Model Apartments EXPOSED

What you imagine a model apartment is going to look like versus what it actually looks like is more shocking than Yeezy season 4. It's easy to think of models lives as glamorous, but if one is starting out on their first few contracts, the reality is anything but. Different cities have different standards of quality, so while you may find a nice model apartment in Germany, you'll find a hell hole in Italy. The hell holes are plentiful. Here is my experience.

Photo from CNN

The cost Most models apartments cost anywhere from $900-$1500 a month. The agency usually deducts this from your account, so every month you begin with that amount of debt. For example, my rent cost me 750€, or $1100 Canadian a month and I slept on a cot. More on that later in the post. Once you begin the month, your account is -750€. If your agency takes 50% (like most in Europe do), you have to make 1500€ in jobs just to break even. If you don't? That debt gets carried over to the next month and you get deeper into the hole. Models are so rich, aren't they? *maniacal laughter*

What you get More often than not, that outrageous fee you're paying for a roof over your head gets you not much more than that: A roof. You're lucky to have an actual bed, but chances are you will be sharing your room with two, three, sometimes ten other girls. Bunk beds are also unbelievably common. I've even heard of models having to share beds with other models, as if this dingy futon is worth the collective two grand a month that they pay for it. If you're unlucky (like a friend/ roommate of mine) you'll show up to your apartment and all the beds have been filled. In this case, a sympathetic bed building ceremony will occur, in which your other roommates scrounge for pillows to make the floor less hard than your souring outlook on life.

Photo from XOJane.com

Why not find your own place?

There are many, many reasons why it is hard to rent a place in another country. Lets see: the language barrier, the short term, the different country, the having to pay out of your own pocket - you get the idea? Which leads me to...

STORY TIME

My apartment in Italy was...okay. If moldy bathrooms, a gas leak, and the fact that it wasn't actually a space suitable for inhabiting, then yeah, okay. It was a spacious photography studio, as in, a working office environment with cots crammed in a loft/storage area. We would occasionally have castings take place in it during the day, and since we had no real doors in our loft, our things were left out in the open. Cue a pair of $300 sunglasses that I left out being stolen. (Jokes on them, they were prescription.)

Over time, for reasons I don't want to get into in this blog post, it was no longer safe to stay there. The agencies solution? To go stay with a "friend" of the agency who only had one bed... that I was expected to sleep in with him. Needless to say that was not going to happen. So, I had to wander Milan with all of my belongings and pray a hotel would take me. They didn't. Long story short (and there is a longer story, including having to crash at the owners house for a night, getting kicked out of an agency paid-for hotel, and living with a rich dude for a month), I eventually had to find an AirB&B to stay at that I paid for out of pocket. Trust me though when I say, the longer story will come out. Stay tuned.

Photo taken in my apartment studio. Photo by Carlo Bistolfi. My expression sums up how I felt.

Agencies make a killing off of these apartments, and if you don't make any money, or break even, the agency is still laughing in your face with how much they squeezed out of you. The only bright side is if you have good roommates. My model roommates and I quickly became great friends as we navigated this crazy world. Without them I probably wouldn't have been able to last as long as I did in Milan. There, I ended on a positive note.

If you would like to read more on this topic, check out CNN's article The 'Model Apartment Trap" by clicking here.

-XO Lexi

Have your own experience as a model that you'd like to share? Send me an email at the contacts tab.