The gap year

Number one son has said it's fine if I share his plans on my blog, which is very kind of him. Because it is a very strange story, that starts over two years ago when he was spotted going into the Canberra Show by a talent scout for a modelling agency. When we got over the immediate reaction (piss-off-you-scammers) and did some googling, and talked to him about it, and went up to Sydney to chat with them ... we realised it was an actual thing. That actually happens to actual teenagers, who then get signed for a two-year contract to an international modelling agency and start to fit in a bit of modelling work between their classes. He did test shoots.

He walked some shows in Australian Fashion Week.

He got a paid gig promoting Wool for Schools. He wore an $10,000 pink Dior suit for a GQ Australia magazine shoot.

He got styled very strangely for the hippest of fashion stores.

It has all been very odd, and very different, and very unlikely for a teenage boy who likes space rockets, dungeons&dragons and wears t-shirts with science-based puns. It's been terrifying for us as parents (a week after his sixteenth birthday he spent five days on his own in a serviced apartment in Sydney finding his way to fashion shows .... the dodgy photographers in industrial parks ... the 3 am bus to Sydney more times than I can count ....) but he has been an absolute rock star with the wierdness, and the uncertainty, and the complete chaotic pointlessness that is the fashion industry. We are so proud of how grown up he's been.

Which brings us to 2020 - the year that all those castings and shoots and practising were about to be turned into a real year of being a full-time model. Of basing himself in Sydney, then, after he turned 18, being launched overseas. Probably China or Korea they thought, given his look. A year of who-knows-what, but how could you not give it a go? If it doesn't work, at least it will be an adventure, and if it does work he could earn enough to pay his uni fees.

But the world said no, and overseas travel is unlikely to happen any time soon, and it's a tough pill for a wee lad. He has been so grown up about it, and even managing to look on the bright side - some of his friends who went straight to uni are struggling with remote learning.  We don't know what the rest of the year will bring, and there is still a chance that the domestic fashion industry will pick up? Maybe. So that is the latest wierdness that life has thrown up for us. As some of our friends have said.... of all the people to have a child who is a fashion model we wouldn't have picked you two! We completely agree.