Episode 4
Eavesdropping in New York
Modeling tips and life lessons from the next table
It’s funny, but sometimes I think the biggest difference between my current life in New York and the 16 previous years I spent living as an expat in the German-speaking part of Switzerland boils down to background noise.
I never learned the local dialect of “Sweitzerdeutsch,” so the conversations going on around me always sounded like white noise. Here, it seems, there’s always something interesting being said within earshot.
…
I was in the mood for eggs the other afternoon and stopped into a nearby Le Pain Quotidien for a breakfast bowl and coffee.
Soon after being seated, an Asian guy approached the table next to mine, taking a few moments before sitting down because he was in the middle of an intense conversation on his smart phone.
“How tall are you?” I heard him ask? “Six-three? And your waist? Thirty-four? Good. What about your chest?”
I thought he was getting some guy’s measurements for a tuxedo or something until I heard him say, “I need all these precise measurements so I can design a look for you that I think the agencies will want. New York trends tall — taller than Los Angeles and most other cities. So that’s good.”
Even before the call had ended, a good-looking Black kid in his 20s came over to the guy’s table, and the two greeted one another. By this time, I was so fascinated with my eavesdropping that I began trying to type their words into my iPhone. I overheard the first guy — an apparent modeling agent — ask the kid to stand up so he could assess his build and features.
“You’re about 6 feet tall, right? That might be a little short for New York.” But the dude had a lot going for him and looked to me like he could walk right into an ad for Nike or Apple.
“You’re gonna learn a whole new language,” I heard him tell the kid. “You’re gonna learn how to look, talk and act” to get placed.
“And you need your own regimen: for your body, hair care, skincare. That’s important because when you leave, you want them to say, ‘Wow, did you see the skin on that kid’s face? It was like imported satin!’”
The kid did have gorgeous skin.
At that point, I couldn’t help myself. Eavesdropping just wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry for interrupting, guys. But I wrote a series called “Eavesdropping in New York,” and I told them about it. “When I overheard your conversation, I just found it so fascinating I couldn’t help myself from coming over to ask if you’d be willing to talk to me for a column.”
Both guys were amenable, and we took a couple of pictures, had a brief chat, and agreed to follow up in more detail later.
Finding a Dream Job, a Purpose, a Calling and a Career,
All Rolled into One
Sometime afterward, at an Italian coffee shop in the neighborhood, I sat down with Greg Chan to learn more about his life. He told me he’s in the fourth generation of his Chinese family to grow up in California. He was born in the town of Davis, which he described as “very granola, a sister town of Berkeley, and the bike-riding capital of the world.”
He’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis, where he majored in organizational studies — a branch of sociology — and in expressionistic painting. Not reading about it but creating it. “I knew that between the painting and the sociology, I’d find some way of making a living,” he recalled.
Chan found that intersection at a rock concert, where he met a girl he liked a lot. She was more into him as a friend, but she wanted him to meet her brother, who was in the modeling business. So he did, and the brother said the words that changed his life: “I’m gonna show you how to find girls.”
That started the kind of career path that Confucius must have had in mind when he famously said, “The man who loves his job never works a day in his life.”
Chan didn’t get the girl, but her brother hired him at his modeling agency, teaching him how to find beautiful people who had the potential to make it in the tough world of fashion.
Mining for Magic
After two years under the brother’s wing, Chan moved to another agency. A woman there trained him to be a scout — to “look for that magic something that maybe doesn’t perfectly fit all the modeling requirements, but that breaks the beauty rules and possesses its own power.”
Living in San Francisco, Chan would wake up at 3 a.m. and cold-call agencies in Milan and Paris to ask if they’d be willing to take a look at pictures of potential models he’d spotted. “If they said yes, I’d get the film developed and send it overseas by snail mail to their agencies — it took about three weeks to get there,” he said.
Then, one day, he got a call from Michel Leviton, the agent who discovered ’90s supermodel Claudia Schiffer. “Who are you? I want to know you!” Chan recalled Leviton saying, using his best French accent to imitate him.
Two days after that, Chan got a similar call from Marilyn Gauthier, whose agency represented Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and a bevy of other supermodels.
