Rusch Raymaker and the SL Fashion business

I left you last week at the end of my personal tour of Avenue Models. Rusch Raymaker had been showing me around her impressive building. And no, I hadn’t gotten to met any of the 30 models on the books; and to cut the suspense immediately, let me tell you that I didn’t get to meet them later either. But I was warming to Rusch, who was now talking to me in her office.
Rusch is a woman with some very interesting ideas about the world of Fashion in SL. She is also somebody with a Mission, which we’ll get to later.
We began by taking about the Exxess fashion show I’d been to and where I’d first met Rusch. I told her how impressed I’d been;
Rusch Raymaker: *beams* that is one of our best shows yet and more to come :)
Rusch told me that the show took about a full week's work to put together. (And in case you didn’t know, the work-day for people at the top of the fashion industry is probably way over 20 hours work per day). She said she’d hardly slept the whole time; she’d been in Mad Max mode thought. (Don’t think “Max Factor” here folks; we’re talking about a mean and determined Mel Gibson pushing the accelerator through the floor). Eight models had been used on the show. I’d been overawed by them, and Rusch agreed that we’d been treated to the pick of the cream.
Getting exposure is probably one of the toughest challenges for designers wanting to go beyond word-of-mouth marketing. I asked Rusch if the Agency’s PR service wasn’t perhaps the most essential cog in the machine, but she told me that really it was a combination ... the main thing was the creative direction of the show combined with seamless coordination and good PR work of course.
The staging of course can be very important – as it had been for the Exxess show, which worked in total harmony between the collection and the setting. Rusch agreed with me that it would have been impossible to have staged it on a set of floating clouds.
Actually, considering that Rusch is bringing over 18 years of experience in RL event production, choreography and marketing and has created fashion shows for some of the really big names in RL fashion, she’s really offering a good deal here. And she told me that although Avenue could do a normal runway show for less than $15k, clients will come to Avenue (and pay) for quality and original show concepts that will help set them apart from the other shows. Again, it’s all about getting the right exposure.
Our conversation turned to the Modelling school, Avenue Academy which started in June and so far more than 20 students have signed up.
Models impress me. The way they walk, mainly. I wanted to know how much of the models was actually *them*, and how much was the Avenue mould, so I asked whether Avenue had developed its own special modelling pose AOs to get the girls in the Academy sliding down the runway the way they did, but no, the girls chose their own from a range of available AOs or huds, and they select appropriate poses suitable to the show and designs.
It’s just like RL. To be a model they need to have a good base to start off with in terms of their shape and skin, although anybody can enrol in the academy (although personally I can’t see really grotesque people, or tinies, or furries really wanting to do that, but this is SL and anything is possible).
Rusch said that getting to the top in SL modelling depended mostly on whether models in SL have that eye... the ability to shape the aesthetics of their own beauty, unlike RL where apart from maybe getting plastic surgery you get what you’re born with.
So why do women come to Avenue to learn how to model? Rusch’s answer was really the same as you’ll find on her web-site; Avenue Academy is able to provide them with comprehensive and practical training from top working models in SL and help them get emotionally and mentally prepared for the industry as well. The lessons they learn from experienced working models is invaluable, and Avenue sets standards for their trainees to aspire to and help them get started in modelling.
And then, for me at least, the conversation got to really interesting ground. I told Rusch that I’d slanted my first article around a not-much-thought-out preconception that Top Models were something like every man’s fantasy, a kind of unattainable sexual goal. Very quickly (at the speed of light even) Rusch’s reply flashed on my screen, that she hardly thought that models do it to become a man's fantasy.
I wasn’t looking to provoke Rusch in the least, and I went on to say that in reality, men had little to do with it. The models were there to appeal to women, to show them their own fantasies about themselves, how they wanted to look, who they wanted to become. And it’s true.
It’s women who buy the clothes, and the men just pay (at least they do in RL fashion. In SL the women pay unless they’re very lucky). Fashion is really for women, by women and all about women. Male fashion is of course a thriving niche. But go to any mall and compare the number of women’s stores to men’s, you’ll see. Fashion, and Fashion models, are fantasies for women.
Subtly changing the subject, Rusch told me that for her it was its really all about the designers, presenting their brand and designs with the best models and show production and PR
When we started winding up the interview, I finally discovered Rusch’s Mission;
Why does someone start an Agency and a modelling Academy? In Rusch’s case it was simple. She’d seen so many women in SL, beautiful women, having to resort to escorting, camping and such. Her answer to that was to start up an agency which would let women partake in a fun vocation and experience in SL without having to sell themselves out.
Rusch left me with a “goodbye sweetie”. Hamlet the man hiding beneath the Clark Kent suit bristled a little. I don’t really *do* sweetie. But she meant well. And this is Fashion, after all, so I let it drop.
I went back to my very wonderful new office with nameplate in the SL-Newspaper building. My next challenge was going to be meeting the icy stare of an Editor armed with shiny sharp pointed steel scissors ready to dress me down to size after last week’s exercise in self-indulgence.
But it seems that my luck’s still holding, because you’re reading this. Or maybe I’m just learning some of the tricks?
Hamlet Kornbluth

(This editor needs someone to learn to count - I believe I said 500 words?) Dana