INTERVIEW / January
INTERVIEW / January
Words by Ilze Pole
Publicity photos, by Alamy and Vida Press
NEXT?
WHAT HAPPENS
Latvian supermodel Ginta Lapiņa (29) has enjoyed her success
to its fullest and is now moving forward by opening a modelling
agency. Together with her friend Karlīna Caune, who is also a
well-known model, they are ready to share their experience and
help the next generation of young women navigate the constantly
changing world of fashion, so full of beauty and unknown turns.
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/ airBaltic.com
There’s an old tradition in this part of the world of
‘pouring our luck’ on New Year’s Eve. In other words,
the concept that our happiness is in our own hands
takes on a physical manifestation as we pour a small
amount of molten lead into a bucket of cold water.
It’s dangerous, it’s exciting, and it feels like unlocking
a mystery, because the figure that results when the
lead hardens is said to be a key to what will happen
in the future.
The figure Ginta Lapiņa pulled out of the water
that night almost 15 years ago strongly resembled the
Statue of Liberty. ‘Someone even teased me – Ginta
is going to New York!’ she recalls. Six months later
she did. She was 15 years old.
Lapiņa was focused on becoming an interior de-
signer, and on weekends she was attending prepara-
tion courses at the Riga School of Design and Art in
the hopes of passing the entrance exam the following
summer. In March, however, someone approached
her as she got off the tram. It was the same young
man who had been watching her the whole way.
Nils Raumanis had recently founded his own
modelling agency, Dandy Model Management, and
he asked Lapiņa whether she was a model. She said
no, but Raumanis persisted with the conversation
and asked her to come do some test shoots. ‘More in
the hopes of ending the conversation, I gave him my
mother’s telephone number. She is very firm, and I
knew she would never agree to all of that nonsense,’
Lapiņa tells me.
But to her surprise, by the time she got home, Rau-
manis had already spoken to her mother, who actu-
ally encouraged Lapiņa to give modelling a try. ‘If you
don’t try it, you’ll never know if you like it,’ she recalls
her mother telling her. Since that evening, Lapiņa’s
mother has been her greatest supporter. ‘She is my
muse and my greatest inspiration in everything I do,’
says Lapiņa.
The story of how they were discovered is different
for every model, whether it was on the street, on the
beach, or, as with Gisele Bündchen, at a McDonald’s
in São Paulo. And then it becomes a choice of what
to do next – will she take a risk, accept the challenge,
and step inside the world of modelling, which is so
full of unknowns, assumptions, and misinformation?
It’s also a risk for their families, because there’s really
no one to ask for advice.
Lapiņa did the test shoots back then. Her pictures
were sent directly to agencies in New York, and in
a few months’ time she was there herself. She did
not become a teacher, as she had dreamt of doing
as a child, and she no longer sewed appliqués on
her friends’ blue jeans. Instead, she visited Miuccia
Prada’s studio, where the famous designer created a
dress for her to wear at her next show.
‘I used to give motivational talks at some of the
modelling agencies in Latvia. The response was
great, and I started thinking that I could expand,
because modelling was perceived almost as some
kind of phantom. There were – and probably still
are – various indiscriminate and scathing opinions
about what high fashion is and what a girl needs
to do in order to succeed in it,’ says Lapiņa, whose
career highlights include working for Yves Saint
Laurent, Prada, Marc Jacobs, and Versace
and whose name has appeared on lists of the
highest-paid supermodels.
Lapiņa continues: ‘Together with stylist Dāvis
Sakne, we organised the Unlikely Model Camp in
Latvia. We invited a number of specialists – the best
photographers, hairdressers, makeup artists, nutri-
tionists – to tell the girls not only about how to pose
in front of a camera but also about how important it
is to take care of themselves by eating healthy and
exercising and how important teamwork and coop-
eration are.’
One of the people Lapiņa invited to participate in
the summer camp is her good friend Karlīna Caune.
As Caune visited her in Los Angeles before the camp
last year, their conversations turned to the idea of
She did not become a teacher.
Instead, she visited Miuccia Prada’s
studio, where the famous designer
created a dress for her
opening their own agency with a mission of talking
about the industry from their own experiences and
guiding and supporting young models in all aspects.
Because having the support of an agency is very
crucial for a model – it can make or break her career.
‘This is how ASE Model Management was
founded,’ says Lapiņa, explaining that Ase was a
Viking goddess. ‘As soon as we found this name, we
knew it would be the name of our agency. We’re now
very happy to be taking our next step as a business.’
When you speak about your newly founded agency,
you talk a lot about the need to create an environ-
ment in which young women are protected, sup-
ported, and understood. How did your own journey
begin in this sense? Did you get all the support
you needed?
I did! Nils supported me as best a man can. But actu-
ally he worked more with guys. I think I was only the
second girl he had approached. So there were times
when I lacked the kind of support one might get from
an older sister, who might tell me about some of the
important details of the industry and also remind me
about the feminine aspect. Because at age 16 you just
think the world needs to love you as you are, and you
think you know everything! That’s why Karlīna and
Baltic Outlook
/ 2019 / 63