Mila Jovovich, branded the most highly paid model in the world, was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 17 December 1975 (her birthday's soon!). Model agencies of Ukraine, the country from which Mila and a few other of the most beautiful models of the world originate, focus on the international 'new faces' market. But embassies and consulates often throw hurdles on the way of Ukrainian beauties, making obtaining visas for them excessively diffucult and often impossible...

Like many other countries in central & eastern Europe, the home modeling market in Ukraine is still rather limited.  Advertising, followed by editorials are the main areas of local work, fashion shows being fairly limited in number, as K models.com noted.  Most agencies therefore specialize on either the international 'new faces' market or on placing models with agencies in Asia. The most frequently mentioned countries for placing models overseas were:  Korea, Japan, Thailand, Lebanon, China, Malaysia, Turkey & Greece.  Getting working visas for Asian countries is generally easier than for Europe. Visas for Japan however are getting harder to obtain, the source says. Models are generally  placed with an Asian model agency for 2 to 3 months.  These placements are increasing in number and are an important source of income for Ukrainian agencies.

A common concern expressed by most of Kyiv agencies is agencies in Asia (particularly in Korea) that do not pay the full agreed fee.  This is becoming a regular complaint.   it is clear that agencies in central Europe would greatly benefit from greater collaboration in order to share knowledge about unreliable agencies and clients around the world.

For Europe, the target markets are of course Milan and Paris.  However Italian visas are also getting harder to obtain.

There are two very different approaches to internal scouting within Ukraine.  Most agencies describe working with a network of local agencies across Ukraine.  One agency however was focusing on holding a scouting competition in all the cities and major towns of Ukraine.  For a country of 50 Million people, this is a major task.

In terms of external scouts from western Europe, the usual names from the main agencies are frequent visitors to Kiev.  K models suspects that these agencies are also becoming more frequent visitors to regional cities in Ukraine as the competition for quality new faces hots up.

A feature of Ukrainian Scouting is the requests from some Schools and Parents for 'donations' in order for them to agree to release a new face model from their care.

Working with direct clients often proves difficult for Kiev agencies.  A major frustration with western direct clients is the length of time after a casting that a model is requested for a booking.  Sometimes this will occur 3-4 months after a casting, by which time the model may have been placed in the Asian market.

The biggest frustration for Kiev agencies is of course, Visas.  Much of the time is spent working with embassies and consulates.  Furthermore the entry of Poland, a big competitor,  into the European Union has made it easy for Polish models to travel across Europe.