November 5, 2025 • 27 mins
In this episode, Omar Albertto tells his story. As he takes us on the wild ride that is his life—from partying at Studio 54 to modeling in Milan—he considers the racism he battled to find a place in the industry for himself and others.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey everyone, it's Vanessa Grigoriatis. Thank you for sticking around
to hear Model Wars, the podcast from iHeart Podcasts and
Campside Media. This episode, we're speaking with Omer Alboretto. He's
that exuberant guy who went from model to agent and
then went from hustling with Paul Fisher at the Lynd
(00:46):
Agency to becoming one of the most influential figures in
the entire modeling industry.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I was very fortunate I've to opening Omar's Man. Within
like eight months, the Los Angeles Times approached me and
they wrote this incredible artile about Omar's Men, saying Omar
says goodbye to the Kendall image and introduces us to
a new realism in male models.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So yes, I'm the guy who started that.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
The inclusivity, the diversity, which is very predominant today in
today's world. Everyone speaks of diversity and inclusivity. It was
always I've been doing this forever in my life.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Umar's vision for a new type of model didn't come easily.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I recall many times castings when the clients will say
no black models.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It was so often, and it was so many.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Especially like department stores, department stores, because you know, we
had catalog those days. But some campaigns as well, some
advertising jobs that will say no model, no black models,
or when they cast and they say, oh, we're looking
for a black model.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
So it was never like a model, like a black model.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So some change was desperately needed.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Remember when I moved to Los Angeles, I called every
male model a chuck. Iybody looks like their name is
Chuck and they're like a quarterback. Everybody looks like a
quarterback with six pack and brown hair and green eyes.
And I didn't go well with that.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Because I don't play football.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
It's like they all look alike to me.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
And Omer is the kind of guy who can almost
will change to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
When Klin said to me, no black people, no black models,
I still went ahead and send black guys.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Oh my god, I did that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I will say, you know what, I'm gonna send in
this guy because I know they're gonna vibe. So the
guy might be Philippine, no Asian, Turkish, Russian, whatever, but
I knew he would vibe with the photographer and then
the photographer would go to bat for the guy.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I know this is why I want.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Omar also has one hell of a life story. It's
one of those life influences, art influences, commerce style of stories.
If you need someone to break the mold in the
modeling agency, who's better than a dark skinned Panamanian who
speaks Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Italian who left his home
(03:21):
country to live and to party in New York and
Los Angeles, Milan and a bunch of other places. And
as you might remember from earlier in the series, it
all started in exactly the place you would have thought
it would have started, Studio fifty four, where Omar was
discovered as a model. But before he could get to
(03:45):
Studio fifty four, Omar had to find his way to
New York.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I grew up in a neighborhood called Villa Casserees in
Panama City, Panama, very very fortunate.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
My mother worked at the.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Canal Zone, so my mother was earning an American salary
in what was then a third World country. So I
can't say that I come from humble beginnings because I
don't went to private schools, drivers I always had a housekeeper.
I was a swimmer. I swam for the national team.
I became pro at twelve years old, I knew nothing
(04:21):
of fashion, entertainment, music, none of that.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
I was from the pool to school, to school to
the pool.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
My mother, as a gift, gave me a ticket to
go to Disney World in Orlando, and when I arrived
to Miami, I was kind of freaked out.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I had a big afro then, and.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
I heard that in America, if you had an afro,
they'll arrescue. So my entire time on the plane, I
kept pushing it down. But when I got to South
Beach I didn't.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It was weird.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It was like we had a layover and it was
a lot of like old people playing dominos on the streets.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I'm like, what is this place? And I'm a Latin
guy who said to me, like, where are you going.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I'm like, well, I'm going to this New World tomorrow.
He's like, I'm going to the World. We used to
call in Latin America New.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
York the World. So he said, I'm going to the
World tomorrow. I'm like, man, I want to go to
the World.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
He goes, yeah, I'm going to take a bus tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
So I asked for my ticket. I called my brother
and in New York City. My brother was already living
in New York and I told him I was coming
to New York and he said, let me get your ticket.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
And I said, now, I'm going to take a bus
with this guy. He's cool.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
We're going to just travel, you know, up to New
York and I get to see some of the United
States and got off the plane or walked through Times Square.
Never saw anything like that. Whoa like the other day
from Times Square? Was Times Square, not not the thing
that's oh now.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I mean Times Square was like the It was like
the bottom of the ghetto. I mean it was exciting
because it was like you bumping into people.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
You got drug dealers paying puzzle hookers.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
It was crazy. I never saw anything like that. I'm
just staring at everyone.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And funny enough, I saw a line at a movie
theater my brother was while they standing online. I never
saw that in my life, to go to a movie theater.
