

Height: 4’1″    Age: 6    

Based in NYC

Represented by DWKing Talent Management 

Tell me this isn’t the cutest mug you’ve ever seen on modelingmentor.com? I’m looking forward to watching this sweet girl, with her incredibly marketable face, hit the big time!

Remember, your submissions are still eligible for next month!

Don’t forget to “like” the page of your favorite Model of the Month

Well, it started with an old modeling friend calling to see if my eight-year-old wanted to do an acting camp with her ten-year-old in New York last summer. Seemed like a great way to get away from my four-kid household and spend some quality time with a girlfriend in my favorite city and J, a dancer and extrovert, was up for it. So we signed up our kids for casting director Madelyn Burns acting camp at Performing Options. It’s pricey but run by actual casting directors and concludes with a showcase for actual agents. The waiting room has “Dance Moms” potential—Southern moms hanging around for six hours each day gabbing about their kids (h-ello, it’s New York! There are a gazillion better things to do!). Anyway, the kids loved it, and after day 2, Madelyn approached me and asked if J had an agent. She said, “That kid needs an agent.” Who am I to argue? Next thing I know he interviews at Shirley Grant (management company that launched the Jonas Brothers and reps many of the kids on Broadway) and he’s signed on.

Now on top of dance classes four days a week here and Saturday afternoons at Alvin Ailey in the city, we’re running to auditions in New York after school. Luckily, only about four a month. Unluckily, they seem to come in batches, so we’re bouncing in and out of the city like pinballs some weeks. It’s exciting, though, and only a tad depressing that many of the auditions are held in the same places I used to frequent as talent not stage mom. Now there is a new crop of poreless vixens crowding the places, texting and using slang words I don’t understand.

I know, what’s all this have to do with the Huggies casting? Well, my old partner (Tear Sheet) was holding a casting for Joe Fresh and needed toddlers. He asked if I could bring mine. But she needed representation. I asked J’s booker if they’d rep her for the casting. Why? Temporary insanity? Equal opportunity model mom? I don’t know, but I emailed some pics of her and they agreed. The Joe Fresh job didn’t pan out, but then out of the blue the agency calls with a Huggies casting for her. I can’t really say no (cardinal rule: You don’t say no to your agent—or your son’s agent). So I have to come up with an outfit for her with no stain on it by the next morning and figure out what to do with her hair (fourth child—haircuts don’t happen). And BTW, aspiring model moms, castings generally come in the day before, sometimes the day of. You don’t get advance notice.

On the train platform, it’s funny, because there is a little girl about the same age as T, all dressed up, with her dad. For a second I think maybe they are going to the same place. Then I realize how ridiculous that is, seeing as we are in Connecticut, an hour from New York, there are numerous stops in between, and many things a dad and daughter might be doing, the least likely of which is an outing to a Huggies casting in New York.

We have a really nice ride to the city. From Norwalk on (5 minutes in), T gets up at each stop and chirps, “We’re in New Yoik?!” (For some reason she has a Brooklyn accent.) Her enthusiasm is not diminished by the ten times that I have to respond, “No, not yet.” At the casting, guess who we run into? Yep the dad and his little cutie pie. I let him know I’m relieved I am not the only lunatic living in our town.

Despite the large crowd in the waiting room at the casting agency, they shuffle the kids in and out swiftly. This is one thing I’ve noticed on auditions with J, they definitely respect kids’ limited attention spans and move ‘em through. It’s remarkable. At this audition, I also notice that most of these little tykes are not New Yorkers. They are dressed up in fancy frocks that scream New Jersey and Long Island. The casting directors aren’t going to care about that. What they care about is if your toddler will happily leave you and head off with a stranger into a different room where they must smile, laugh, act cute and forget all about mommy. The boy before us comes out in tears. I try to distract T so she doesn’t get any ideas.

She must not have because I was told she was “great” and got a call later that day saying she had to go back the next day for a callback. And the day after that there might be a fitting. Seriously, for a two-year-old modeling diapers?

