Rule 208: Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a
question is an answer
— Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
So what kinds of models are there? A lot more than most people know about. If you try to become a kind you aren’t suited for, you’ll likely spend a lot of time running into walls. Fashion vs. Commercial vs. Editorial
Pick up the latest issue of Vogue and you will see primarily three types of modeling. If Diana Dondoe is lensing for a Prada
ad, then it’s a fashion “campaign” (fashion advertising). If Canadian bombshell Daria Werbowy has turned a story on fashion into a pictorial page-turner, then it’s (fashion) editorial. Now, set aside Vogue and pick up a copy of Newsweek. The Citibank ad with all the smiling, happy customers in it is “commercial”. The distinction between the three really is complex.
The Formal Definitions: “Fashion” means things related to clothing, accessories and beauty products. “Commercial” means “things done to promote a company or product.” “Editorial” means things done to support an article or story in a magazine or book. “Editorial” can be about more than “fashion,” although in modeling usually “editorial” is short for “editorial fashion”. In Practice: “Commercial” can also be about fashion (they sell the clothes by advertising). “Editorial Fashion Agencies” usually consider showroom and catalog work as “commercial;” “Commercial Print Agencies” consider such work “fashion,” even though its intent is commercial. All this interlocking of terms is enough to make your head hurt, and the words are used differently depending on who is doing the using. For people whose experience is in advertising but not
fashion, “commercial” models are the people you see in ads for banks, autos, pharmaceuticals and all of the many other products and services that people are used to advertise. We will treat “commercial” in the latter sense, because agencies are aligned that way. An “editorial fashion” agency is very likely to have some “commercial” girls under contract, but they will be very different from what a commercial print agency thinks of as a “commercial model”. Fashion models also work as commercial models, although the reverse is rarely true. Commercial models are used as “extras” in fashion advertising and editorials however. There are many types of commercial models, and some kinds of modeling that are neither “fashion” nor “commercial.”
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