He's like, oh, it's a doubleheader too, kind of like
iconic films Superfly and Saturday Night Theater.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I like, I want to.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Check them out.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
So I haven't even been in America for two days
and I'm already watching Tony Manero and superply. So I
was doom from the jump and I watched these two
movies and.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Went back to my brother.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
We lived in Brooklyn, right across the street from the
Brooklyn Museum from Prospect Park, and it was very, very
cheat that neighborhood then. I don't know what it looks
like now, but it was super super chic and my
brother did extremely well. My brother was president of Io
Insurance Services offices on Wall Street. He told me he's
going to put me in school so he could get
facilitate my papers to stay.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
So do you want to stay? I'm like, yeah, I
want to stay.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And now is when fate intervenes for Omar, although he
also helped fade along with a pair of Italian designer jeans, we.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Went to the city. We got dressed nicely.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
My brother gave me money to buy something nice and
about a pair of Ferucci jeans, and we went to
see the play. And when we left the theater, we
kind of looked to our right and it was Times Square.
Looked to our left in the Central Park, we saw
a lot of limousines coming out of fifty fourth Streets.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
We're like, what's going on? We never saw that many
limousines in our life. We're like, let's go buy and
see what's happening.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And as we got closer, we saw the big on
in fifty four and Ricardo looks at me. He said, Pete,
that's the place we saw in the news a few
days ago with famous people go. So we were walking
through the crowd and Steve Rubel, famous owner of Studio
fifty four. He used to stand on top of a
(08:03):
fire hydrant picking people, got the velvet rope and stop
staring at me. You're not getting in. He was so
rude to people. And he goes those two right there
and I'm like me, say, you're coming.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Are you staying? I'm like, we're coming, and he gave
us two tickets. We're like, oh my god.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I never saw people like that in my life.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
The first thing were on the left. I'm staring at
that whole table.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I couldn't get my eyes off them because I'm staring
at Diana Breeland, I'm staring at Houston. I'm looking at Andy,
you know, Andy Warhol, you know this little guy with
crazy looking hair.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
And I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Get my eyes off Jean Michellekis because I'm like, they
let that guy.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
In he looked like a bump.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
He's like, guy got paint everywhere and a hoodie and.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
And we're like, what the heck is this place in.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Houston with a cigarette holder talking to Diana Breelan.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
And and we stayed. We had like eight dollars among ourselves.
We split it.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
We bought one drink, two glasses. When we finished it
was water and ice and you know, try to fit in.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know, I love women.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But that night we kept staring at this one black
guy because there weren't that many black guys in there
many black people in there at the town. Out of
like twelve hundred people, it was probably like fuck thirty
twenty thirty.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
And I'm staring at this black guy in the middle
of the dance floor.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I never saw anything like that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He was like six four six pack, no shirt on,
white fur coats, skin tight leather jacket, pointed counter of
cowboy with a big Ulzi Paratti belt, and he's twirling
these two women and it's like, I mean, one is Liza,
one is beyond Copley.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I don't know who these women are. And he's torn it.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Then he throws.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
The coat, takes it off and throws it to the
side and the buck we look at guy Jeff Musquiz
picks it up and takes it to the table.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I was born that day.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
That's the day I was born, the Omar before Sach,
sweet little shy kid. I walked in that place and
I saw a world that was like.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What more about Omar's story? After the break? So Omar
found his calling on the dance floor at Studio fifty four.
That's something his brother, who remembers the president of an
(10:33):
insurance company, can surely understand.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
My brother, actually, my brother did one of the greatest
and worst things ever happened to me.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
I remember coming home one day and he said, pack
your stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I'm like, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I never asked questions, but my brother was tough. Packed
my stuff. He drove to Queens Village. We dropped me
off in this gorgeous apartment and I dropped my luggage upstairs.
He went in his pocket. He took three hundred and
fifty dollars out. He said, this is for you.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
What are we doing?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
He said, this is your apartment. What you mean is
my apartment? He said, yeah, this is your apartment. It's
time for you to fence for yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
And I'm like, wow, I'm bawling.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Now I got three hundred and fifty bucks. I got
an apartment. Oh, let the fun begin? And it Yeah,
the fun began indeed. But a month later I went
home one night and put the key in and turned
the light on and there's no electricity. And turned this
and there's no gas. There's nothing. I'm going, what's going on?
(11:42):
So I go downstairs to the landlord and I say, hey,
you guys got electricity?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
Show?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, well I don't. Nothing is working. Go where have
you paid your bill? Like?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Like?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Have you paid? Do you check your mail? I'm like,
where is.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
My mel She goes that box is yours? And it
was like stack like this, you know electric bill? This?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Oh? What do I do?
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Pay it?
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Not any money?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I'm and parting my ass off. So I call my
brother the next day and I said, hey, there's no electricity.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
He goes, and what do I do? You go pay
the bill? You go, I have no money? Should I
come over?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
You go? No?
Speaker 4 (12:31):
You ever heard of something called a job? What? What? What?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
What?
Speaker 4 (12:36):
What am I going to do? I mean a job,
like I really have to get it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
If I got a job at a part time job
at a belt factory in the city, putting holes in belts,
a series of things, like the dad.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I worked as.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
A messenger, but all that money was just going to
go to Studio fifty four. That's all I did was
go to Studio fifty four. Get you rest up, Ricky.
