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Nor will her income be glamourous. Virtually all statistics in the modeling business are the figment of someone's creative imagination. Best estimates are that only about 50 or 60 of New York's 1,000 photographic models make between $10,000 and $20,000 a year. Among them are two outstanding up & coming fashion models, a sensational, Lauren Bacallish redhead named Kathryn Cassidy, 23, and a sultry Maryland beauty named Jean Patchet, 22. About 75 models make between $8,000 and $10,000 at rates up to $25 an hour. The rest charge from $5 to $15 an hour and often do not find enough work to make ends meet. Lisa Fonssagrives is alone in charging $40 an hour.
The Day of a Model. What makes a face and a figure worth $40 an hour? The answer to that lies in the way Lisa Fonssagrives works.
Last week, one of Lisa's typical days began at 7 a.m., when she arose at her converted gardener's cottage in Muttontown^ Long Island. She breakfasted in bed, listened to her eight-year-old daughter Mia read her lessons. She drove 35 miles to Manhattan in her red-upholstered Studebaker convertible. On the road, she was something of a hazard. An amateur plane pilot, she considers any speed under 70 m.p.h. dull. She fretted at whistling truck drivers and ogling motorists/'There will be an accident for sure," she said, "and those silly men will get us all tickets."
Her first Manhattan stop was her office, where she picked up" gloves, shoes and a list of bookings which her secretary had prepared for her. Then she went to Seventh Avenue for a fitting of a dress she would model later in the week. From Seventh (where a gown is a garment, a batch of dresses a line and a model a dearie), she taxied two blocks east to Fifth (where a garment is a creation, a line a collection and a dearie a darling). After a session with the hairdresser (Lisa's hair, which used to be black and then red, is now ash blonde), she rushed to a sitting with old friend Horst at the Vogue studios. Two hours later, she raced on (without stopping for lunch) to another sitting with Photographer Henry Gravneek. She retouched her make-up in the taxi. Says she: "It makes for the most interesting variations depending on which way the driver takes the bumps." As she entered the studio, Designer Taylor was on hand to introduce Lisa to the black cocktail dress she was to model. While the designer pulled and pinned the dress into place, she patted Lisa Fonssagrives' modest bosom and said: "Darling, you'll simply have to fill that out. You know what I want—the Maxime look."
"Well," said Lisa with resignation, "it's a leettle difficult when one has never been chez Maxime, but I think the feeling will come." The feeling came with the addition of some falsies.* There were crises over shoes (wrong ankle straps) and gloves (too shiny) and the necklace (too large). But presently the massed lights went on, all shadows withering in the merciless crossplay. (Many models are less than brilliant conversationalists. Says Lisa, an excellent one: "Sometimes I think all these hot lights numb the brain.")
Then Photographer Gravneek quietly started shooting, only now & then asking Lisa to turn a bit this way or that. Thirty minutes and 16 camera clicks later, it was all over.