In search of Asian models
Roman Yang builds stepping stones for Asian models in US
For a long time, the fashion markets in America and Europe seemed impossible for Asian models to enter. Asian models hardly appeared in the TV commercials or campaign advertisements of big fashion labels of department stores until Korean model Park Sung-jin shot a global ad campaign for Italian luxury brand Bottega Venetta and Choi Sora appeared in the French fashion house Louis Vuitton’s ads.
Chinese American casting director Roman Young is a pioneer in finding and exposing Asian models in the American fashion market. Pursuing his 20-year career in fashion at the world’s biggest modeling agency Wilhelmina Models, Young left the company to establish his own model management The Young Bloods and started casting Asian models.
“I found my branch in Seoul last year is constantly seeking talent here which I believe is currently the hottest fashion hub in Asia,” said Young during the interview with The Korea Times at Dongdaemun Deseign Plaza (DDP) in Jongno, Seoul, on Oct. 20.
Young established partnership with local model agencies including YG Kplus, Aconic, Curmas and Ghost to help Korean models advance in the global fashion field. Young has successfully exported top Korean models like Park Sora, Bae Yoon-young and Park Sup, who have walked on the runways of Chanel, Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Q Why did you visit Korea? A The primary reason of my visit is to see the talent I represent and the future talent I’ve been following and new talent I’ve never met.
Q You are based in New York. How do you find new Asian talent?
A I think it’s a combination of everything. Of course, social media has changed the landscape of scouting and it has worked to our favor. There have been a few that I scouted directly through Instagram. Some people have messaged me directly on Instagram so they just typed in Roman Young and messaged me directly.
It happens often. They will direct message me — I don’t get the message directly, I have to check the foreign team but every once a while I get quite a few.
Q How often do you get direct messages on Instagram? A Normally it’s the people who won’t be thinking about modeling that have better chances, not always but generally.
Outside social media, it is my contacts, my team here that is very good at identifying talent who didn’t have representation and maybe doing lookbook for local designer or they were in a TV commercial or something that they weren’t fully professional models yet, so my team has reached out to those people to explain what we do, introduce me to them and start talking.
It’s a mixture of many different connections on the social level as well. Maybe a designer might know a model or a clothing brand might suggest one.
Q Korean models have always been there. But why have they become so popular these days? A This is a very good question because this comes up quite a bit even in the international scouting discussions, why Korea?
For me it’s very clear. The Korean market is really developed culturally with fashion, style, media. I think Koreans dress better than most Americans. Their fashion sense, their ability to catch on with the trends very quickly and their isolated aspects of Korea makes the maturity level of fashion very high. Models are very intelligent about what’s going on in culture and fashion.
The proximity of American culture has made them more easily adoptable to American things as opposed to people in countries such as China, where it’s so massive, you can get a girl from the countryside where she has never seen a fashion show, she doesn’t know what fashion is.
But in Korea everyone is tapped in. So the level of sophistication is very high.
On top of that, I think Seoul is more international than most cities. When I tell Korean models they need to learn English, they are not fighting me about that. Of course they know some words, they know some basic phrases, some already speak English, but if they don’t, they are for more driven and they have access to learn English like this. That coupled with the ability for Koreans to travel globally, a Korean passport is very powerful as a tool for traveling globally. So already we are working in an industry that’s quite global in fashion. So there are shoots happening in the Himalayas or in New York, or Mexico City or Paris, and at the last minute the models have to grab their passports and go to the job. If the model is Chinese, they can’t do it. They have to wait two weeks for a VISA. If they are Russian, they can’t do it. If you go down the whole list of countries that cannot travel at a moment’s notice.
But Korea, like America, is one of those countries where you can go right away. This is a very powerful tool in securing work and making sure you are moving up on the fashion ladder to secure a job.
Q Why did you decided to scout Asian models?
A When I was growing up, in western culture, it was very are to see much Asian beauty represented in media and fashion, much less mixed beauty. So when I started 25 years ago, I felt, as I was becoming more mature in this business, I was going to change what I see. And if I have the power to scout, I am going to scout whoever I want. And I would like the rest of the world to distinguish Chinese, Korean and Japanese like we can. And I think it is possible if they see enough representative beauty constantly, they will start to recognize the differences. It is my responsibility to expose that beauty.
Q What is the ratio of ethnic models for talent in the American fashion market?
A I would say 70 percent are still Caucasian. And sometimes Latinos are included in the Caucasian category because they can pass as Caucasian. But I feel that the next chunk of beauty would be Asian and black. I would say it’s mostly Caucasian, a lot of Asians and black models. I think fashion follows the majority the demographic. So just as you have a majority Korean population, the Asian population here will not see many Caucasian models because they are not selling to Caucasians. In America and Europe the majority of the culture is Caucasian. America, thankfully, is the one country in the world of fashion, where there is a lot of power, that has very diverse demographic.
That is being reflected in the magazines that took a lot of pushing. But until people that were Asian or Black assumed positions of power in the media, they were not represented. So maybe there were lots of black people, lots of Asian people, but they weren’t being hired because the casting directors were Caucasian and editors didn’t think of that.
As culture and social media created more exposure of beauty and trends, they had to react. And at the same time Asian, black, and Latino editors start to move up and say ‘Hey, you know what. I want to see myself too.’ Scouts like myself started pushing models to the Asian editors now at big American magazine and together you start to expose them.
But I think everything is driven by sales. We have more data about sales.