Finding the Next Supermodel

Boss lady Pujan Kapur Sharma, the model coordinator with FDCI, briefs the girls, “Show your style statement, walk up straight and don’t twirl, girls. It doesn’t work. Don’t be grouchy, be peaceful”. She follows this up with a walk in the designated ramp space. While quite stern, Sharma routinely adds a few words of encouragement, such as, “Tie up your hair. Everyone has a beautiful face”. All this, while she’s being nudged by some girls who wonder if shorts work better than knee-length leather skirt; or ask her if they can borrow someone’s rubber bands.

As commercial music plays in the background, the models stand in a queue in groups of eight. The first batch walks to Be sexy, a number set to repetitive ear-numbing beats that tells these girls to, well, be sexy. Ill-fitted shorts, tube tops, spaghetti straps, pimples hidden under layers of make-up, winged eyeliner, long strides, duck walks, glittery heels and a perpetually unimpressed jury. The first few minutes are dull and the supermodel dream feels even more distant.

B9 is asked to walk again, this time Sharma asks her to move her arms as well. Interestingly, “B9” is a lucky badge number. Auditions held in February this year resulted in a fine find — Parisian Sheherazade Dakhlaoui, also a “B9” holder. This season, too, B9 gets selected. “Sheherazade is such a stunner but she’s moved to Mumbai. I hope she comes back for the next fashion week,” says Gandhi, as he shows photos of the French beauty on his phone, in Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna’s creations. This time, Gandhi says, the “wow factor” is missing.

After the first round, the jury discusses the scores while the models wait in the room or saunter around the media enclosure for food. “Eat a biscuit, at least,” laments one to the other, almost cementing age-old modeling clichés. The nervousness is palpable. Some step out of the rooms to see if the jury is back, some walk out for a smoke, while a few gather around mirrors, reapplying lipstick. For a ramp regular such as Khusbhu Kankan, the ordeal is all too familiar. She was selected in the auditions in February, walked the runway at the Couture Week and the Autumn-Winter week in Delhi, and is now back to competing for a spot. “We are supposed to undergo at least four such auditions to become FDCI models. I hope I get through. I will eventually move to Mumbai and pursue Bollywood,” says Kankan. Group D comprises models like her who have cleared these auditions in the past. In round one, their experience helped as they strutted to a dreadful mix of California dreamin.

Sharma is back with the list of selected models for round two. From the lot, 20 are selected and the others are politely asked to leave. Preeti Rajib, an IAS aspirant, walks back with a smile, confident about cracking the exams, and comments how “foreign faces are taking over because they are biologically leaner”. Some stick around, asking Sharma and the rest of the FDCI crew where they went wrong. They go back with no answers. “We are not looking for a pretty face, we are looking for the right height, size and attitude. It’s about practicality — designers get a pool of models who wear their clothes. They have to be one size,” says Gandhi. The journey for the final 11 has only just begun.