Women's Wear Daily Evolution of Modeling Workshop
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Women's Wear Daily Workshop in Meatpacking, NYC on the evolution of modeling. The panel discussion included two female models, Nathalie Paris and Danielle Knudson, as well as their agent to discuss the ins and outs of modeling today. The conversation revolved around how social media, mainly Instagram, has affected their careers. They talked about how they got discovered and started in modeling. One girl was making make up tutorials on youtube and a certain video attracted enough views to go viral. The other model had been modeling ever since she was 5, and received a shout out by Justin Bieber!
There was a lot conversation about Instagram specifically, how they gained more followers, techniques on how to get more likes on Instagram, etc. Nathalie has close to 1Million followers and gets 40-50,000 likes per post. Brands are definitely selecting models based on their social media followers. Nathalie and Danielle talked a lot about how they try to stay true to themselves with either modeling jobs or just posting pictures on Instagram. Their advice on how they gained more views is to reach out to other people. If one blogger or model takes a picture with another together, their followers will tend to intersect and follow each other. They also talked a lot about taking advantage of what Instagram offers including Instagram livestream and Instagram stories, and of course hashtags and tags are great ways to connect and engage with followers.
Another topic that was discussed was do people value a picture or the caption more, and the response was that posting a quality picture should match the quality of the caption. The caption is really a persons way of communicating with the audience and tell them what they should be looking at. The quality of the picture is important because it should be a way of telling the story that you want to tell. The physical quality, either taken on a professsional camera vs the iphone, is noticeably different. Though the iphone captures both you and the background that you are in, the professional camera is better at focusing on one subject. When models post pictures, they always post it with a quality camera because it looks more professional and it's better for focusing on them. The setting of where you take it is also important. You want to take a photo with a background that shows character. Of course it's cool when you post something with an extravagant background like a skyline or a beach, but even just a simple brick wall or an object in the background will tell the story. If there's a taxi in the back, you can tell I'm in a city.
A question was brought up that I thought was interesting, it was "Where do you think the future of social media is going?" The agent said something that I didn't think of. He said that he thinks there will be more video taking and less pictures. He talked about how people will prefer to watch more vlogs and read blogs because you can see someone personality more clearly. You can get to know a vlogger more clearly because you know how they act and you have more of a connection with them. I think that is somewhat true, but bloggers are in a way more helpful with stuff too. People turn to bloggers to find information faster because people like asking a question and getting a direct answer. A vlogger could answer your question, but if you want to refer quickly to, lets say, 5 fun places to go to in NYC or picture ideas for a night out, you're going to want to see something fast rather than finding the video and having to find the certain part where it answers the question.
The WWD workshop was very informative and it gave me some good pointers for my blog and social media. Afterwards, I walked around the Meatpacking District, went into a lot of stores and took some photos. WWD was holding an after party, where they allowed the guests to try the virtual 4D world using the Samsung phone. I did a surfing one and it was amazing to see how real it was. There was were a lot of NYFW pop-up stores including Maybelline shop with free make overs and Lexus sponsored display for cool pics.
