Victoire Dauxerre - Size Zero - My Life as a Disappearing Model

I’ve got two brothers: Alexis, who’s a year and a half younger than me, and Léopold, who’s six years younger. I used to feel happy when they got home. We’d have tea together in the kitchen, and life was peaceful and safe.

‘No doubt about it – you’re the next Claudia Schiffer.’ We were window-shopping for watches in Rue des Francs-Bourgeois when a puny little guy accosted me. He hardly came up to my shoulders. I looked him up and down and he smiled at me. ‘Have you ever thought about being a model?’ Yeah, right, great chat-up technique. Thank you, and goodbye. But instead of ignoring him, Mum showed an interest. ‘Your daughter is extraordinarily beautiful. She has a great nose! It balances her face and would catch the light perfectly. Believe me – I know what I’m talking about.’

He knows what he’s talking about? When it comes to noses? I felt like laughing, because I know perfectly well what my nose is like. It’s got a little bump, which has been handed down the maternal line in my family for at least three generations and which I spent my whole childhood rubbing, trying to flatten it out and make it go away. So much so that it’s left a slight blue mark. Any true ‘connoisseur’ would know that what was not quite right about my face was my nose.

He addressed me informally as if we’d known each other for ever. ‘I promise you, I know what I’m talking about. I work for a modelling agency called Elite. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them? You were made for the profession, believe me. I could get you to New York for September fashion week, and you’d go down a storm. Here, take my card. Think about it, and call me. I promise you, you really are made for it. If you let me handle things, I can make you into a supermodel.’

I said thank you, but that I was revising for the Bac and for Sciences Po and none of this was on the cards.

‘Just call me,’ he said, and off he went.

Mum was looking at me with a big smile on her face. Once he was out of earshot, we burst out laughing. So they were true, then, these stories of scouts from modelling agencies accosting girls in the street and it all happening just like that, with a snap of the fingers in front of the window display of a jeweller’s shop! Supermodel? Whatever next?

Mind you, Elite was a pretty big name. I might not have been a fashion addict, but I did read some of the women’s magazines and I knew that Elite was one of the top agencies. A quick search on the internet that evening confirmed what I’d thought: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista … Even though that Seb guy – the name Sébastien was on his business card – had gone over the top, it had still been nice of him to say that, just maybe, I could be part of that select band of the most beautiful girls on the planet!

It did me some good. I stored away Seb’s card in a corner of my desk, and his fine talk in a corner of my mind, and plunged back into my revision. Deep down, I was trying to control the anxiety that gripped my stomach whenever I thought about the exams. I knew perfectly well that I would pass my Bac, and yet I was terribly afraid of failing it. As for Sciences Po, that was the great unknown. Not even my consistently excellent school grades were enough to set my mind at ease, and the closer the entrance exams got, the more petrified I became. I wasn’t just fretting a bit – I was terrified of failing and proving that I just wasn’t up to it.

I passed every single one of my exams, with a warrior-like determination. I was quite the little trouper when it came down to it. The Bac was a cinch, but Sciences Po was another matter altogether. I stressed out crazily about not knowing a thing, about getting the one subject that I hadn’t swotted up on. I’d prepared as best I could, but it just wasn’t possible to revise the whole curriculum. I felt confident, as if I were in control of the situation, and yet at the same time I felt fragile and at the mercy of random chance, which could completely upset all my plans. The exam took place in a room without air conditioning where the temperature hit 40°C – it was an ordeal as much as an exam. And I wouldn’t know if I’d passed it, or the other entrance exams I’d taken, until the end of July.

In the meantime, I decided to call Seb, just to see. When I asked him, ‘Do you remember me?’ he replied, ‘I was hardly likely to forget you!’ I know it was daft of me, but I liked hearing him say that. And after all, it was an option: if I wasn’t smart enough to succeed with my brain – in journalism, theatre, politics or something like that – then perhaps I could use my ‘dream body’ to get on in life?

We set up a meeting and Mum dropped me off at his door near Saint-Michel. She must have said at least a dozen times: ‘If there’s the slightest problem, you leave, promise? And you call me. You call me and I’ll come and get you.’ Don’t worry, Mum. I just wanted to talk about what the job entailed, find out how things worked and see what he had to offer me. Then if I didn’t get into Sciences Po or one of the other colleges, there was still a chance of finding myself in New York for fashion week. I’d been dreaming of New York ever since Friends and Sex and the City and perhaps I’d take to fashion week really well.

This guy really talked nineteen to the dozen. He didn’t stop talking from the moment I entered the room, going on about my nose, my blue eyes, my endless legs – ‘How tall are you? Looking at you, I’d say 5 foot 10, right? Bang on, I knew it! You’re just perfect, my angel. Perfect!’ – as well as the agencies, the fashion shows, the castings, the photo shoots, the sublime clothes of the top designers, the ad campaigns worth hundreds of thousands of euros, the fantastic hotels all around the globe and all the top-flight models he’d personally discovered and coached to the summit of their profession. I politely listened to him taking me for an idiot. If he was so successful, what was he doing in this shabby little studio, which didn’t even belong to him but to his girlfriend Clémentine, a pretty, slightly plump girl who wanted to become an actress and who he was ‘coaching’ too?

Being an actress was my own dream. I’d known it since I saw Romy Schneider in Sissi when I was 8. I’d taken the Sciences Po entrance exam because I was a conscientious pupil and my father had advised me to get some qualifications first, but my goal had always been to become an actress. ‘You’re mad, Victoire, don’t even consider it!’ Seb declared. ‘You’ve got the physique of a model, not an actress. When I saw Marion Cotillard in Taxi , I knew straight away, before anyone else, that she would become a film star. She’s got that something extra. You don’t. You’re a supermodel. You don’t have a Hollywood face.’

He was increasingly getting on my nerves – all this talk about himself and the constant name-dropping. It smacked of lies, his whole spiel about being the African diplomat’s son who’d wanted to study at Sciences Po (what a coincidence!) but had ultimately decided to ‘coach his girls’ instead. A pathetic mixture of fake bling, dreams and drudgery. But we were talking about Elite, after all, and he was saying he could get me in with them!

We did some photos, or rather ‘Polaroids’, as they’re called – it used to be the only way they had of creating instant snaps. Nowadays, they’re digital photos of course, but without any retouching or make-up or anything else, and he was going to use them to present me to Elite. In the Vogue magazines scattered on the coffee table, he showed me the basics of a pose: hair tied back to show off the face, head slightly inclined and looking straight ahead. ‘Show intent in your gaze. We need to get the impression that you’re thinking. And half open your lips, so that you don’t look withdrawn.’ One side of me wanted to take the piss out of him, while the other was concentrating like mad on trying to follow all his instructions at once. Seb was right: posing is a professional art. But did I really want it to be my profession?