Casting Agent Extraordinaire

Daniel Peddle went from studying film at NYU to casting models for Elite. Check out MODEL.com's interview with him here. I thought this bit was particularly interesting:

Have you noticed a predominant look this season?

There have been two looks that we’ve been drawn to and that we’re sort of editing our casting towards. We really like the tomboy look - not necessarily masculine in their face but they have sort of hardness to them while maintaining their elegance.
Another thing this season is trying to discern from all the girls out there the ones that are ethnically ambiguous. Girls and boys that have faces that you can’t just put in a certain place or race or geography. I think it’s very helpful to see those types of faces in our conflicted world because you can see that we’re still evolving as humans and they are the results of people willing to go beyond the socially constructed notions around race. I think that’s really important and were going to see even more of those as the population changes.

With the Internet and the way that everyone is so connected now it’s not something you can overlook anymore. I don’t think its possible to do a modern show and have it be all blondes. I understand that sometimes a designer has an aesthetic that dictates something like that and of course we’re going to work with them to achieve their goals but personally I don’t find that to be a very modern statement.

He also does some awesome watercolors of runway behind-the-scenes:

Photo credits: http://models.com/oftheminute/?p=4111#more-4111