The Daily News of Los Angeles
Friday
Woman beats odds to walk runway
Petit model to make international debut at London Fashion Week
by Marianne Love; Correspondent
Using social media, Sayda Hartoonian has carved out a path to a modeling career that looks to bypass stereotypes. The journey is taking her to London, where she'll be walking the runway in Fashion Week.
As far back as Sayda Hartoonian can remember, she has always wanted to be a runway fashion model.
The North Hollywood woman is getting that chancetoday when she makes her international debut at London Fashion Week in England.
Hartoonian, whose professional name is Sayda Word, isn't any ordinary fashion model.
She doesn't meet "industry standards" and is quite possibly the shortest model to walk the London runway.
First of all, she's only 5' 3," and even though she's only 25 years old, it could be said she's older than most models about to "retire."
Plus-sized models, trans and disabled models have broken into the runway modeling industry, but "petites" have not.
She attributes her good fortune to hard work, dedication, passion, networking and social media, the avenue she took to build a resume when traditional avenues weren't working.
She wrote, filmed, directed and edited comedic skits and posted them online.
By using social media, like Instagram and LiveAF, a live-streaming video application, Hartoonian built a following and a fan base.
Before that it was one rejection after another.
"As soon as they realized
I was 5' 3," they immediately turned me away for my height without fail," Hartoonian said. "Now I have close to 100,000 followers on Instagram and my videos are averaging from 1 million to 44 million viewers. Streaming got me more of a worldwide audience and gave me a strong enough presence to open up doors that would not have been able to be opened prior."
She believes many people in various industries are set in their ways, but she said a determined individual can use social media to get past stereotypical thinking.
"That's why this is so amazing and so powerful," Hartoonian said. "I'm ecstatic that I get to walk. I was so happy that I was crying. This will be a huge moment in my life. It will take one person to pave the way, and I want to be that one person to pave the way for petites."
Hartoonian will be wearing clothes by Taiwan designer Johan Ku and worn by actress Shailene Woodley and singer/songwriter Carrie Underwood.
London Fashion Week is the "Super Bowl" of the fashion industry, and Hartoonian being there is akin to Tom Brady winning another Super Bowl ring, according to Amanda Micallef, co-founder and president of Arsenic, a community of models, artists and creators who use social media to control their own destiny rather than intermediaries such as studios, record labels and modeling agencies.
"Sayda will likely stand the tallest in terms of her pride in being there and her power as a human," Micallef said. "In terms strictly of height, Sayda would be among the shortest if not the shortest model to walk in LFW."
She's definitely creating her own path in an industry that is built around tall models, Micallef added.
Designers typically create samples for their runway shows, and these are built in a fairly standard sample size based on a traditional model's form, she said. For this reason, it's challenging for a petite to walk in a major fashion show.
A designer would have to believe in the talent enough to alter their pieces pretty significantly to fit a smaller person,Micallef said.
Micallef said social media has helped change the core idea around who a model might be and the attributes associated with that.
"Social media influencers command a lot of sway with their audiences," she said. "Those audiences often don't share the more narrow view of the fashion elite about what is beautiful. Brands want and often need to tap into an influencer's ability to reach and inspire an audience that can be as big as a cable television stations viewership."
Micallef said high fashion and runway modeling is one area where there hasn't been much evolution.
"Most of these models are still quite young, very tall and exceedingly thin," Micallef said. "Sayda is petite. She's 10 to 12 inches shorter than most runway models. While thin, she's strong, fit and muscular."
Hartoonian's path to making her modeling career dream come true has been unusual.
It startedwhen she was around 5 years old.
She reveled in looking at the beautiful, empowering women in Vogue magazine,sewing and designing clothing she used from fabrics found around the house.
During middle school and her years at Providence High School in Burbank, she kept her eye on the ball because she knew education was important.
Her other passion was science.
As a student at UCLA,she studied biology with a minor in evolutionary medicine. Her focus was on cancer research.
She gave the commencement speech at her graduation.
She plans to use her platform one day as an international model to draw attention to her other loves: animals and people.
"I have a big passion for science and taking care of people and animals," Hartoonian said. "When I was young, I rescued strayed animals from streets and took care of them in my garage to make sure they were healthy. I'm fascinated with human and animal anatomy. I have a big passion healing people and animals."
Her mother, Mari Hartoonian, took the trip to London with her youngest of two daughters on Tuesday.
"I'm very proud," said Mari Hartoonian, an Armenian immigrant who came to America as a teenager not speaking a word of English. "Sadya was always an honor student. If she puts her mind to something, she will make sure she completes it and make her dreams come true.