Fashion
Sitting Pretty
New "ugly” models agency offers hot properties
rrr269@nyu.edu
When the owner of Shadow Casting was asked to find a rugged 1960s-era ex-sailor who would sit naked in a chair for a furniture ad, she knew just where to look.
Ugly NY is perhaps New York City’s only modeling agency specializing in booking non-professionals. The agency, a new offshoot of an established London firm, represents models sized zero to 30; little people of four feet and under; and sumo wrestlers, old ladies, drag queens and tattooed bikers, among others.
“Other agencies avoid these kinds of people,” said the Shadow casting director, Renée Torrière. “Ugly has made a home for them.”
Ugly, which opened in the summer of 2007, is the sister agency to the well-known Ugly in London, the first character model agency there in 1969. Ugly NY has signed on nearly 300 models so far.
Ex-lawyer Asher Suss signed with Ugly in August. Using his best Eeyore impersonation voice, he describes his character as “the working guy who has got to get up and make the donuts.”
Whatever that means, his strategy has worked. He was booked into a video ad directed by fashion photographer Nigel Barker, of the TV show “America’s Next Top Model.”
Suss played a taxi driver. He was fine with that.
“If people want me and they’re going to pay me for it, then I’m just gonna go with it,” he said.
British expat Simon Rogers founded Ugly NY, after working for more than 20 years as a fashion model. His friend Marc French – the pair have been friends since they were teenagers – runs the British affiliate. The pair hope to expand their brand to other cities, among them Los Angeles and Berlin.
Its name notwithstanding, Ugly NY doesn’t just represent the odd and grotesque, but real people, its reps say. The agency believes it is tapping into a shift in advertising trends, in which advertisers seek models who look more like customers, on the theory that the customers can better relate to them.
The agency gets up to 100 e-mailed applications per day. But photos that give a good laugh are filed in a desk drawer.
Ugly NY talent representative Yvette Ulrich says that New York is the best city for this kind of agency.
“A lot of New Yorkers, they’re not trying to be anything else: this is it, they show up as is,” she said. “It’s not like they’re getting dressed up in the morning, that’s who they are.”
Ugly models can sometimes earn the same rates as runway or other traditional models, though mainly it expects to offer part-time gigs paying a few hundred dollars a day.
“I tell them, you can make money being you, the way that you look, because it’s beautiful,” Ulrich said.
Native New Yorker Najwa Moses welcomes the chance to make money from her appearance, whether or not the looks she gets are flattering.
“My hair is unusual and I’m pretty tall, so I’m always getting looks,” she said. “Some are positive and some are negative, but they’re looking.”
She was booked as an extra for the movie version of Sex in the City because, she said, the directors liked her different but fashionable look.
Model Betul Alganatay, featured on Manhattan Storage ad on billboards, says she chose Ugly NY because she didn’t want to get lost in a bigger agency.
“Ugly has a different attitude towards the business,” she said. “They look at it in a human way.”
Anyway, there’s really no such thing as ugly, according to Rogers. “There’s boring,” he said. “But not ugly.”
“There will always be room for Giselle in her undies,” Rogers said. “But we think there is room for so much more.”
Soon after signing on with Ugly NY, ex-lawyer Asher Suss was booked to play a taxi driver in a fashion video.
Photo courtesy of Ugly NY.