Smart Move: Betabrand Clothing Uses PhDs as Models

Just like computers are replacing cashiers and bloggers supplanting, ahem, journalists, it seems as if the trend of actual everyday humans filling in for professional models is a growing one. The latest label to give it a whirl is Betabrand — a hipster San Francisco–based company that's enlisted women with PhDs to model its new spring line.

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“When you look beyond the ranks of the professionally beautiful, photography becomes a lot more fun,” Betabrand founder Chris Lindland says in a statement. “Our designers cooked up a collection of smart fashions for spring, so why not display them on the bodies of women with really big brains?” 

The bookish beauties (and they are, naturally, all beautiful) all either have a PhDs or are working toward one. They include a woman with a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College; a nuclear engineering PhD candidate at University of California, Berkeley; and a cognitive psychology PhD from Stanford. They’re modeling items from selvedge denim jeans to button-downs and dresses.

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Betabrand, which makes and sells crowd-sourced prototypes of clothing for men and women, almost always uses models that are staffers’ friends, relatives and colleagues anyway, Lindland tells Adweek. It also gives customers the chance to be the website’s temporary star model through its unique Model Citizen program. This year, the brand put out a call for PhDs and doctoral candidates on Facebook, attracting 60 female applicants from around the world.

It’s not the first fashion company to experiment with using real people for its marketing. Last year, Free People launched FP Me, an online community for customers to upload photos of themselves in clothing from the label. Then, in February, the label announced a two-week experiment in which FP Me images would replace those of professional models. Also recently, Calvin Klein launched its #mycalvins campaign, inviting the public to upload tagged social media photos, which the company would collect and link to its products. American Apparel, though, is one of the pioneers in this area, always being on the lookout for new, non-professional model talent—and often kicking up controversy with some of its choices.

As for Betabrand’s move, it’s received the thumbs-up so far — and it's already upping the ante, currently running a Model Citizen photo contest that will land one lucky customer on a San Francisco billboard. “Ideally,” the rules suggest, "this photo should also be entertaining, awe-inspiring, supremely idiotic, or some combination thereof.” Why not go for it?

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