By GARY STEWART
Editor
As a child, Deborah Hayes
was ashamed of being tall.
Everyone pushed her into
basketball, a sport she hated.
Now, she’s a model and
Talent Agency Director, and tall
is in. She’s proud of it.
The daughter of Bob and Sue
Hayes of Kings Mountain,
Deborah today is Talent Agency
Director for the Barbizon
Schools in Charlotte. She
recruits models, books models
for various fashion shows, ads
and commercials, and coor-
dinates a number of fashion
shows herself.
With the track record she’s
built since taking over as head of
the Barbizon programs, there
may be no stopping her.
After admittedly being a flop
in basketball, some of her high
school friends encouraged her to
try modeling. She entered Bar-
bizon to study fashion merchan-
dising.
“I was the worst one in the
class,” she recalled Monday in
her office in the Outlet Square in
‘Charlotte. “Everybody had to
beg me to keep going back.”
But, graduation night, things
seem to fall in place and she was
the best in the graduation
fashion show. The next day she
received a call from Belk’s asking
her to be an alternate in
“Seranade to Autumn”, the big-
gest fashion show in Charlotte.
She worked for Belk’s for
three months, then with Ivey’s
for another year, and then joined
another modeling school in
Charlotte as a teacher.
“I was making good money,”
she recalled, “but was not getting
the exposure I wanted.”
She joined Barbizon a year
ago as combination Head of
Staff and Talent Agency Direc-
tor. Under her guidance, the
school grew at such a rapid pace
she was made fulltime Talent
Agency Director and someone
else was hired as Head of Staff.
“The more they want me to
do, the more I want to do,” she
says. “Except for my dog, Prisci,
and swimming, I don’t have any
hobbies. I'm usually so tired
when I get home at night, I just
hit the couch.”
Deborah goes to school part-
time at UNC-Charlotte, where
she’s a business major. She lacks
two years on her studies, and
then hopes to either open her
own modeling school or land a
modeling job in New Y ork City.
She has booked shows at
several locations in Charlotte
and this week coordinated a
show at the Ramada Inn for the
Charlotte Humane Society. The
show was her personal attack on
the recent N.C. Legislature’s ap-
proval of allowing animals to be
sold for lab research.
Deborah has appeared on
several televison specials and in
TV, newspaper and magazine
ads. She plans to travel to New
York this winter for a possible
layout and feature story in
“Vogue.”
As her father says with pride,
Miss Hayes has a lot of initiative.
She also has a lot of intensity. To
build Barbizon to the biggest
modeling school in Charlotte,
she didn’t just sit back and wait
for business. She went all over
the big city, knocking on doors
and selling her models.
“The hardest thing about
booking a model is that the client
is looking for one specific thing,”
she says. “You have to convince
them that who you’ll send will be
Lost Berry
exactly what
mind.”
Deborah keeps a list of over
100 models but works with only
about 20 at one time. She limits
her class sizes to 10.
they have in
The market is constantly
changing, thus, some models get
steady work for awhile, and then
business slacks off.
“Most people now want the
All-American, Miss America
look,” Deborah says, “or the tall,
very high fashioned type. The
people in Charlotte are very par-
ticular about hair.”
The general feeling that
“gentlemen prefer blondes”
doesn’t necesarily apply in all
modeling cases, she says. “For
ads, especially, they don’t want
blondes,” she said. “They want
dark hair that will show up in
color pictures. If the ad is for
glamour, then they want
blondes.”
She has made many ads and
commercials of her own, as well
as a panty hose package. She’s
appeared on “Top of the Day”,
“Channel 18’s Forum” and
“Good Morning With Jim Pat-
terson” twice.
She’s been invited to do some
work this winter with the biggest
modeling agency in New York
City, and will make another trip
to New York to “knock on
doors” and give out headsheets
(personal information) on
Bargizon models.
“A lot of people in Kings
Mountain ask me if all this has
changed me,” she said. “It hasn’t.
I no longer hate being tall. I
rather enjoy it now. My best
friends from Kings Mountain
will always be my best friends
and my first loyalty will always
be my parents. If the time ever
comes when they need me, I'll
quit everything and go to them.
“This has made me more self-
confident,” she added. “I’m con-
fident that if I have to depend on
myself, I can do it. I work hard
and I feel like if I can take
something like this and develop
it, nothing can stop me, in-
cluding taking over all of New
York City someday. But if I
never make it big in New York,
that’s okay, because I’m satisfied
Plants
Replaced in Fall
Strawberry plants are
Cn
QR SSG rT
among the victims of this
summer’s dry, searing heat
and may have to be replaced.
Both home garden and com-
mercial plantings are
affected.
North Carolina State
University agricultural ex-
tension specialists suggest
to growers that orders for
plants should be placed im-
mediately to assure availa-
bility this fall.
The plants can be set in
early fall for a light crop of
berries next spring. The best
procedure is to plant in dou-
ble rows about 12 inches
apart. The plants should be
in the ground before Nov.
15 in most sections of North
Carolina.
The NCSU specialists urge
growers to mulch new
plantings. Left unmulched,
they are likely to heave out
of the ground this winter
with the freezing and thaw-
ing of the soil.
Replacing lost plants this
fall won’t assure you of a
bumper crop of berries next
spring. The yield will be
sparse from these new plants
the first season, but produc-
tion should be good the fol-
lowing season.
Deborah Hayes Makes It Big In Modeling
Shooting For The Stars
DEBORAH HAYES
...During a relaxing moment
with myself and am happy with
what I’m doing. For once in my
life, I don’t hate getting up and
going to work.”
For aspiring models, her ad-
vice is to be determined and
work hard.
“Y ou don’t necessarily have to
be pretty or tall,” she says. “You
just have to be determined and
have to develop yourself to
where rejection doesn’t hurt
your feelings. In this business,
you’re rejected more than you’re
accepted.
“You have to have people to
stick behind you,” she added.
Located In The
CLEVELAND
MALL
Shelby, N.C.
MORE IN SIZE
MORE IN STYLE
MORE IN VALUE
SIZES
12-20
2-26
30-52
t
00
00 ‘Til 9:
ND M
N.C.
Ladymore
Clothing Fhe Full HFigure Lady”
ALL
CLEVELA
Shelby,
Monday Thru Saturday 10
“There are many times that you
don’t want to go on. That’s
when you have to have someone
who believes in you, like my
parents always believed in me.
My daddy’s my biggest fan. He
carries around a miniature port-
folio in his wallet. I've always
told them that if I ever make it
big, I’m going to buy them a big
fancy house with a big swimm-
ing pool and teach daddy how to
swim.”
DEBORAH HAYES...In recent fashion show
DEPARTMENT STORE
KINGS MOUNTAIN. N.C
JEANS *1
3 Rm or Lr J¢ RA A
EN Fe eg — 53 -
DOWNTOWN KINGS MOUNTAIN
REDUCED
FOR BACK TO SCHOOL
ee
AND LEE’S
Denim And Corduroy
All Sizes
ee ~——m——
038
NIKE, CONVERSE - cANVAS AND LEATHER
ATHLETIC
SHOES
4°°,
SAVE BIG!!!
BRE
a