Modeling

Nina Blanchard, the founder of an internationally known Hollywood modeling agency whose roster included Cheryl Tiegs and other top models, has died. She was 81. Blanchard died of cardiac arrest Sunday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said Ed Dawson, a longtime friend. A onetime TV makeup artist, casting director and modeling school executive director, Blanchard started the Nina Blanchard Agency in 1961. Booking talent for television commercials, print advertising and runway modeling, her agency was once described in The Times as "the best-known and richest of its kind outside Manhattan."

Even in the highest echelons of supermodeling, the name Alt is big. During her reign of glory in the 1980s, Carol Alt graced 500 magazine covers and possessed a prized contract with Cover Girl cosmetics. There's another Alt on the scene now: She has a face with angles in all the right places; flawless skin; thick, beautiful hair; neon blue eyes. And she wears size 16 jeans. Christine Alt is one of the bookable names in the "plus size" world. It wasn't always that way.

A judge Friday ordered a church-run school to readmit a 17-year-old girl expelled two months before graduation for modeling swimsuits in a department store fashion show. Attorneys for the girl, Machelle Outlaw, said a restraining order was issued by Circuit Judge James Llewellyn as a result of a lawsuit filed on her behalf.

"Strike a pose, there's nothing to it." -- "Vogue," by Madonna Oh really? * Bohdana Saunders, a volleyball player at Buena High, is finding that modeling is not just a smile for the camera. "It's tough," she said. "It takes a lot to get into it because you have to build your portfolio, learn how to walk [on the runway], learn how to dress and how to wear your makeup." Saunders, who took up modeling less than a year ago at the urging of friends, has been fortunate.

After enacting a law designed to discourage adult movie establishments from locating in the city, officials now are looking at another ordinance to do the same to figure-modeling, escort services and introductory services. The proposed ordinance, which received initial approval Tuesday, "does not prohibit the establishment of such businesses but does provide reasonable rules and regulations to protect the city and the general public," Police Chief Harold A.

Almost any other day at Surfrider Beach, Huey Pritchard and Tony Zapata would have been in the water waiting to catch a Malibu wave. But on this particular afternoon, there was no ocean swell; the sea had become sheet metal--flat and shiny and gray. So instead of surfing, the two boys lounged on the sand, involved in another favorite pastime: Discussing their futures as high-fashion models.

They are big and they're beautiful. They're called "large and lovelies" by the modeling trade and they have the same occupational hazards as their long and lean counterparts--having to wear furs for an outdoor shoot in the summer, juggling bookings and maintaining a shoe wardrobe that would make Imelda Marcos blush. But large-sized models have the added difficulty of appearing fashionable in a Size 16 evening gown.

Marla Hanson's lawyer once gave her a custom-made button to wear at a press conference. It read: "Yes, I am the model." Hanson, whose face bears the scars of her New York nightmare, says it was a long-overdue response to people who would stop her on the street to ask: "Are you the model who was slashed?" "It's such a violent word," Hanson said, a shudder in her voice as she spoke by telephone from San Francisco.

The calm of Estee Lauder's corporate heaven was shattered Friday morning when the firm's new $6-million "image" model Paulina Porizkova declined to share her birthday cake with members of the press. "Would you like to cut the cake for our guests?" asked Evelyn Lauder, daughter-in-law of Estee and a vice president of the firm. "Not really," answered Porizkova on her 23rd birthday, adding that the cake was so pretty that she'd like to take it home to her boyfriend intact.

A Municipal Court judge Tuesday ordered the head of a modeling agency to pay $22,000 in restitution to 45 modeling job applicants who replied to misleading advertisements in San Diego newspapers. Judge Ronald Domnitz also ordered Allen Neumann, president of New York West modeling agency, to pay $3,500 in fines. Neumann entered a plea of no-contest to false advertising charges and agreed to pay the fines and restitution. Deputy City Atty. James D.