Fashion model selection is a targeted case of aesthetic evaluation. For almost 100 years—beginning with data which Herbert Blumer collected in the 1930s—scholars have tried to understand how models are selected. Most have taken a critical and structural approach. I rely instead on a microsociology which centers endogenous decision processes. It highlights the agency and constraints of situational perception and situational stratification, yielding a novel analysis of the casting encounter. Data comes from an ethnography of a fashion week in a semi-peripheral city. It includes backstage evaluations gathered during a stint as a casting agent. I find that agents surprisingly ignore faces, instead focusing on the embodied cues of height/heels, the walk, and body size. Sustained microsociological analysis opens a layered mode of perception highlighting the dynamics of time, attention, emotion, and situations.

时装模特选择是审美评价的一个有针对性的案例。近 100 年来——从 Herbert Blumer 在 1930 年代收集的数据开始——学者们一直试图了解如何选择模型。大多数人采取了批判性和结构性的方法。相反，我依赖于以内生决策过程为中心的微观社会学。它突出了情境感知和情境分层的代理和约束，产生了对选角相遇的新颖分析。数据来自一个半外围城市时装周的民族志。它包括在担任铸造代理期间收集的后台评估。我发现特工出人意料地忽略了面孔，而是专注于高度/高跟鞋、走路和体型的具体暗示。