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Photo by Dallas J. Logan
The modeling career of Springfield native Donna Taylor has taken off in the past year.
Donna Taylor — the little model who could
North High grad models for Lancome, Sephora, others
Hot Topics
By Andrew McGinn,
Staff Writer
Updated 9:37 AM Friday, June 5, 2009
SPRINGFIELD — Gisele is 5 feet 10 inches.
Tyra Banks is 5 feet 10 inches.
Heidi Klum is 5 feet 9½ inches.
Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer are both 5-feet-10-inches of old-school foxiness.
Then there’s Donna Taylor.
Five feet 4 inches.
A virtual smurf in the long-legged realm of modeling.
“Agencies said, ‘You’d be perfect if you were 6 inches taller.’ Photographers wouldn’t shoot me. Nothing,” Taylor recalled.
Now the 2002 North High grad has won a tall victory for short people — she’s on her way to becoming the next top model.
And she has a confession.
“I really think I’m 5 foot 3,” she explained, “but I’m so used to lying and telling people I’m 5’5”. That’s definitely a stretch.”
But when her picture recently was unfurled on the side of the NBC building in midtown Manhattan — on a banner to promote the Rockefeller Center observation deck — size no longer matters.
Oh, she still goes to cattle calls like every other girl with a pair of four-inch heels in New York City.
“I get lots of stares,” she said. “I get lots of snickers.
“As much as I try, they’re all just hovering over me.”
But Taylor is getting lots of gigs — modeling for Lancome, Sephora, even Microsoft.
That’s her in the bedroom scene in the video of John Legend’s “Everybody Knows.”
What’s even more unlikely about her story?
That, just a few years ago, she was working locally in human resources at Assurant.
And that all this modeling stuff has happened since just last summer.
“It was all by accident,” Taylor said, “but it blew up quickly.”
She’s been back in Springfield recently to — as she put it — clear her mind.
“I need to go back to Springfield and just breathe,” she told herself.
Taylor up and moved to New York in 2007 after studying fashion merchandising online.
She didn’t have a job waiting, she didn’t know anybody.
She landed a job at a modeling agency, connecting clients with models.
And that’s how it happened.
Models were needed for a new print campaign for Palmer’s skin-care line.
“I sent every girl from our agency,” she said, “and they didn’t want any of them.”
So someone suggested she go.
What happened next can be seen in magazines from Ebony to People.
“I was flipping through the magazine and kept missing it,” Taylor said, “because I didn’t recognize myself.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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1:21 AM, 8/13/2009
2:21 PM, 6/19/2009
big chuck
10:49 PM, 6/5/2009
10:31 PM, 6/5/2009
8:43 AM, 6/5/2009