Tao okamoto heighth series#

It was a time when people were going back to that pixie or Vidal Sassoon kind of bowl cut, and I had it before other models cut their hair,” she says, wildly understating the fact that designer Phillip Lim was so inspired by Okamoto’s look that he sent every model in his autumn/winter 2009 show down the runway in wigs cut to match her hairstyle.īesides the emerging androgynous trend, Okamoto also credits the strength of the Chinese economy at the time for her success. The first was my hair became kind of trendy. I have to think now there was a mix of reasons. Okamoto met a new agent, booked a number of shows and was quickly getting noticed for her unique hairstyle. But a last-ditch effort to make it in New York would change all of that. “I don’t know,” she says, “I think I needed to challenge myself and see if I could get booked without having this signature Asian look.”įor the first season, it seems, she couldn’t. They didn’t care where I was from or anything else.” Outfit Miu Miuįrustrated and questioning her place in an industry that treated women as so easily replaceable, Okamoto decided to ditch the typical long black hair then associated with Asian models and get a sleek, close-cropped bowl cut. They were just treating me like the Asian girl.

“I was doing well but nobody knew my name. “I think what they were seeing in me was something very exotic, which didn’t really stand out in Japan,” she says. Okamoto moved to Paris and soon found regular work as a so-called Asian beauty. “So I was like, I love Japanese creativity and design, but maybe I’m not needed here. “I started to get a lot of offers and requests from foreign designers, at a time when I was so not popular among Japanese clients and designers,” Okamoto says. But it was too much trying to pursue modelling and attend classes at the same time, and she dropped out after a year. She returned to Japan, finished high school and decided to go to college. When she was 17, Okamoto spent a year in England as an exchange student and started to think beyond the borders of her home country. Her school didn’t allow her to work, so any auditions had to be done outside of school or in secret. Okamoto readily admits that, despite her determination to become a model, she had no idea what she was doing. “I got a call back, and that’s how I started working and signed with an agency,” she says. When they discovered the scout was not the real deal, Okamoto decided to go out on her own again, sending her picture to a well-known agency in Japan. “I told my parents for the first time that I was having a difficult time understanding myself, that I wanted to love myself but it was hard and I thought modelling could be a way I might be able to shine.” The experience led Okamoto to reveal her feelings to her parents. He was strange, not like a good agent, but it gave me a bit of confidence that I might look attractive to some people.” Outfit Ralph Lauren “I went there by myself the first weekend and I was lucky enough to be asked to become an actress by this agent. So I decided to walk this famous street in Harajuku where people get scouted,” she says, referring to the popular shopping and street-style district in Tokyo. Okamoto called the publishers of one magazine, only to find out their annual modelling competition was still months away. I was going through puberty and started to look at fashion magazines and thought, ‘Maybe I can try this, modelling.’” “If I were good at sports, I wouldn’t feel bad – but I wasn’t. “I just wanted to feel confident about what I had and how I looked,” Okamoto recalls when I reach her by phone in New York, where she lives with her husband and co-founder of The Last Magazine, Tenzin Wild. And while the rest of the family was average height, Okamoto found herself standing head and shoulders above other girls her age. Her mother was at home while her father ran an after-school tutoring centre. Okamoto grew up in Chiba, on the outskirts of Tokyo, as one of three sisters.

Tao okamoto heighth series#

The 33-year-old’s career reads like a series of what some would call lucky breaks – whether setting off a huge hairstyle trend in the modelling world, booking her first acting role alongside Hugh Jackman or appearing in some of the hottest TV shows in Hollywood.īut life wasn’t always runaways and red carpets. Tao Okamoto is a perfect example of what happens when preparation meets opportunity.