Role models
Addison Gill and Madison Schill hope their website helps smooth the runway for fashion industry
As she prepared to step onto a runway for the first time in two years, Addison Gill was surrounded by excitement: stylists making last-minute adjustments, makeup artists and hair stylists carefully touching up their work, more than a dozen other models preparing to walk in Pink Tartan’s runway show during the World MasterCard Fashion Week in March. Yet Gill, 21, was calm. “It felt so empowering to be back, and feeling this calm, inner strength, knowing that this is what I love to do and I am so happy to be part of the entire experience,” said Gill, who was born in Caledonia, Ont., and achieved international success as a teenager modelling in New York, Paris, Milan and Tokyo.
The Pink Tartan show was the first major step in a career Gill wants to revive. She began in 2006 at 14, and won the major V Magazine Model Search a year later.
She first walked a runway for Calvin Klein in New York City, then appeared in shows for Valentino and Louis Vuitton in Paris. She was featured in Teen Vogue and Fashion, on the covers of Italian Vogue, French Elle and Flare and was once named one of Canada’s 50 most beautiful by Hello! Canada.
By age 19, Gill wanted a break.
“I wanted to figure out who Addison is as a person, instead,” said Gill. She enrolled at the University of Toronto (U of T). “I’m really glad that I had the chance to do that because I feel like, coming back into modelling now, I have a greater self-understanding that I’m able to share with other people as well.”
She does that through the website Mind Over Model, which she created in August 2014 with Madison Schill, her best friend and another ex-model, to share their experiences with anyone who wants a career in that industry.
Gill and Schill couldn’t be more alike: They met at Schill’s first fashion show in New York more than five years ago and bonded immediately. Schill, 21, is from Oshawa and was born three days after Gill. Both are tall and slim with long, brown hair and pale skin. Now based in Toronto, they love Taylor Swift songs and are proud of their awkward dance moves. And, of course, their names rhyme.
Schill, too, began modelling at 16. She moved to New York after high school but, two years later, after opening the Ballets Russes-inspired Clover Canyon show during that city’s fashion week, she realized she’d checked every box on her list of modelling goals.
She had appeared in Flare, then the French and Italian editions of Vogue. She called Paris home for seven months. And, at 18, standing in bejeweled pointe shoes, Schill felt full of energy but remarkably calm, satisfied with what she’d accomplished as a model and ready for her next step.
That includes studying metaphysics, French and Italian in her second year at U of T. So, during the Pink Tartan show, the girls were a study in contrasts. While Gill was back on a runway, Schill, her biggest fan, cheered her on from the fourth floor of the U of T’s Robarts library, where she was studying David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature for an upcoming exam.
Unlike Gill, Schill has no plans to model again, she says.
“I say that with the most love, because I had a great time modelling. A switch just flipped one day and I realized it was time for my second chapter.”
Mind Over Model builds on the support Gill and Schill offered one another during their busiest years.
After long days of castings (and a lot of rejection), the teens would return to their respective apartments and confess their worries.
“We would talk back and forth on Facebook chat. She’d be in Tokyo and I’d be in Paris, or she’d be in New York and I’d be in Toronto,” said Schill. Was Schill the only one who was told her cheeks were too full? Did Gill have to change her style too? Did she find that little coffee shop in Paris by St. Michel?
“We’d find strength in each other and lean on each other, share experiences,” Schill says.
On their website, that manifests in a “fashion safe-haven,” with advice on experiences the models say are profoundly confusing when experienced alone. They tackle body image (“Your body is where it needs to be. But let me ask you this: is your mind?”) living in new cities, contracts and handling promoters.
Their readership is small — about 1,000 per week — but it allows them to remain personal: Schill and Gill phone many of the girls who email seeking advice.
“It’s what I wish I had when I was modelling,” Schill says. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help these girls soar with as much grace, humility and information as possible.”
The website provides an insider’s perspective of an industry that others are quick to judge, says Cathy LeDrew, managing director of Toronto’s Plutino Group, the agency that represented Schill.
“Mind Over Model is giving people a better insight into models as people, showing you don’t have to compromise yourself to have a fulfilling career.”
She says recognizing all of their career options can help young models make good decisions about their futures on the runway.
“There are other facets of it, like makeup, styling, production, editing,” she adds. “In Madison’s case, she hasn’t left the industry, she’s just switching gears.”
Today, Canadian models are a little older when they begin international careers, says Brandon Hall, creative director at Gill’s agency, Sutherland Models.
“They’ve gotten (high school) out of the way and, before going on to postsecondary education, they can take a good year to see where their career goes,” Hall said. “It’s not to say some girls can’t do both, but when a girl is taking a career path like Addison’s where it’s very demanding, school was sort of put on the back burner.”
Her career, he said, had skyrocketed. Being so in-demand can be exhausting for someone so young.
For Gill and Schill, enrolling in university was a Hannah Montana moment; being unknown, again, was refreshing. “I had travelled so much and done so much online high school, I really just wanted to absorb it as much as I could,” says Gill.
Now, she has developed a stronger sense of self and is able to return to the industry with a more mature perspective and the confidence to help her with important decisions, such as giving up her books indefinitely: after two years at U of T, she decided to put her studies on hold.
“To me, the most valuable lessons I’ve learned have been through my modelling experiences — through travelling, working closely alongside such creative teams, collaborating on projects.”
Although Gill was back at fashion week, she walked in just three shows — including Mikael D and Stephan Caras on the Friday.
The rest of the week, she and Schill visited the models backstage, vegan desserts in hand — an easy way to strike up conversations about Mind Over Model. On Friday, they capped it off with a sleepover and takeout, watching movies and recapping the moments spent on different sides of the industry.
Among them, the walking instructions Pink Tartan designer Kimberley Newport-Mimran gave to her models: Express inner strength.
Gill said she finally knew what that meant.
“The energy there was so amazing. I felt like I was coming home.”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help these girls soar with as much grace, humility and information as possible.” MADISON SCHILL MIND OVER MODEL CO-CREATOR