My friend Dicato learned how to sew, so he used
to make me beautiful trousers every week.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Like jeans.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I remember he made me my jeans that I went
to Italy with. He made them for me whatever money
we have with my top and whatever.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Shoes he wore.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So we were always super dappered out. But all we
do is go to the studio. That's all we do.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I kind of like develop a certain sense of
style myself. And dear friend of mine, Arthur, Arthur Williams
and his boyfriend Lawrence, they were so great, you know,
grateful to me, grateful to me.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
They always took a liking to me.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
They introduced me to a designer, Italian designer Callediola Viola, and.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
The guy looked at me and said, hey, I want
to meet this guy.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
And they introduced me to the guy and he's like, oh,
you have a great look.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
You know what. I never had a guy tell me that,
like I have a.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Great look, and he and he invited me to do
his collection in Milano, and he sent me a ticket
and seven hundred and fifty dollars cashier's check to come
to Milano.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I'm like, yeah, of course, but I'm not a model.
I'm like, isn't that kinda like weird? Ricardo was like, dude,
you gotta go.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I have no idea what the hell I'm going in for.
I arrived, I got picked up at the airport.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
They put me up pension.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I lived on the patia and the next morning the
driver came to pick me up to take me to
the showroom for my fitting.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I got to.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
See the designer and when they were doing the fittings,
they were the seamstresses. There were like three of them
and they were freaking out taking my measurements and they
were speaking Italian and they were like my question on
the possibly no, no, of course, I been request what
(14:59):
what are they tripping out about?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
So they're like, call Cloud and the woman said, Kim
a Cloud.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You look.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Request call a designer. He needs to come and see this.
So he came down and he said.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Hey, thank you for coming. I'm so happy you're here.
I'm like, dude, like, what's going on? Like why they
tripping on me?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
He goes, well, I got great news to tell you. You
are ay walking, dummy, and I'm like, what does that mean?
Speaker 4 (15:26):
I had the.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
Egg exact measurements of the dummies, the mannequins, to the tee,
every neck from here to here, from here to here,
from here to.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
There, in seam, hips, waist chest, it was everything was
exactly the length.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And I said, is that a good thing? He goes,
you're walking, You're a mannequin.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Said I'm gonna do something for you, and he called
lemarsh Di Ricardo Guy elenadic Asti was the top model
agency in Milana at the time, and he told her
I had this guy for you. Got to meet this guy.
So he sent me over with his driver. I went
to the agency. They took polaroids of me, and they
call him and say, hey, can we send him out
(16:10):
right now because it's fashion week? Well, yeah, send him out.
I went on six castings and booked all six shows,
and those four years I was averaging like thirty three
shows per season between Milano and Paris. They placed me
in Paris for Paris Planning and worked for the best
of the best. You know, work for Kenzo and you
(16:33):
sail On and Piter Cardan, Jesus you go. Tim Mugler
became friends with those guys. But every weekend that I
was off, I would go to New York to go
to the studio. One thing with me, I was always
very realistic with myself. I knew how to separate myself
(16:54):
from Omar and looked at myself and I said, look,
I'm never going to become super male model. I look
at the guys that I'm going up against. Those guys
are bloody beautiful. They were all white. Charles Williams married
event people's marrying womble. These guys were beautiful to look at.
I'm like, I'm not nothing to look at. I'm just interested.
(17:16):
I got a cool swag, and I have this crazy
voice and this accent.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
So yeah, I get, but does.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Not translate well to print. And I really wasn't really
doing any print jobs. I was doing more runway. I
was fine making a good living, but I was also
blowing my money. I'm never saying that dime in my life.
I was just partying and on one of my trips
back to New York. Dear friend of mine, he said, Hey,
there's an agency in New York called Lamage Models and
(17:44):
they're thinking of opening a runway the department.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Will you be interested? I said, I'll take a shot.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
He said, well, I have an apartment in the back
of the agency, on the penthouse.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
So I'm living the big life.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I'm living on sixty fourth in Madison on a penhouse.
The offices in the front and the back there's open
a door and there's a whole apartment there, and that's
where I lived.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So Omar is going from model to agent, and now
he gets to see a whole new side of the industry.
He's the one telling people where to go, how they
should dress, what they should say, how to present themselves.
But being on the business side also means confronting much
of the industry's ugliness. This is the point from the
beginning of the episode where clients feel entirely comfortable telling
(18:34):
a black model agent that they don't want any black
models for their shoe, and Paul Fisher backs Omar up
on this.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
With the time Supermodels kind of ran the day because
the Kontinesst Publishing company would only put supermodels on the
covers of their magazines versus celebrities. Out of every twelve covers,
eleven of those covers were supermodels, and out of the eleven,
ten and a half of them, year after year were
(19:04):
white women. We used to have to beg the Continents
Publishing company to give Naomi a break or carry Young
a break. I used to fight with the editors of
every major magazine about their their way of looking at
our modeling industry, that it did not reflect what was
happening in our communities around this country. I used to
(19:25):
fight with them. I mean, there's there's four editorial spreads
in Vogue every single month for and each each each
editorials between six and eight pages, which is twenty four pages.
