Lydia Bielen is a young model, known all over the world. She has worked with numerous reputed magazines, such as Harper’s Bazaar, as well as numerous others, and has traveled all across the globe in her modeling career. Over the past week, we sat down with Lydia Bielen, and covered a bit about what it means to be a model, what she likes about it, and what some of the most common misconceptions about her industry are.
Like many, Bielen cites her ability to travel as one of the main rewards of being a model. Indeed, a quick look through her Instagram feed will reveal an array of shots from Italy, the United States, France, Greece, and several other places in-between.
“Between experiencing new places, working from beautiful beaches, meeting tons of amazing creative people, learning a new language, and everyday being a new adventure, traveling is definitely the best part of the modeling industry,” says Bielen, with a smile.
Naturally, however, the modeling industry is peppered with its own set of downsides and misconceptions, on which Bielen was by no means shy.
“One misconception about modeling is that you get to keep all the clothes you model,” Bielen confided, laughing. “People ask me if I get to keep the clothes all the time. While it’s true, sometimes you get to keep something, it’s not like we take home the hundreds of pieces we wear a day in an e-com job for example, or the expensive gowns you see us wearing in editorials. It’s our job just to wear it for photos or videos or whatever, but we don’t keep everything.”
Of course, Bielen also spoke, on a more serious note, of the insane pressure young models like herself are under, thanks to the expectations that a model should look a certain way in order to be successful. She spoke of colleagues who’d suffered a great deal from this pressure, some even going as far as developing eating disorders as a result. So, it’s safe to say modeling has its own dark side.
Bielen also spoke of the difficulties experienced by the modeling world during the Covid-19 pandemic. Difficulty shooting put people like Bielen in a strange position, though it also encouraged resilience, showing the people in this world a new way to function and go about their work.
“Some magazines, like Harper’s Bazaar for example, even published “FaceTime shoots” on their covers during this time. Everything was on social media, which was kind of weird but kind of cool.”
But like most of the world, the modeling industry is now slowly beginning to look to the future and setting its sights on exciting new goals. We asked Lydia Bielen what some of her plans and ambitions for the future were, in closing.
“I have achieved a lot of my modeling goals the past few years already, but one of my next goals would be to do a campaign that’s advertised in Times Square. Like a lot of people who visit New York, I was mesmerized the first time I walked around Times Square. It would be really cool to see myself there.”