The smell of perfume, makeup and hairspray fills the air of the Naked City Ink tattoo shop at the Commerce Street Studios. A number of twentysomething girls, wearing torn jeans, tank tops and open-toed shoes are waiting anxiously inside. They're holding bags and backpacks full of shoes, dresses, various other clothes—and at least one carries a pink feathered boa.
Across the hall, a large, heavyset photographer with a brown goatee and short spiked hair grunts as he sets up his lighting inside of the art gallery. His groans reverberate across the hall back into the tattoo shop and the young, blonde girl who vaguely looks like Jodie Foster getting her makeup done flashes a puzzled look. Undisturbed, the makeup artist, a skinny Russian woman, continues to plaster pancake-white foundation onto the young woman's face.
Inside this seemingly seedy atmosphere of young, star-struck girls and aggressive professional photographers is, according to event promoter Sarah Lester, a future art movement.
"This is revolutionary," Lester said. "What we're doing here is something different than anyone else in the country."
Using a combination of amateur girls looking to get into the modeling business, photographers looking to expand their portfolios and clubs hoping to bolster their image with sexy young girls, Lester is trying to start the nation's first combination fashion and art-centric scene with the backdrop of Sin City.
"We're looking for girls with the Vegas attitude to become the faces of our city, art and club scene," Lester said.
Using years of club promotion and personal experience from the fetish modeling world, Lester and her company, Vogue Elite, hope to bring the two drastically different scenes together by bringing fresh, would-be models to clubs and art galleries all over the city.
"I have clubs all over town asking me for contact info for my girls and to bring events to them," said Lester. "It tells me that Vegas is ready for a combination art and fashion scene."
How the clubs find Lester's "Glitter Girls," as she calls them, is another story.
Using Myspace, Lester finds photographers, makeup artists and girls interested in becoming models and invites them to a local art gallery. At the gallery the girls are clothed and made up for shooting. The photographers later send the photos to Lester, who develops them and the following night has a party at a local club where the art is displayed. Proceeds from sales go to the girls, the photographer, the makeup artists—and finally to Lester, who uses it to fund other events.
"It's a lot of work, I'm running off of three hours of sleep usually, but it helps everyone and gets everyone's name out on the street," Lester said.
In only the three months since starting these parties, Lester says she's had two girls go on to land other professional modeling jobs.
"It's a free-for-all, but I've had girls be contacted by clubs to become go-go dancers, and [queries] from agents looking for talent—it's incredible," Lester said.
Roselynn Savage, 22, one of the participants, says, "I'd like to model and do artsy-type things. I want to make some money, but coming to these events is more about networking [with photographers] and building a portfolio."
Savage, who recently dropped out of studies at CCSN, is hoping that her work with Lester will pay off in a career as a model. "I want to help promote Las Vegas art, fashion and myself [as a future model]."
A lot of the young women who are here trying to make it big in the modeling industry are students.
"Modeling is something I've always wanted to do," said Michelle Branich, a 22-year old UNLV business student who has been modeling for a year. "It's about art and for me ... it also supplements my school costs."
Regardless of superstar dreams of making it big in the business, questions of safety and the possibility of exploitation by photographers come to light, especially when working with young women who don't know the dangers and risks of the modeling business, Lester says.
"We take every step to insure our models' safety," said Lester. "We check IDs, our photographers, everything. If a photographer acts up and makes a girl feel uncomfortable they are gone. We want to make a safe environment for our models."
Back at the tattoo shop, the blonde girl at the makeup table gets up and goes back to the makeshift studio set up in the adjacent gallery. Her white dress with polka-dotted cherries shifts around as she poses for the camera. "I need you to stand there for a second," says the photographer as he peers through the lens of his camera. The sound of a digital- camera beep fills the room as he snaps off some photos. "All right, now what do you want to do?" he asks. The girl simultaneously points to a guitar in the corner of the room and a footlocker behind her. "Let's see what we can do with this," she commands. The photographer smiles and obliges as he shifts his camera down on the tripod. "I love this job," he mutters proudly as he checks his next shot. "I really do."