Twenty four pages times twelve months is two hundred and
forty four pages. Out of the two hundred and forty
four pages, two hundred and thirty of them were white women, period,
full stop.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
It never hit me.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You know, I'm still learning how to be a black
person in this country.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I'm honey. I when I came to America, I didn't
know who Martin Luther King was.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I didn't know who Malcolm Axel gross up Park and
all these black heroes, incredible humans that I know nothing
about those people. I grew up in Latin America. We
study at AlSi, Mofranco and up at all. We don't
study Shakespeare. We studied me Listen. I mean, I didn't
(20:13):
know anything about black culture. So I think I was
very fortunate to grow up in an environment that color
was not an issue, in a neighborhood that color.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Was not an issue.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We had financial racism when I was growing up. Either
you were poor or you were middle or you did well.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We did well.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
So my neighbor next door to my home in Panama
where I grew up was Japanese, across the street Filipino,
next to the Chileno, next to that German. So I
had I grew up in a environment with all kinds
of race.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I never really fell into that trap or that behavior,
and I now not me.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Omar also says that the main leverage he and Paul
had and fighting for their models came from their connections
to photographers, which were deep.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
One of the things we had our advantage over many
agencies is that we really had a lockdown on photographers.
PAULI had his posse of photographers that were very loyal
to him. Many models that we created that no one
wanted to touch and welcome.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
We did it because we had the photo power.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
When you have the photo photographers behind you who believe
in your vision, and these are photographers of power, the
thing that makes it a lot easier. So you knew
what you were going to get and you knew what
it will do to your model's career.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
But with professional photographers being replaced by influencers taking selfies,
the path that Omar helped forge for new faces breaking
into the industry feels like it has disappeared.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
I don't know how do you make a model today?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
It breaks my heart.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Into today's market, today's world of modeling with social media
and influencers, digital creators, content creators.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
What are you? What are you talking about? Your digital creators?
Speaker 5 (22:11):
I'm looking at your pages, just pictures.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Of you, like, what do you? What are you creating?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Is?
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I see you could now create your own persona online.
I just see so much of nothing these days, and
there's no signature like water. Water is a great drink.
Is there a better way to make water? Do you
want to mess with that formula?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
We had a formula and it worked, and social media
came and disrupted that formula, so our formula no longer works.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
But Omar isn't exactly one to complain.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I mean, the nineties was a roller coaster for us.
You know, it's there a roller coaster. We never were
any played for more than like ten days. I remember
closing the agency and.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
We were like, let's get out of here.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
We closed the agency and went to Hawaii four days,
like all of us, the whole entire agency, and we
all took mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
We arrived and were.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
This beach the night we arrived, all on mushrooms. And
the next morning we got up and there was a
sign that saying do not go into the ocean because
it was like a shark infested water. And here we
were hanging out in this ocean all night on mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It was a fun ride. But when Omar finally became
a father, he decided he should probably give up the
swimming with sharks on mushrooms part of his life.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
My son was born and that changed a lot for me.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That's really was the time when I'm like I need
to I didn't want to do this, by the way,
I just didn't want to be in the industry at
that time. I don't say I was freaking out, but
I'm like, I'm about.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
To become a father. I cannot have this lifestyle being
a father.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I remember being in Russia with some friends of mine
and one became a very famous director now, Chris Broncado.
He wrote Narcos. Chris, look at me. He's like, Ohmi,
when was the last time you stayed home on Friday night?
I don't think I have ever stayed home on Friday night.
(24:27):
He's like, dude, we should do a story called The Fridays,
The Many Fridays of Omar. I can't do this no more.
Like I just want to like focus and stay in
one place. So I think I'm gonna just say Miami.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
This is when Omar opened his own agency, and he
still runs it to this day. It's different from what
he used to do. But that's kind of the point.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
People from my generation, they're caught up in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
They're pissed. I don't blame you. Yeah you're pissed, but dude,
keep it moving. Man. We're not there no more. I
don't lived there no more. I hate Fisco, I hate
old school funk. It bores me already been there and
listened to afrobeats. You gotta just keep it moving in life.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
That's the one thing I always tell young people, like,
stay present, stay in the now, and by the time
you finished saying the word now, that's part of the past.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Model Wars was executive produced and hosted
by Vanessa Gregoriotis. Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.
Julia K. S Levine was our producer and reporter. Our
(25:47):
senior producer was Lily Houston Smith, and our assistant editor
was Emma Simonov. We had story and production help from
Shoshi Schmolowitz, Ali Haney, and Blake Rook. Our production manager
was Ash Warren and our studio recordist was Ewan Li Tremuant.
Sound designed by Mark McCadam. This episode was mixed and
engineered by Amber Devereaux. iHeart Podcasts executive producers were Jennifer
(26:12):
Bassett and Katrina Norvell. The show was also executive produced
by Rachel Winter and Campside Media's Josh Dean, Adam Hoff,
and Matt Schaer. If you'd like to access behind the
scenes content from Model Wars and Campside Media, please go
to join campside dot com. That's j O I N
(26:32):
C A M P s I d E dot com.
