[Applause]
[Music]
i remember being in milan and hearing
that it had
sort of made its way there when all of
us were there for fashion week and
i remember everyone trying to get out
everyone was trying to escape the city
and there were still shows going on of
course and there's so many people around
you and it's such an enclosed space that
if one of us were to get it
we'd probably all contract it and i just
remember scrambling to try and get a
flight to paris little did we know how
it would follow us to paris and then you
know to the world
[Music]
it was such a surreal time because we
have
obviously have never experienced
something like this before and we had no
idea what it meant
for our jobs for
where we were living and and we had no
real gauge of of how long this was going
to last and so it was a big time of of
unknowns i think for everyone i was
shocked but i don't think i was angry or
sad
because i was only concerned about the
health of my family in wuhan which is
where the virus was said to be
originated i was worried about asian
discrimination and racism
growing i was
more concerned about that than my career
i think work is my whole life i
i
i'm not really sure what i did before
i was working like this it feels like
you're running to catch up like you want
to constantly be involved or else
if you're not then you're irrelevant
and
i was nervous of that i was like nervous
of
not booking jobs if i took a break to
focus on myself
and
i don't like how that's sometimes a
reality in the industry
the fear of the unknown
that happened with kovid and how it
unraveled
i think put everyone at unease and
mental health became such a it just came
into the center of the picture for me
it really
took a lot of out of me to be able to
stop and look at myself again in the
mirror
i didn't know who i was i based
everything off of my job and the people
around me that once i had to really sit
with myself i realized how much work i
had to do internally i
realized that
my my traumas from when i was young
actually affected me more now in this
career because
i was so insecure
and already hated myself coming into
this business and then you get broken
down to a point where you don't feel
like your opinion matters or what you
say
you know
means anything to anybody you know i've
been modeling now for 10 years i've been
traveling and working very aggressively
and
when i had slowed down because of the
pandemic it was like i had to sit there
with my own thoughts and i had to figure
out
all these things that i'd been pushing
down or
just not addressing
and i seeked help
i seeked meant like
therapy and counseling
and i've been
taking the time
out of my life to make that a priority
since i want to say like oh yeah i use
this pandemic to like write the next
great american novel or like
make a bunch of oil paintings or
something but like i don't know i think
a lot of it was like me
being depressed some days if i pulled
myself out of bed like
that was a huge accomplishment for me
this is something i don't really speak
about a lot but i was waking up every
morning especially before work
in tears and i would go to work you know
put a smile on my face so by the time i
would get home i would be so drained
that for me was something i had to learn
over
quarantine was you know boundaries being
able to
say no which i never knew was a
possibility no matter what your plans
are no matter how many jobs you have
booked already or on the horizon it's
about your health and being safe and
keeping others safe and that was
something that i think a lot of people
weren't used to that the pandemic
forced everyone to kind of
deal with and sit in
i'm lucky enough to be vaccinated
i feel
really safe i want to keep my family
safe i want to keep the people that i'm
working with safe i want to keep their
families safe
[Music]
i think it is starting to change i think
that models
are having longer careers of more
meaning and more substance
but i think there is always that
mentality and sort of that frenzy when
you first start out and you feel like
you need to please everyone you need to
take every single job the pandemic
obviously although it hindered
um a lot of us
with work i think it's been good for the
industry moving forward i think
because everything feels a bit more real
and human now
i think that this year made us all
realize that we need to
take ownership back of our lives and
understand that it is a job but we can
also you know have our personal lives
too which i don't think a lot of us
really unders understand or understood
the level at which we push ourselves
probably
is going to
fall a little bit shorter because i
think we're all a little bit more aware
of what we can handle in our own mental
health and that's really important
i feel the pandemic has changed so every
like every aspect of everybody's life
like for me i've just been more aware of
who i have around me and the kind of
energy i keep around me and what i do
that's worth my time there were a lot of
like at home zoom photo shoots going on
and it was so hard
that's when i really also realized like
i
really appreciate everyone that is
a part of
the production of what we do we're
talking like we're talking makeup hair
the assistants
producers
production
i
bow to them all in the sense of knowing
how everyone is so important they made
it look so easy that we took it for
granted until now it's not just us you
know we do it with a team of
so many people that just
are so hard working so wonderful so
artistic so creative and we make
projects together that's what this is
you know and so i feel like that's why
we all try to work our butts off to be
able to be the best that we can be
because we want to prove to ourselves
and to everybody that you know this
really is a passion it's it's art and
that's when i look at it and i'm proud
to do what i do
[Music]
you