Jeff Tomsik, star of today’s Morning Goods, was shot by Bruce Weber for Abercrombie & Fitch. That shot of him at right is from his 2006 campaign. So surely, getting plucked out of obscurity to bare your abs — and ass — for the famed gay photographer means you’ve made bank and can relax your way to riches, right? Haha.
Lending your likeness to the A&F giant will score you just $500 a day, according to Brad Greiner, star of the retailer’s 2004 campaign (seen here), who ended up on a “five-story billboard on Fifth Avenue.” With two days worth of shooting, that was a cool $1,000 for the whole gig. It might be big money for a struggling model (or a Los Angeles immigrant who didn’t realize he could model), but it’s a completely inconsequential fee to Abercrombie, which makes one-large every half-second, or so we imagine.
Not that A&F is paying out obscenely low rates. Similar retailers hand models similar day fees, mostly with the excuse that these campaigns will launch the modeling careers of these fellas. Which may be true, if you believe there’s much room to make money in male modeling. Unless you’re Garret Neff and score a lucrative Calvin Klein contract, forget it.
Not that Greiner is bitter. He’s taken his minor fame and launched a charity to support Darfur refugees. Who said models were useless?
How about we take this to the next level?
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terrwill
Now we know why you see so many “ex-model” ads on Craigslist for those who are seeking “generous”??????
Jacob
I would love to model :o)
I did some modelling in the past and i would like to do some more in the future :o)
x
Latebrosus
Is Bruce Weber officially gay now? He’s married to Nan Bush.
alan brickman
Another Gay taking advantage of beautiful male models…shocking…lol
Steve
Look at it from the perspective of the company. If I am putting together an ad campaign, I need models to show the product. I want the customers to notice the product. The purpose of the model is to get the customers to want the product. Nothing more.
There are thousands of kids who want the work. Hundreds of them can get the customers to look. Dozens of them meet all of our criteria. Some of those want a lot of money. So we pick one of the others, and call him in for a photo shoot. If one of the cheap kids clicks, we don’t need the expensive kids. Even better, the cheap kids are usually the ones with no experience, and so are “fresh” to our customers.
Why would the company want to pay a high price, when we can get what we want for cheap?
If the campaign calls for acting skills, movement, dance, voice, etc., or if the production calls for a lot of expensive trades, then it might be worth the price to get experienced and skilled actors. But, for a photo shoot in a studio, the cheap kid who wants it can make it work.
Tabitha Lennox
500 a day for having your photo taken is a pretty good deal!! I know, I know a lot of models make way more, but 500 is not bad at all. He said he could barley afford to shop at a&f may I just ask how much do they charge!??
Pickles
A $500/day model still exists, for sure. It’s not remotely unlikely that he started there- but this in-depth story neglected to quote his current rate, which is probably at least $5000-10,000/day.. at least.
As for surprising model good will, my bf books them for his work. It’s amazing how smart and generous the majority of them are. They do get to go to extraordinary places sometimes and have awesome stories (the one who ‘dated’ Paula Abdul for a year or so was chock full-) but most of the tales were kind of sweet.
Ad Man
This is crap….We paid more for talents (note, NOT models because for commercial use, we want real people) and the price goes up with usage…eg Billboard has alot of exposure..get more…and we are talking about 3rd world fee here….