If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Thanks so much for listening to our entire series on
Model Wars. We've really enjoyed it and we hope you
have two
Speaker 5 (27:01):
You
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey everyone, it's Vanessa Grigoriatis. Thank you for sticking around
to hear Model Wars, the podcast from iHeart Podcasts and
Campside Media. This episode, we're speaking with Omer Alboretto. He's
that exuberant guy who went from model to agent and
then went from hustling with Paul Fisher at the Lynd
(00:46):
Agency to becoming one of the most influential figures in
the entire modeling industry.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I was very fortunate I've to opening Omar's Man. Within
like eight months, the Los Angeles Times approached me and
they wrote this incredible artile about Omar's Men, saying Omar
says goodbye to the Kendall image and introduces us to
a new realism in male models.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So yes, I'm the guy who started that.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
The inclusivity, the diversity, which is very predominant today in
today's world. Everyone speaks of diversity and inclusivity. It was
always I've been doing this forever in my life.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Umar's vision for a new type of model didn't come easily.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I recall many times castings when the clients will say
no black models.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It was so often, and it was so many.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Especially like department stores, department stores, because you know, we
had catalog those days. But some campaigns as well, some
advertising jobs that will say no model, no black models,
or when they cast and they say, oh, we're looking
for a black model.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
So it was never like a model, like a black model.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So some change was desperately needed.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Remember when I moved to Los Angeles, I called every
male model a chuck. Iybody looks like their name is
Chuck and they're like a quarterback. Everybody looks like a
quarterback with six pack and brown hair and green eyes.
And I didn't go well with that.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Because I don't play football.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
It's like they all look alike to me.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
And Omer is the kind of guy who can almost
will change to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
When Klin said to me, no black people, no black models,
I still went ahead and send black guys.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Oh my god, I did that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I will say, you know what, I'm gonna send in
this guy because I know they're gonna vibe. So the
guy might be Philippine, no Asian, Turkish, Russian, whatever, but
I knew he would vibe with the photographer and then
the photographer would go to bat for the guy.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I know this is why I want.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Omar also has one hell of a life story. It's
one of those life influences, art influences, commerce style of stories.
If you need someone to break the mold in the
modeling agency, who's better than a dark skinned Panamanian who
speaks Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Italian who left his home
(03:21):
country to live and to party in New York and
Los Angeles, Milan and a bunch of other places. And
as you might remember from earlier in the series, it
all started in exactly the place you would have thought
it would have started, Studio fifty four, where Omar was
discovered as a model. But before he could get to
(03:45):
Studio fifty four, Omar had to find his way to
New York.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I grew up in a neighborhood called Villa Casserees in
Panama City, Panama, very very fortunate.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
My mother worked at the.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Canal Zone, so my mother was earning an American salary
in what was then a third World country. So I
can't say that I come from humble beginnings because I
don't went to private schools, drivers I always had a housekeeper.
I was a swimmer. I swam for the national team.
I became pro at twelve years old, I knew nothing
(04:21):
of fashion, entertainment, music, none of that.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
I was from the pool to school, to school to
the pool.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
My mother, as a gift, gave me a ticket to
go to Disney World in Orlando, and when I arrived
to Miami, I was kind of freaked out.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I had a big afro then, and.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
I heard that in America, if you had an afro,
they'll arrescue. So my entire time on the plane, I
kept pushing it down. But when I got to South
Beach I didn't.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It was weird.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It was like we had a layover and it was
a lot of like old people playing dominos on the streets.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I'm like, what is this place? And I'm a Latin
guy who said to me, like, where are you going.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I'm like, well, I'm going to this New World tomorrow.
He's like, I'm going to the World. We used to
call in Latin America New.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
York the World. So he said, I'm going to the
World tomorrow. I'm like, man, I want to go to
the World.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
He goes, yeah, I'm going to take a bus tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
So I asked for my ticket. I called my brother
and in New York City. My brother was already living
in New York and I told him I was coming
to New York and he said, let me get your ticket.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
And I said, now, I'm going to take a bus
with this guy. He's cool.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
We're going to just travel, you know, up to New
York and I get to see some of the United
States and got off the plane or walked through Times Square.
Never saw anything like that. Whoa like the other day
from Times Square? Was Times Square, not not the thing
that's oh now.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I mean Times Square was like the It was like
the bottom of the ghetto. I mean it was exciting
because it was like you bumping into people.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
You got drug dealers paying puzzle hookers.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
It was crazy. I never saw anything like that. I'm
just staring at everyone.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And funny enough, I saw a line at a movie
theater my brother was while they standing online. I never
saw that in my life, to go to a movie theater.
