Sixteen points, one crown, and the rulebook behind both.
By Anthony Perlas · Nightlife Report · Wed Oct 21, 2026, PT
Podium photos: Ava via @avakortman Instagram · Emily courtesy of Emily Sophie Christine · Kyla via @kyla.doddsss Instagram.
Ava Kortman left The Bureau Fashion Week LA with 16 Runway Points and the crown. Emily Sophie Christine finished second with 12. Kyla Dodds took third with 10. Here is the podium, how the Games are scored, and the standard we will use from next season, a line that runs straight back to Eileen Ford.
Editorial picks. The Venus Games is Nightlife Report’s own editorial format, scored under our Runway Points rules. These are our picks, not official Bureau awards. The Bureau announced no winners.
The podium
| Place | Title | Model | Walked for | Runway Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Champion | Ava Kortman | Krown Kink | 16 |
| 2 | First Runner-Up | Emily Sophie Christine | Sewreffic | 12 |
| 3 | Second Runner-Up | Kyla Dodds | Krissy King | 10 |
Champion: Ava Kortman, 16. Stage presence and charisma decided it. She held the end mark on Friday at The Opening, then carried a second, harder look at the same standard a night later. In the head-to-heads, presence was the line that never swung. She is also our Model of the Year 2026.
First Runner-Up: Emily Sophie Christine, 12. She walked for Sewreffic and finished second on the corrected board.
Second Runner-Up: Kyla Dodds, 10. She walked for Krissy King and closed out the podium.
How they were scored. All three were scored under our performance rules: walk, presence, styling and camera. The Standard below was not applied to them, and no model was measured or estimated.
How the Games work
We score the walk and the presentation. Each look is judged from the front, the side and the back: posture and line, stride and pace, the turn, the pose at the end mark, and how the garment is carried from first step to exit. Each model’s card sets her place, and place sets the points: 16 for first, 12 for second, 10 for third, down to 3 for eighth. Ties go to the higher Camera line, then Presence, then the Head Judge’s call.
Head Judge Anthony Perlas makes the final call. The rest of the panel are original fictional personas written for Nightlife Report. The full rulebook, including the tie-breaks and what we can and can’t know from stills: How The Venus Games Works.
The Standard
From next season, part of every card will measure a model against the Nightlife Report Standard, our own consolidated reading of the classic runway ideal. It is not a Ford agency specification: Ford-era minimums were 5’7″–5’8″ (The New York Times, 1978).
- Height: about 5’10”.
- Runway sample size: 0–4. That is our range. The major houses cast from US 2: LVMH and Kering brands start casting women at French 34, which The Guardian translates as US 2 (Kering, 2017).
- Proportions: 34-24-34, the classic runway ideal, tall and slender.
- Natural: no fillers, implants or cosmetic work required. The Standard rewards what a model brings and what she trains.
The Standard is worth 40 points of a 100-point card: height 15, proportion and silhouette 15, sample-size fit 10. The other 60 are performance: walk 20, presence and charisma 20, styling and camera 20. Sixty beats forty on purpose. A strong walk and a well-cut garment change how a figure reads on stage.
Consent first. Benchmark lines are scored only for models who agree to take part. Where possible we measure privately backstage. Otherwise we estimate from stage and camera footage, scaled against fixed references, and treat every estimate as ±1–2 in. Individual breakdowns are never published. Hair and eye colour are not scored.
The Standard is a historical reference, not a measure of anyone’s worth. Agencies today cast across a much wider range of heights, sizes and looks.
Where the Standard comes from: Eileen Ford
For more than four decades, Eileen Ford “influenced standards of beauty” as head of Ford Models (The New York Times, 2014). She ran the agency, in the Times’s words, “like a convent,” and let some newcomers live in her Upper East Side townhouse so she could keep a watchful eye on them (NYT obituary, via CNBC).
“They have to account for their time to me. They eat dinner with me, at table, every night. I don’t ever want to tell a mother I don’t know where her daughter is at 2 a.m.”
Eileen Ford, to Forbes in 1984, as quoted in The New York Times obituary (republished by CNBC)
The Ford look “changed remarkably little over the decades,” The Telegraph wrote: tall, willowy, usually blonde and fresh-faced (The Telegraph, Eileen Ford obituary). The reason was practical. Ford said models “must fit manufacturers’ samples” (Vanity Fair, 2015). That is why our Standard measures sample-size fit, not hair or eye colour.
Then, in 1977, John Casablancas opened Elite in New York (Elite Model Management) and began to woo top models away from the established agencies. The industry called it the “Model Wars” (The New York Times, 1978). Ford kept the chaperone’s rulebook. Casablancas sold personality. Our card keeps both: the classic line for the Standard, and 60 points for presence. The whole story, from published reporting: Ford vs. Elite: The Chaperone, the Challenger, and the Look That Outlived Them Both.
The agency she built carries on as Ford Models: fordmodels.com.
The full record
- The full board: Final Results: Bureau LAFW, Oct 2026
- The head-to-heads: The Venus Games: Comparison Round
- The rulebook: How The Venus Games Works
- The history: Ford vs. Elite
Sources: The New York Times, 2014 (via CNBC); The Telegraph; Vanity Fair, 2015; The New York Times, 1978; The Guardian, 2017; Kering, 2017; Ford Models.
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