Shortly after 8 o`clock on a balmy, hazy summer morning, Chicago fashion model Cammy Kelly is already at work, about to be made up for a photography session. Completely pale-faced with her short, dark brown hair pushed behind a black band, Kelly is nearly unrecognizable as the animated mannequin who strides so many runways around town and who laughed on a red telephone from countless billboards during the summer of 1991 in an Illinois Bell ad headlined ”Pep Talk.”
While Chris Isaak warbles ”Wicked Game” from the stereo, makeup artist Sammy Martin applies pancake makeup to Kelly`s face with a wedge-shaped sponge. They`re working in a room off photographer Terry David Drew`s River West studio for a cover photo for the holiday issue of Complete Woman magazine, a bimonthly headquartered in Chicago. ”The covers for this magazine aren`t like Cosmo,” Kelly tells Martin. ”They`re more approachable.”
As Martin works, the elegant, public Cammy Kelly begins to emerge, not unlike a photographic image gradually appearing on a print in the darkroom.
In the meantime, Drew is lighting his set, stylist Lisa Baruch is steaming the wrinkles out of four different party dresses and Complete Woman editor Bonnie Krueger and art director Sherry Darnall are going over the jewelry, an assortment of dangly earrings and bracelets.
By 9:05, Kelly, pancaked and powdered, her lips painted a voluptuous red, is ready. Almost. She grabs a brush and goes over her eyebrows again. ”That`s the makeup artist in her,” Martin comments. ”Any model who does makeup, too, goes over it.”
Baruch helps Kelly into a shimmery white dress that`s a size or two too large. Not to worry. Baruch pulls some metal clips from the True Value Hardware canvas tool belt around her waist and pins the back of the dress so that it does not bag in the front. She also applies double-faced tape to keep the off-the-shoulder neckline in place.
Kelly slips into gold spike-heeled pumps and takes her place in front of a spill of white paper and the eye of the camera. ”OK, Terry,” she says. Drew adjusts the lights and snaps a Polaroid test shot. ”Oh, I wasn`t ready,” Kelly says. ”I was going like this”-she purses her lips. Drew calls for a stepladder and adjusts the lighting again.
At 10 a.m., after a few final touches by Baruch and Martin, the shoot is underway.
”That looks nice,” Drew says, as Kelly vamps and flirts with the camera. ”Gooood!”
”Stand up a little straighter, Cammy,” Bonnie Krueger says.
”Right there, don`t even move, and give me a slutty look,” Drew orders. ”No!” cries Krueger. ”Smile!”
”All smiles?” Kelly asks, sweetly. ”Sorry, Terry.”
Krueger and Darnall decide they don`t like the earrings and substitute a different pair. Martin touches up Kelly`s hair.
As shooting resumes, Kelly pivots and smiles into the camera. Again and again. Seductive but not too dangerous.
”Oooh, I like that,” Krueger says. ”Do it again.”
”A little less,” Drew says.
”Really nice,” says Krueger. ”Happy Holidays! They`ll come home for Christmas for sure.”
But the shoot isn`t over. It takes almost 20 minutes for Kelly to be installed into the next dress, a little green silk number with a low neck that requires an assist from gaffer`s tape to enhance the cleavage.
”If you want to, have fun with the dress, and we`ll see what we get,”
Krueger tells Kelly.
Kelly runs her hands down the skirt, steps back and playfully flips up the hem. It`s getting tedious, but Kelly somehow maintains an air of spontaneity.
There are two more changes-a gold dress and a red one-and at 11:45 a.m. Drew declares: ”OK! That`s all the time you get.”
”When we will see it?” Krueger asks Drew. To Kelly, she says: ”You`re fabulous. You`re professional. You`re wonderful to work with.”
Kelly is already on the run. She has another booking at noon. She slips off the red dress and pulls on navy Moschino pants with gold braid running up the sides, knots a big white cotton shirt at her waist, grabs her model`s bag and is out the door. Scot Overholser, Drew`s assistant, takes her to Marshall Field`s State Street store in a little Ford truck, driving as fast as possible through the lunch-hour traffic.
On the way, Kelly works on her makeup, rubbing off some of it, redoing her lips with a brush, adding mascara, while worrying out loud about being late.
Once at the store, she races inside and up to the 12th floor, where she dons a short, blue-and-silver beaded Bob Mackie gown for an appearance with Mackie himself, who`s launching a men`s fragrance. When Mackie appears on the 1st-floor fragrance department with Kelly and two other models in tow, Kelly is cool, unruffled and perfect-looking, with no hint of her early schedule or the frenzied drive to the store.
After all, the job of a model requires that no one ever see her sweat. No matter how late she`s running or no matter if she`s wearing shoes that are way too big or too tight. There is no uncomfortable reality allowed in fashion, only fantasy and illusion.
Cammy (short for Camille) Kelly came to Chicago from Detroit nine years ago to seek her fortune as a model. After growing up in the small town of Pinckney, Mich., she had dropped out during her freshman year as an art major at Eastern Michigan University and was casting about for some direction when her father entered her in a Miss Michigan beauty pageant.
”I had to do photographs for a booklet connected with the pageant, and Terry Drew was the photographer,” Kelly says. ”That`s how I started. My first picture was done by Terry, and then he asked me to come back and do some test shots because he knew I was a ballet dancer and wanted to do some things with toe shoes.”
At that point Kelly was not considering modeling. She thought she might return to school and possibly become an art teacher. But Drew saw her potential as a model, and Kelly`s interest in modeling grew. She was almost 5 feet 10, thin, with long dark hair and translucent skin and enormously graceful from her ballet training.