He's like, oh, it's a doubleheader too, kind of like
iconic films Superfly and Saturday Night Theater.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I like, I want to.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Check them out.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
So I haven't even been in America for two days
and I'm already watching Tony Manero and superply. So I
was doom from the jump and I watched these two
movies and.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Went back to my brother.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
We lived in Brooklyn, right across the street from the
Brooklyn Museum from Prospect Park, and it was very, very
cheat that neighborhood then. I don't know what it looks
like now, but it was super super chic and my
brother did extremely well. My brother was president of Io
Insurance Services offices on Wall Street. He told me he's
going to put me in school so he could get
facilitate my papers to stay.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
So do you want to stay? I'm like, yeah, I
want to stay.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And now is when fate intervenes for Omar, although he
also helped fade along with a pair of Italian designer jeans, we.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Went to the city. We got dressed nicely.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
My brother gave me money to buy something nice and
about a pair of Ferucci jeans, and we went to
see the play. And when we left the theater, we
kind of looked to our right and it was Times Square.
Looked to our left in the Central Park, we saw
a lot of limousines coming out of fifty fourth Streets.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
We're like, what's going on? We never saw that many
limousines in our life. We're like, let's go buy and
see what's happening.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And as we got closer, we saw the big on
in fifty four and Ricardo looks at me. He said, Pete,
that's the place we saw in the news a few
days ago with famous people go. So we were walking
through the crowd and Steve Rubel, famous owner of Studio
fifty four. He used to stand on top of a
(08:03):
fire hydrant picking people, got the velvet rope and stop
staring at me. You're not getting in. He was so
rude to people. And he goes those two right there
and I'm like me, say, you're coming.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Are you staying? I'm like, we're coming, and he gave
us two tickets. We're like, oh my god.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I never saw people like that in my life.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
The first thing were on the left. I'm staring at
that whole table.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I couldn't get my eyes off them because I'm staring
at Diana Breeland, I'm staring at Houston. I'm looking at Andy,
you know, Andy Warhol, you know this little guy with
crazy looking hair.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
And I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Get my eyes off Jean Michellekis because I'm like, they
let that guy.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
In he looked like a bump.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
He's like, guy got paint everywhere and a hoodie and.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
And we're like, what the heck is this place in.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Houston with a cigarette holder talking to Diana Breelan.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
And and we stayed. We had like eight dollars among ourselves.
We split it.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
We bought one drink, two glasses. When we finished it
was water and ice and you know, try to fit in.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know, I love women.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But that night we kept staring at this one black
guy because there weren't that many black guys in there
many black people in there at the town. Out of
like twelve hundred people, it was probably like fuck thirty
twenty thirty.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
And I'm staring at this black guy in the middle
of the dance floor.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I never saw anything like that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He was like six four six pack, no shirt on,
white fur coats, skin tight leather jacket, pointed counter of
cowboy with a big Ulzi Paratti belt, and he's twirling
these two women and it's like, I mean, one is Liza,
one is beyond Copley.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I don't know who these women are. And he's torn it.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Then he throws.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
The coat, takes it off and throws it to the
side and the buck we look at guy Jeff Musquiz
picks it up and takes it to the table.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I was born that day.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
That's the day I was born, the Omar before Sach,
sweet little shy kid. I walked in that place and
I saw a world that was like.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What more about Omar's story? After the break? So Omar
found his calling on the dance floor at Studio fifty four.
That's something his brother, who remembers the president of an
(10:33):
insurance company, can surely understand.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
My brother, actually, my brother did one of the greatest
and worst things ever happened to me.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
I remember coming home one day and he said, pack
your stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I'm like, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I never asked questions, but my brother was tough. Packed
my stuff. He drove to Queens Village. We dropped me
off in this gorgeous apartment and I dropped my luggage upstairs.
He went in his pocket. He took three hundred and
fifty dollars out. He said, this is for you.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
What are we doing?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
He said, this is your apartment. What you mean is
my apartment? He said, yeah, this is your apartment. It's
time for you to fence for yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
And I'm like, wow, I'm bawling.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Now I got three hundred and fifty bucks. I got
an apartment. Oh, let the fun begin? And it Yeah,
the fun began indeed. But a month later I went
home one night and put the key in and turned
the light on and there's no electricity. And turned this
and there's no gas. There's nothing. I'm going, what's going on?
(11:42):
So I go downstairs to the landlord and I say, hey,
you guys got electricity?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
Show?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, well I don't. Nothing is working. Go where have
you paid your bill? Like?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Like?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Have you paid? Do you check your mail? I'm like,
where is.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
My mel She goes that box is yours? And it
was like stack like this, you know electric bill? This?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Oh? What do I do?
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Pay it?
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Not any money?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I'm and parting my ass off. So I call my
brother the next day and I said, hey, there's no electricity.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
He goes, and what do I do? You go pay
the bill? You go, I have no money? Should I
come over?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
You go? No?
Speaker 4 (12:31):
You ever heard of something called a job? What? What? What?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
What?
Speaker 4 (12:36):
What am I going to do? I mean a job,
like I really have to get it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
If I got a job at a part time job
at a belt factory in the city, putting holes in belts,
a series of things, like the dad.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I worked as.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
A messenger, but all that money was just going to
go to Studio fifty four. That's all I did was
go to Studio fifty four. Get you rest up, Ricky.
