PAGE PARKES

35 years after she ‘dreamed of doing something incredible,’ modeling agency’s founder has shaped lives and adapted to changing industry

Page Parkes sits quietly in an office at her titular headquarters off Silber, contemplating her life in the modeling business.

It’s been 35 years since she started the agency on a dream, a few prayers and straight grit. She says it was built with dirt and hard work.

Her passion for this business runs deep.

For years, Parkes, 58, put in 20hour days and sacrificed her personal life to be a mother, counselor and all-around head cheerleader for a generation of young, aspiring models. Her agency has helped launched the careers of some of the biggest names in the business — Angelina Jolie, Channing Tatum, Alexis Bledel, Hilary Duff and Katie Moore, who became the “it” model at New York Fashion Week last year after cutting from her long, blond locks for a short, red pixie cut.

The petite Parkes, with model good looks but a shyness for cameras, believed early on she could make the fashion and beauty industry better. She said she focused on honesty and integrity, virtues that often get lost in the glamour of fashion.

That’s what she learned from her hardworking mother, Joy Parkes, who raised her and her two sisters in Clear Lake. Her father, Wade Parkes, was a used-car salesman.

In school, Parkes wasn’t particularly inspired by academics, but her mother nurtured her talent for design.

“I was taking four hours of home economics a day. I could turn curtains into something beautiful,” Parkes said. “My mother really paid attention to see where I exceled, and she always told me I was special.”

After graduating from Clear Lake High School in 1976, Parkes didn’t get accepted to any art school in the United States, so her mother found one outside the country — the Regent’s American College London, from which Parkes studied in London, Italy, France and Switzerland en route to earning a degree in design. She graduated in 1979 and earned the college’s Young Couture Award, which was presented by designer Emilio Pucci. She went on to study with the designer at the Emilio Pucci Castle in Florence.

But she didn’t work with professional models until debuting her first collection, which was focused on resort wear. That’s when she discov- ered the power of modeling and how it can sell a look.

After returning to Houston, she went to work at Michael St. James modeling school and agency, but the company had financial troubles and eventually shuttered.

Parkes figured she could make her own way, so in 1981, at age 20, she started the Page Parkes company with a $20,000 investment from her mother.

“It was a magical moment,” she said. “When the sign went up on the building, it was close to heaven. I always dreamed of doing something incredible. This was it.”

Parkes spent most of her career scouting and nurturing models as if they were her own children. She gave them money for food when they had none, a bed in her own house when they had no place to sleep and, of course, work as a model. But by 49, she wanted her own family and adopted three siblings, then ages 5 months, 2 and 3 years old.

“I wanted to change lives for real. I’ve been blessed to work with so many great models and transform their lives, but I wanted my own,” she said.

Adoption, she said, was the “most magical experience of my life.”

Parkes currently lives in Austin with her children and commutes to her Houston office several times a week. She’s consolidated offices in Austin and Dallas into the current headquarters, which they moved into last summer.

“Our goal is to be Page Parkes Texas and represent the state,” Parkes said. “We’re moving into a new age. Today, I can take a male model and book him as a woman. This industry is changing by the moment.”

She also said more companies, including JCPENNEY, are focused on targeting women’s sizes 10-22, instead of traditionally smaller sizes. So the agency is looking for more fuller-size models.

At the agency’s modeling school, talent adviser Todd Ramos has worked with Parkes for nearly 20 years.

“There’s no one else better in this industry,” Ramos said. “She nurtured, mentored, but let me be me.”

This year, Parkes has announced that Tabitha Pagel Garcia will take over as the company’s president.

Garcia started modeling with the agency at age 12. At 17, she told Parkes she wanted her job one day. Parkes admired Garcia’s spunk and hired her as a personal assistant.

“I still have the note Page wrote me from my first (modeling job). She wrote, ‘I can’t wait to see what your future holds,’ ” said Garcia, who once walked with Houston native actress Bledel along the Memorial Park running trail when she needed to get her “hips down” for her first acting job. “Page has always done everything with her heart, and she taught me always to end a relationship well because they may come back.”

Back in the office, in front of the camera for a change, Parkes poses bashfully as if she’s new to the process.

She has a tattoo that stretches from the back of her neck to her right shoulder. It reads: “My story isn’t over yet.”

She smiled, then said, “When I die in these walls, I will haunt them if they don’t treat customers like I did.”