Tommy Commery nearly talked herself out of it. She is a toddler mom from Houston with a 2-year-old at home, and on the morning of the casting she told herself her nervous system was going into complete shock. But she showed up anyway, walked in front of the panel, and told them about the day her daughter wanted to help cook and clean and do laundry because that was the only version of her she had ever seen. Victoria's Secret had opened a nationwide casting call and thousands of women answered it, each of them carrying a version of the same private argument: is it even worth applying? This is a crazy thing. Tommy’s answer to that argument was a contract for walking, and a 2-year-old watching her do it.
Four cities, one open door
The search ran across Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, and Chicago. Around 1,200 women were invited to meet the panel inside shopping malls, the majority of them unsigned and many of them having never walked a professional runway. The rules around looks, body, and height were deliberately left off the requirements. Creative director Adam Selman put it plainly: ‘Let’s see what you’ve got, and if you think you’ve got it, then I want to see it.’
What the panel actually watched for was harder to measure. Paloma, one of the casting leads, described it as energy, tea, and aura. In Los Angeles she spotted Mara Gimatia descending an escalator before Mara had even reached the floor, pulled her out of the spectator line, and borrowed a pair of shoes so she could walk the runway on the spot. Mara had come to watch, not to compete. She told the panel she had decided that year to put herself out there regardless of where she was from or how she looked, and that the right people would see her for who she was.
In Los Angeles the panel also met Kaia Cornelius from Seattle, who was asked mid-walk to borrow a stranger’s high heels from the front row after the panel decided block heels were not going to cut it at a VS show. She found a size eight in the audience and walked again. The panel met a doctor of neuropsychology from UCLA, a transgender woman who said she wanted to show that people like her are simply here, trying to accomplish their dreams and be happy, and a woman from Utah whose Mormon family had no idea she had flown in. Her sister-in-law helped her get ready and lent her the heels.
The pressure behind the open call
From the panel’s side, the math was unforgiving. Four cities, hundreds of women seen across the run, and only 10 spots to bring anyone to New York. The eventual winner would walk the Victoria's Secret fashion show in October and sign a contract with IMG Models. Luis Matos, who runs IMG and manages Gigi Hadid, sat on the judging panel alongside K. George, described by those around him as one of the best casting directors in the entire industry.
After Houston, with one city remaining, the producers acknowledged they had only a handful of confirmed names. ‘We’ve been to three cities so far and we only have a few models to show for it,’ Selman said, noting the search was for someone who had not already been found by an agency. Chicago still had to deliver. The show itself added its own weight: big wings, full glam, high heels, lingerie, and a runway described by those who know it as not for the faint of heart. The question hanging over every city was the same one Selman kept saying out loud: can we get them there in four months?
The moment that kept one producer moving
Tatiana Brewer Tinsley, from the Bronx, walked in Houston between sessions of LSAT prep, working toward law school while pursuing full-time modeling. The panel moved her to the top of their board, with one judge saying she would put Tatiana in front of a New York casting director without hesitation.
The casting tour with its mall crowds and borrowed heels and women telling stories they had never told publicly before eventually folded back to the same place it started: a late night, a phone, one more scroll, and a woman deciding she was never going to get anywhere if she did not try.
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