My friend Dicato learned how to sew, so he used
to make me beautiful trousers every week.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Like jeans.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I remember he made me my jeans that I went
to Italy with. He made them for me whatever money
we have with my top and whatever.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Shoes he wore.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So we were always super dappered out. But all we
do is go to the studio. That's all we do.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I kind of like develop a certain sense of
style myself. And dear friend of mine, Arthur, Arthur Williams
and his boyfriend Lawrence, they were so great, you know,
grateful to me, grateful to me.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
They always took a liking to me.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
They introduced me to a designer, Italian designer Callediola Viola, and.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
The guy looked at me and said, hey, I want
to meet this guy.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
And they introduced me to the guy and he's like, oh,
you have a great look.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
You know what. I never had a guy tell me that,
like I have a.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Great look, and he and he invited me to do
his collection in Milano, and he sent me a ticket
and seven hundred and fifty dollars cashier's check to come
to Milano.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I'm like, yeah, of course, but I'm not a model.
I'm like, isn't that kinda like weird? Ricardo was like, dude,
you gotta go.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I have no idea what the hell I'm going in for.
I arrived, I got picked up at the airport.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
They put me up pension.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I lived on the patia and the next morning the
driver came to pick me up to take me to
the showroom for my fitting.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I got to.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
See the designer and when they were doing the fittings,
they were the seamstresses. There were like three of them
and they were freaking out taking my measurements and they
were speaking Italian and they were like my question on
the possibly no, no, of course, I been request what
(14:59):
what are they tripping out about?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
So they're like, call Cloud and the woman said, Kim
a Cloud.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You look.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Request call a designer. He needs to come and see this.
So he came down and he said.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Hey, thank you for coming. I'm so happy you're here.
I'm like, dude, like, what's going on? Like why they
tripping on me?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
He goes, well, I got great news to tell you. You
are ay walking, dummy, and I'm like, what does that mean?
Speaker 4 (15:26):
I had the.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
Egg exact measurements of the dummies, the mannequins, to the tee,
every neck from here to here, from here to here,
from here to.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
There, in seam, hips, waist chest, it was everything was
exactly the length.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And I said, is that a good thing? He goes,
you're walking, You're a mannequin.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Said I'm gonna do something for you, and he called
lemarsh Di Ricardo Guy elenadic Asti was the top model
agency in Milana at the time, and he told her
I had this guy for you. Got to meet this guy.
So he sent me over with his driver. I went
to the agency. They took polaroids of me, and they
call him and say, hey, can we send him out
(16:10):
right now because it's fashion week? Well, yeah, send him out.
I went on six castings and booked all six shows,
and those four years I was averaging like thirty three
shows per season between Milano and Paris. They placed me
in Paris for Paris Planning and worked for the best
of the best. You know, work for Kenzo and you
(16:33):
sail On and Piter Cardan, Jesus you go. Tim Mugler
became friends with those guys. But every weekend that I
was off, I would go to New York to go
to the studio. One thing with me, I was always
very realistic with myself. I knew how to separate myself
(16:54):
from Omar and looked at myself and I said, look,
I'm never going to become super male model. I look
at the guys that I'm going up against. Those guys
are bloody beautiful. They were all white. Charles Williams married
event people's marrying womble. These guys were beautiful to look at.
I'm like, I'm not nothing to look at. I'm just interested.
(17:16):
I got a cool swag, and I have this crazy
voice and this accent.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
So yeah, I get, but does.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Not translate well to print. And I really wasn't really
doing any print jobs. I was doing more runway. I
was fine making a good living, but I was also
blowing my money. I'm never saying that dime in my life.
I was just partying and on one of my trips
back to New York. Dear friend of mine, he said, Hey,
there's an agency in New York called Lamage Models and
(17:44):
they're thinking of opening a runway the department.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Will you be interested? I said, I'll take a shot.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
He said, well, I have an apartment in the back
of the agency, on the penthouse.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
So I'm living the big life.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I'm living on sixty fourth in Madison on a penhouse.
The offices in the front and the back there's open
a door and there's a whole apartment there, and that's
where I lived.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So Omar is going from model to agent, and now
he gets to see a whole new side of the industry.
He's the one telling people where to go, how they
should dress, what they should say, how to present themselves.
But being on the business side also means confronting much
of the industry's ugliness. This is the point from the
beginning of the episode where clients feel entirely comfortable telling
(18:34):
a black model agent that they don't want any black
models for their shoe, and Paul Fisher backs Omar up
on this.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
With the time Supermodels kind of ran the day because
the Kontinesst Publishing company would only put supermodels on the
covers of their magazines versus celebrities. Out of every twelve covers,
eleven of those covers were supermodels, and out of the eleven,
ten and a half of them, year after year were
(19:04):
white women. We used to have to beg the Continents
Publishing company to give Naomi a break or carry Young
a break. I used to fight with the editors of
every major magazine about their their way of looking at
our modeling industry, that it did not reflect what was
happening in our communities around this country. I used to
(19:25):
fight with them. I mean, there's there's four editorial spreads
in Vogue every single month for and each each each
editorials between six and eight pages, which is twenty four pages.
