Michelle MacKenzie
By Naomi Rendall
Michelle MacKenzie got her start at 15 years old with John Casablancas. A year or so after she started they arranged for her to go to Korea - pairing her up with an agency there. Although there were models from other cities when she arrived, Michelle was the only one there from John Casablancas Vancouver. There for about two months, it wasn't easy - she was often lonely - but, ultimately, she did get a lot out of the experience and visited lots of places, including the "amazing museums."
Five years later, and now with Richard's International Model Management, she's done work in California, locally - seen in such magazines as Look, Opulence, and the new Bridge - and a campaign for local retailer Plenty. She is also about to leave Vancouver again with her modelling. "It looks like I'm probably travelling at the end of January," she tells me excitedly, "to Milan, and then Greece as well, but I don't know where in Greece." Although Milan seems like a sure thing, Michelle is quick to add "I feel like you never actually know until you're on the aeroplane." As she speaks French and has family friends in Paris, she'd like to see her work take her there too.
It wasn't easy at the start, as Michelle was so shy. The runway turned out to be the easier place to be, "because you're more distant…it's not as bad…it's not a bunch of people watching every move and every facial expression," - at least not close-up - "and usually you don't see the people." With all of this talk about the runway, I was curious about whether or not the walking it entails came naturally. "I was really worried about it, and I think a lot of girls are," she confesses, and tells me that her first agent showed her how not to do the things that most of us do without knowing it, "like when you walk, you swing one arm way more than the other one, or do weird facial expressions." Michelle tells me that sometimes they expect you to have a kind of strange walk, and "I remember one time," she recalls, "the first time they said just walk, then they said walk like a butterfly, then the next time they were like - walk like you're really courageous." She laughs as she says "You can do something a little bit different - you can walk fast, or you can walk slow - but it was hard for me to be like, hmmm, a butterfly."
Michelle manages a full-time university schedule at SFU - hoping for an Honours in Communications, with a minor in English - as well as doing work with one of her professors, and modelling - with the help of supportive professors and missed lectures available online. She'll take a term or so off to go to Europe, although she may try to keep up with one or two courses while gone.
Although Michelle loves Vancouver, she does like the idea of living in other places for a few years, "like going to the south of France, and finding some sort of cottage," or, "live in India for a few years."
She's excited about working in Europe during winter, when it'll be quiet compared to the usual influx of models (not to mention tourists) there during the summer months. She has done some research online, and found that affordable places are the size of her closet here, but says, "I feel like it might be romantic in some kind of way, living in some place really small."
As we discuss the modelling industry and the directions it follows, Michelle comments that, "It's strange how they'll kind of zone in on a specific look and then they'll find eight people who basically look the exact same."
She enjoys being exposed to the creativity surrounding the work, and is "excited about being able to encounter so many different styles of art - you learn so much about photography, and about styling, and about designing." Along these creative lines, she's found herself transformed into looks ranging from classic 40s, to a broken doll, to a dead Goth-like person, and even having a full bird's nest, fake birds and all, mounted on her head. In a more personal sense, as she's always been shy, modelling forces her not to be so, and "express myself in a way that I definitely, usually, wouldn't."
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