After the struggle of trying to come up with a second unstained outfit, we headed in again the following morning. T was still game. I was not sure what to wish for. Again I was told she was “great” and that “she by far has the coolest wardrobe of all the kids we’ve seen.” Wow, I duped them. She was wearing pink Converse high tops, and her “MC Hammer pants” (that’s what my husband calls them). Most of her clothes are hand-me-downs, but they came from the sale box of a French vendor at the Christmas Fair at a friend’s kids’ school in England. They are really cool. We left with a coupon for a free package of Huggies (nice) and went up to Toys R Us in Times Square for a ride on the ferris wheel. Luckily T did not get a call for the fitting or the job, because she would have shown up in something from Carter’s and her cool girl image would have been shattered.

That might be it for T’s modeling career. Unless someone figures out a way to clone stage moms. But if any of my kids do venture into the field again, I’ll take the advice I just gave a friend. She tries hard to raise her girls as smart, resourceful, ambitious leaders (like herself) and shuns shallow values. But her daughter, who likes acting and singing and has her mom’s gorgeous Mexican-American looks, is often told she should model. My friend of course worries about the superficial nature of this industry and the messages it sends. I say, her daughter should use modeling as a platform to become a spokesperson for what she believes in (as many models have) and donate part of what she makes, so that modeling is a means to an end. It’s when it’s the be all and end all that it’s a problem.

Up next: my interview with Good Morning America‘s Lara Spencer, a supermom and now an author as well as TV personality (her book, I Brake for Yard Sales, is out!).

1. Clients in New York will fly in a kid from Iowa for a modeling job cuz she’s just so cute.

REALITY: Most kids are cute. Clients aren’t going to look farther than New York agencies (who rep children from the Greater New York area, including kids whose moms are nuts enough to haul them to castings in the city from New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut. Brooke Shields, one of the most famous child models, was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey).

Brooke Shields, Age 14

2. Their l’il darling will make oodles of money and mom and dad will be able to retire.

REALITY: Most child models make very little money. You’re lucky to recoup train fare for an editorial (magazine) job. The most my son earned on a catalog job was $600. (I think. I have to look it up, because he’s eight now and wants to know where the money went. Uh, diapers?). Once you take out agency commission (usually 20 percent) and figure in all the castings you schlep to for jobs that your mini model does not book (and perhaps a sitter to watch siblings at home), money-wise you’d be better off answering one of those “Work From Home” ads in the classifieds.

3. Your child’s cuteness will totally make up for the fact that he is a shy kid.

REALITY: Personality is just as important as looks. A child model needs to be extroverted, bubbly, smiley, enthusiastic, patient, obedient, and independent, in addition to adorable.

So as not to imply that my kids all fit this near-impossible bill, let me explain why each of them has dabbled in modeling.

My oldest started modeling at a few months of age because he actually is many of those things and being in the fashion scene again, even if just kiddie shoots, made me feel ever so slightly cool—a feeling new moms wearing curdled milk on their sweaters crave with a vengeance. He got by without patience and obedience because he was fascinated by the lights, music, and crew, and genuinely enjoyed dancing, bouncing beach balls, playing instruments, and other fun stuff he was directed to do on set. He never wanted to leave any shoot he went on. We both enjoyed the paid playdates.

The twins were born in Madrid, where fair-haired models have an edge (regardless of age, those who look most exotic to the locals are often in highest demand; e.g. Giselle here, and tow-heads in Spain). There was an agency right down the street from where we lived, and I was lonely. Shoots seemed like a good place to meet people who spoke English. My daughter was a great little model until she turned two and decided she only wanted to wear pink. That’s when her career ended. Her twin brother and I had our best day ever—perhaps our only day ever without other siblings along—when he was three and posed for a catalog shoot in the mountains outside Madrid. He was tasked with: running up and down a hill over and over again, jumping in mud puddles, and riding a tricycle in the house. Suffice it to say, keeping a smile on his face wasn’t an issue.

My fourth—well, she’s adorable and has the perfect personality for mini modeling but she’s big for her age (not a plus for child models; read why here) and, come on, I have four kids; a career; somehow I ended up co-chair of the school’s literary magazine; and my postman hates me because I ignore my mailbox in hopes that its contents will just go away. In other words, no way do I have time to be running a toddler to New York (a one-hour train ride) for castings!

Stay tuned to find out why I ended up doing just that and how my eight-year-old wound up with an acting agent. PLUS, what to suggest to your kid who wants to model, if the superficial values of the industry conflict with those you are trying to instill.