”I was struck by her outgoing personality,” remembers Drew. ”She`s very spontaneous. She`s got this-oh, she`s full of life. She sparkles. Extremely. I asked her to do test shots, and we ended up testing every Sunday. She`d drive 60 miles to Detroit every weekend. She wanted to learn and do something with her career. She never gave up. She always worked harder. We were great friends, just pals, and that made it even better. We`re still pals to this day.”
Kelly didn`t win the beauty pageant (although she was named Miss Photogenic), but she found a career and a husband (Kelly and Drew were married eight years ago).
But businesswise, Kelly and Drew are not a package deal. They are booked separately, and their working together as they did on the Complete Woman shoot is an occasional event.
In the early 1980s the two made up a composite card of photos of Kelly and mailed copies to some modeling agencies listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages. Within a few days, some of the agencies called, and Drew insisted that Kelly visit them in person.
”Terry told me, `You`re going to work more in Chicago than in Michigan,` and he brought me here,” Kelly says. ”I didn`t want to go. He said: `Try it. It`s only five hours away. You can commute.`
”I ended up signing with David and Lee model management. They were the most interested. Then I went back home, and then I got audition calls and I`d drive in for them, and then I got booking calls and so I moved to Chicago.”
”I remember what it was about Cammy,” says David Whitfield, who runs David and Lee with his wife, Lee. ”Her book (portfolio) was so beautifully organized. The test shots by Terry Drew were so beautifully styled. We were fascinated with her skill and ability to do that.
”Physically, she fit our description of the perfect model that we look for all the time. She had the height, the skin, the hair. Anybody who walks in with that height and look, we`re going to trap them immediately.”
”Plus she had style, incredible personal style, and a great personality,” Lee Whitfield adds. ”She is so creative in her use of color, her (body) line is incredible. She`s good at everything, and she loves doing it.”
Kelly works both as a runway model and photographic model, something most models don`t do. And she is particularly in demand for runway bookings, sometimes traveling to Dallas, Minneapolis, Detroit and San Francisco for fashion shows.
Runway modeling takes more than a tall, thin body and a pretty face. It`s a performance. The pace is hectic, and rehearsals may consist of only a brief ”talk through” before the show, with plenty of possibilities for error.
Susan Glick, fashion director for the Chicago Apparel Center who produces many fashion shows, says that what separates ”a good model from an OK model is an understanding of the merchandise. Somebody who walks out on the runway, and if you`re putting a sportswear outfit on her, an evening dress or whatever, she understands what she`s wearing and almost plays a role in the clothes. That`s exactly what Cammy does, and that separates a model of her caliber from someone who`s just walking through and doesn`t understand when to be sophisticated, when to be chic, when to be playful, when to have a little drama on the runway.”
Duane Jeffers, regional fashion director for Neiman Marcus who has often booked Kelly, says that she ”fits very well, meaning her body shape doesn`t fluctuate, and that`s very important to us. And second most important, she modifies and updates her look. She changes her hair. She moves very well on the runway.
”On our sales floor as an informal model, she has a bigger-than-life look, something we really like to push-softly exaggerated, not the average customer in the store. She`s always well made up and carries herself in a larger-than-life way, but at the same time, she`s not intimidating to customers. And she romances our merchandise. Whether she`s on the floor or on the runway, she`s very good at making you CRAVE what she`s wearing, and that`s the business of fashion on the retail end.”
Chicago designer Peggy Martin, who has used Kelly in her brochures and press kits for eight years, says she chose her for her spontaneity, animation and sophistication. ”I`ve never seen anyone else like Cammy,” Martin says.
”She moves very well. All the things she`s done for me are alive and energetic, and a certain spirit comes through in photographs, as opposed to someone just standing there like a vase. That`s what sets her apart.”
Kelly is such a natural on the runway that producers often give her something extra to do. At the Oak Street fashion show one fall, she performed a mock striptease in Sonia Rykiel to Joe Cocker`s ”You Can Leave Your Hat On.”
”Sometimes models shy away from working before a live audience, as opposed to doing photos where it`s just you, the photographer, the art director and the makeup and hair persons,” Kelly says. ”You see a photo after the fact. On the runway, it`s instant. You can do another take for a photo but if you go out on the runway and your pants are unzipped and they fall off, that`s it. It`s, whoops! It`s in the moment. I really like that.
”Instead of just walking straight, with one expression, you have to relate to the audience, and you have to relate to what you`re wearing and give it a little more personality.”
Although there are modeling consultants and modeling schools, most models learn their craft in increments on the job. People at their agency may suggest a change in hairstyle or weight loss, but from then on they learn from the makeup artists and photographers they work with. Through trial and error, they learn what gestures and expressions work for the camera. They get continual feedback from bookers and others at their agency and from art directors and photo stylists.
”I learned to do makeup by experimenting,” Kelly says. ”You look through magazines, and then you practice on yourself, trying to do what they do. Or you see on film that what you did was too much or not enough.
”I used to paint, so I knew about depth of field and color, so I think of makeup as making a canvas come to life. Now I do makeup for other models`
test shots and portraits that Terry does in his studio.”
New models may even cut their teeth in a foreign market, including Italy, France, Japan or Australia. After spending a few months in Chicago, Kelly went off to Tokyo to work for nearly a year. ”I did everything from print ads for Sony and Toshiba to the department stores. I did a couple of commercials where I had to lip-synch so that it looked like I was speaking Japanese, and then they had a voice over me.”
