Before school holiday programs and after-school activities catered to almost every interest, modelling and deportment school was among the enticing options advertised to young girls.

It was the 1990s.

Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss were everywhere. Supermodels weren’t just models — they were celebrities. Even Right Said Fred strutted down a catwalk, declaring himself too sexy for just about everything.

Sisters Niki and Krissy Taylor were icons in the world of us teen-magazine-reading prepubescent girls. It seemed we’d barely graduated from entering colouring competitions before we were being invited to enter modelling competitions.

DOLLY magazine had its iconic Model Search every year, offering ordinary Australian teenage girls the tantalising possibility that they too might be plucked from obscurity (or Riverside Plaza Queanbeyan) and become the next big thing.

There was even an Aaron Spelling television series called Models Inc., a spin-off of Melrose Place devoted to the glamorous and, naturally, completely drama-free world of a Los Angeles modelling agency.

The modelling phenomenon had well and truly reached the Bush Capital, and modelling and deportment schools were popping up around Canberra and the surrounding region. Somehow, I was lucky enough to attend not one, but two of these very sophisticated establishments.

My first foray into modelling

In 1993, aged 12, I enrolled in a school holiday modelling and deportment course at Wanda’s Academy and Model Management in Weetangera. Well, technically, my parents enrolled me. But I’m fairly certain there was begging involved.

Aesthetically, the 90s were a time to be alive: tartan skirts, black stockings, Doc Martens, babydoll dresses, brown lipstick and brown eyeshadow. Brown everything.

Hair was huge. Eyebrows, however, were becoming increasingly small. I distinctly remember being told my nails should be more rounded and my eyebrows thinner.

Gen Z, can you imagine?

We had lessons in hair and makeup — because in the 90s, more was more. We learnt how to walk in heels, pose and turn at the end of a catwalk.

The only runway I was regularly walking was the hallway at home, mostly trying to stay out of Mum’s way while she watched Days of Our Lives.

Then there was the advice about food. I remember being given information photocopied from a magazine, including one piece of advice that has remained lodged in my brain for 30 years: if you’re putting butter on something, wait until it’s cold.

Apparently, putting butter on hot food meant it melted in, and you’d use more.

They took our height and measurements too. Looking back, it’s quite jarring to see that presented to a group of young girls as perfectly ordinary.

At the time, I didn’t question it. Duh, I was at modelling school.

My big break

At the end of the course came my big moment: the fashion show. My family came to watch me parade the outfits I’d carefully selected and see me presented with the certificate I had so laboriously earned.

There was just one slight problem with my booming modelling career: at 12, I barely owned two decent weekend outfits. I borrowed clothes from friends so I’d have enough things to wear. One of my outfits had even originally been bought for my grandfather’s funeral.

Professional modelling photographs weren’t cheap either. So my parents did what parents did before smartphones, Canva and portrait mode. They hung a piece of fabric in our lounge room and photographed me posing in my fashion-show outfits.

And that was my portfolio. I still have the photographic evidence.

Apparently, once wasn’t enough

Four years later, in 1997, I spotted an advertisement in the Queanbeyan Age for a modelling course run by Melissa Williams and begged my parents to let me go.

This time there was one problem: I was absolutely mortified at the prospect of anyone at school finding out. Apparently I was confident enough to harbour dreams of becoming the next Cindy Crawford, but not confident enough to admit to my friends that I was going to modelling school.

Unfortunately, my attempts at secrecy were thwarted by one of the great security vulnerabilities of the 1990s: the Rip Curl Velcro wallet.

My friends went through mine, found a modelling-school business card, and shortly thereafter, the whole school knew.

Who did she think she was?

Evidently, someone who was learning the correct way to apply butter.

From Weetangera to the Hyatt

To be fair, all that training did eventually lead to a few brushes with the glamorous world of professional modelling.

Well, Canberra professional modelling.

One job involved carrying glasses of champagne around the Hyatt during a meet-and-greet. I wore caramel-coloured flared pants and a jacket with fur trim, styled with my freshly cut ‘Rachel Green’ hairdo.

It was all very un-supermodel.

I even worked alongside the girl from those iconic Bailey’s Corner commercials — “See you at Bailey’s!” I vaguely recall that I may have appeared as a passer-by in one of those ads. Or perhaps I was an extra in another Canberra commercial around the same time.

Either way, that could have been me!

To a teenage girl in Canberra in the 90s, appearing in the background of a Bailey’s Corner commercial was basically Cindy Crawford drinking Pepsi. There was even talk of me working as a promotional model at Summernats. I was offered the job. My parents and then-boyfriend were considerably less enthusiastic.

The answer was an emphatic no.

And with that, my burgeoning modelling career quietly came to an end, just as it threatened to segue into the glamorous world of promo girls. Apparently I made an impression at modelling school, too. About a decade later, I was at a Canberra pub when a girl behind the bar looked at me and asked, “Is your name Holly?”

She’d been at modelling school with me. Ten years later, she remembered me. I really hoped I didn’t still look the same.

Looking back

Some of it feels more than a little uncomfortable now. Young girls having their bodies measured, being handed dieting advice and being taught how their eyebrows, nails, hair and bodies ought to look? There’s no way a course like that would make it onto too many school-holiday program brochures in 2026.

But for all the things that feel questionable through a 2026 lens, I have really fond memories of modelling school. I remember being excited. I remember practising my walk. I remember my family coming to my fashion show.

And I remember my parents, having already paid for the course, hanging a piece of fabric in our lounge room and doing whatever they could to build the dreams of their 12-year-old aspiring model.

Despite my modelling career never quite reaching Cindy Crawford heights, I earned a certificate that remained proudly listed on my CV for an embarrassingly long time.

The 1990s were problematic. We can probably all agree. But you’ll have to pry the teasing comb and brown lip liner from my cold, dead, perfectly rounded, French-manicured hands.

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