Twenty four pages times twelve months is two hundred and
forty four pages. Out of the two hundred and forty
four pages, two hundred and thirty of them were white women, period,
full stop.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
It never hit me.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You know, I'm still learning how to be a black
person in this country.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I'm honey. I when I came to America, I didn't
know who Martin Luther King was.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I didn't know who Malcolm Axel gross up Park and
all these black heroes, incredible humans that I know nothing
about those people. I grew up in Latin America. We
study at AlSi, Mofranco and up at all. We don't
study Shakespeare. We studied me Listen. I mean, I didn't
(20:13):
know anything about black culture. So I think I was
very fortunate to grow up in an environment that color
was not an issue, in a neighborhood that color.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Was not an issue.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We had financial racism when I was growing up. Either
you were poor or you were middle or you did well.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We did well.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
So my neighbor next door to my home in Panama
where I grew up was Japanese, across the street Filipino,
next to the Chileno, next to that German. So I
had I grew up in a environment with all kinds
of race.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I never really fell into that trap or that behavior,
and I now not me.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Omar also says that the main leverage he and Paul
had and fighting for their models came from their connections
to photographers, which were deep.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
One of the things we had our advantage over many
agencies is that we really had a lockdown on photographers.
PAULI had his posse of photographers that were very loyal
to him. Many models that we created that no one
wanted to touch and welcome.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
We did it because we had the photo power.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
When you have the photo photographers behind you who believe
in your vision, and these are photographers of power, the
thing that makes it a lot easier. So you knew
what you were going to get and you knew what
it will do to your model's career.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
But with professional photographers being replaced by influencers taking selfies,
the path that Omar helped forge for new faces breaking
into the industry feels like it has disappeared.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
I don't know how do you make a model today?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
It breaks my heart.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Into today's market, today's world of modeling with social media
and influencers, digital creators, content creators.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
What are you? What are you talking about? Your digital creators?
Speaker 5 (22:11):
I'm looking at your pages, just pictures.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Of you, like, what do you? What are you creating?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Is?
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I see you could now create your own persona online.
I just see so much of nothing these days, and
there's no signature like water. Water is a great drink.
Is there a better way to make water? Do you
want to mess with that formula?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
We had a formula and it worked, and social media
came and disrupted that formula, so our formula no longer works.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
But Omar isn't exactly one to complain.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I mean, the nineties was a roller coaster for us.
You know, it's there a roller coaster. We never were
any played for more than like ten days. I remember
closing the agency and.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
We were like, let's get out of here.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
We closed the agency and went to Hawaii four days,
like all of us, the whole entire agency, and we
all took mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
We arrived and were.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
This beach the night we arrived, all on mushrooms. And
the next morning we got up and there was a
sign that saying do not go into the ocean because
it was like a shark infested water. And here we
were hanging out in this ocean all night on mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It was a fun ride. But when Omar finally became
a father, he decided he should probably give up the
swimming with sharks on mushrooms part of his life.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
My son was born and that changed a lot for me.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That's really was the time when I'm like I need
to I didn't want to do this, by the way,
I just didn't want to be in the industry at
that time. I don't say I was freaking out, but
I'm like, I'm about.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
To become a father. I cannot have this lifestyle being
a father.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I remember being in Russia with some friends of mine
and one became a very famous director now, Chris Broncado.
He wrote Narcos. Chris, look at me. He's like, Ohmi,
when was the last time you stayed home on Friday night?
I don't think I have ever stayed home on Friday night.
(24:27):
He's like, dude, we should do a story called The Fridays,
The Many Fridays of Omar. I can't do this no more.
Like I just want to like focus and stay in
one place. So I think I'm gonna just say Miami.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
This is when Omar opened his own agency, and he
still runs it to this day. It's different from what
he used to do. But that's kind of the point.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
People from my generation, they're caught up in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
They're pissed. I don't blame you. Yeah you're pissed, but dude,
keep it moving. Man. We're not there no more. I
don't lived there no more. I hate Fisco, I hate
old school funk. It bores me already been there and
listened to afrobeats. You gotta just keep it moving in life.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
That's the one thing I always tell young people, like,
stay present, stay in the now, and by the time
you finished saying the word now, that's part of the past.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Model Wars was executive produced and hosted
by Vanessa Gregoriotis. Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.
Julia K. S Levine was our producer and reporter. Our
(25:47):
senior producer was Lily Houston Smith, and our assistant editor
was Emma Simonov. We had story and production help from
Shoshi Schmolowitz, Ali Haney, and Blake Rook. Our production manager
was Ash Warren and our studio recordist was Ewan Li Tremuant.
Sound designed by Mark McCadam. This episode was mixed and
engineered by Amber Devereaux. iHeart Podcasts executive producers were Jennifer
(26:12):
Bassett and Katrina Norvell. The show was also executive produced
by Rachel Winter and Campside Media's Josh Dean, Adam Hoff,
and Matt Schaer. If you'd like to access behind the
scenes content from Model Wars and Campside Media, please go
to join campside dot com. That's j O I N
(26:32):
C A M P s I d E dot com.
If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Thanks so much for listening to our entire series on
Model Wars. We've really enjoyed it and we hope you
have two
Speaker 5 (27:01):
You
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