Low pressure, good money, tasty food and lots of it: the catwalk is a cakewalk at Dubai Fashion Week, Maya Khourchid finds.
During a one-hour hour break between shows at Dubai Fashion Week, something is off backstage. The hallway is crammed with garments from the next collection to be showcased. Assistants busily iron out kinks from the couture. The hair and make-up room is predictably stuffy, with one hairdresser per girl, each armed with at least 20 hair products - and willing to spray liberally. As the models get their faces powdered and hair dried, curled and pinned, they are suitably sullen.
All this is to be expected. But where are the cat fights, the clawing over clothes, the competitive snarls? Where are the cliques, the cattiness and the general I'm-better-than-you attitude that fuel the likes of E! True Hollywood Stories and America's Next Top Model? In Europe, apparently. In conversation after conversation, I'm assured that Dubai is totally different: easier, more relaxed. Most of the girls lingering backstage (or smoking on the staircase outside) don't even want careers in modelling, which they see as a stepping stone to other opportunities, or a way to make money between life chapters. Stephanie Bacon, a 25-year old Briton, models to make extra money for university. She never planned to; an agent spotted her on the street in Spain. But now that she's almost done with school, it's time to move on.
Alexandra Kujavic, a sleek Serbian brunette, started out as singer back home, which led to several modelling contracts. Years later, she found herself in Dubai working for Emirates Airlines, and quickly realised that she could easily get back into modelling here. According to her, models in Dubai get paid higher hourly fees than elsewhere. But, as Bacon points out, since they give up their image and distribution rights, they generally make the same amount no matter how many times their pictures are used. This might hurt supermodels, but it helps beginners. In Europe, few beginner models make enough money to live comfortably, but here they definitely can. Plus there's better food.
"In Europe they feed you a salad and a sandwich," Kujavic says. "Here it's a five-course meal, as though you were flying in business class." A steady stream of buffet platters entering the off-limits "Staff and Model Lounge" seems to confirm this. Whether or not the five-star catering has anything to do with it, models are bigger in Dubai. Flesh, not bone, protrudes from the outfits sashaying down the runway. And while they are nowhere near the neighbourhood of overweight, Dubai's fashion week models are all bigger than the waiflike beings prowling runways elsewhere in the world.
Kujavic herself is on the thin side of average; certainly not emaciated. Neither is Roberta Georgiadia, a 23-year old Lithuanian model. "I couldn't work in Europe, I'm not skinny," she explains. "I'm thin but not so small." Kujavic theorises that "first of all, here they are trying to sell the clothes. Middle Eastern women are not so skinny, and they want to see how it is on them." At most shows, designers send their prototypes (which always hover around size zero) to the show organisers. For Dubai Fashion Week, the organisers pick the girls first, then send their measurements on to the designers.
The average Dubai Fashion Week model is also older than the average model elsewhere. Kujavic is 30 years old, though you can barely tell behind her sunglasses and long, dark extensions. "Here they call me a baby," notes Stephanie Silva, a 20-year old petite platinum blonde, somewhat dismayed. She's a seasoned model by other standards This all may be for the best. As Kujavic notes: "Everyone is healthy. No one is dying here."