Stalking Beauty By Day, Busing Tables By Night
At that point, Chan began a grueling schedule of scouting for beauty during the day and busing tables by night. Sometimes, the nights proved as fruitful as the days. “The food scene is incredibly glamorous,” he said.
“I loved it so much, I frankly didn’t even care if I got paid for it,” he recalled. “I was making enough to live on, and scouting models made me super happy.”
Up to a point. After Chan had established himself on the West Coast, he moved to New York, where he landed a regular job at an upstart agency called DNA Models. He also found the love of his life and dove into a serious relationship. But when Covid struck, it ended, in part over his obsession with his work. “The business can be threatening to any partner,” he said. “It can be too much, and it’s kept me from finding love again.”
Locked Away With His Thoughts
The lockdown left Chan with found time for deep self-reflection. He decided that he had to aim higher than making a lucrative living from discovering the next cover boy or girl while walking through Union Station or talking on the phone at a chic coffee shop.
He figured out what it was that he really wanted to do, and that gave him the most gratification. He used his keen eye to identify young people who are unaware of the power they possess and marshal his experience to teach them how to nurture that power to fortify their confidence and foster their personal growth. That’s his specialty at Ask a Model Agent and several other modeling-related businesses he now runs.
I confided that when I first overheard his conversations at Le Pain, his passion was so intense that I could almost see sparks of energy radiating from him. He smiled and appreciated the observation, explaining the source of that passion. “I look for people who don’t know how beautiful they are,” he said, “and maybe I can’t make every one of them a model. But what I can do is make them feel good — and powerful — about themselves and who they are.”
“Greg and I met through the internet,” Hannah Jo said. “He scouted me on TikTok and saw that I was living in New York, and we met shortly after.
“I knew from our first conversation that he was going to be in my career for the long haul and that he was someone I could trust — not just with modeling but with anything I wanted to ask or share.”
She added, “I’ve always left our conversations feeling inspired, which I think is the most important aspect of modeling and life. Greg taught me to pivot and to constantly look for inspiration and TO inspire because that’s where the magic happens.”
Hannah is surely a very nice-looking young person. But is it all about looks? I asked Chan. Is it all about teaching young people how to maximize their physical appearance so that they can be objectivized, exploited, and monetized? Isn’t that what the socially conscious have been railing against for years?
First of all, Chan responded, people ignore the fact that we’re all judged to an extent by our looks at their peril. “It’s a fact that tall people are perceived as better leaders and good-looking people of both sexes enjoy benefits that others don’t. That’s just life.”
However — and there’s a big BUT, Chan said his job is more about building confidence than enhancing looks alone. “It’s more about my helping them find their confidence mentally,” he said. “It’s about teaching them that they’re beautiful in an extraordinary way and can be who they want to be.”
Fuma Maruno, a young male model Chan discovered “under the constellation of Grand Central Terminal,” credits Chan for changing the course of his life. “He helped me reach greater heights than I ever imagined,” Marino said. “He booked me at Dior as my first job ever and signed me to work in Europe that very year.”
Lessons Learned
“The most valuable thing he taught me,” Maruno added, “was to adapt at all costs, as the industry doesn’t wait on anyone or anything.
“If not for those words, I wouldn’t have come this far. And no matter how difficult, I’ve always managed to adapt to the situation and worked with what I have. I’m forever grateful for the opportunity that he’s worked so hard to give me.”
The impression I got from Hannah and Fuma is that whether you want to be a model or just a confident, successful person, the life lesson they got from Chan is the same.
In Chan’s words, “It’s about understanding your value in the world and how your authentic self is powerful.”
“I’ve always loved the underdog,” he added. “That’s why I love my work.”
Whoever they start out as “the job is to channel them into something powerful that they can become, and that’s the focus at all times. The drive and the process are beautiful in itself.”
Thank you for reading my story.
Besides this series, as a retired journalist, I also interview interesting people. Here is a sample interview with Alaina Kupec, 54 — a successful pharmaceutical company executive before and after her transgender transition.
And, if you’d like to read other stories in my “Eavesdropping in New York” series, here are the links:
