Who judges, what counts, and how a model ends up on the throne.
By Anthony Perlas · Nightlife Report · Sun Oct 18, 2026, PT
Editorial picks. The Venus Games is Nightlife Report’s own editorial format, scored under our Runway Points rules. These are our picks at Bureau LA Fashion Week, Oct 2026, not official Bureau awards. The Bureau announced no winners.
Darlings, you’ve seen the board. Now you get the rulebook. Everyone wants to know how a model ends up with 16 points and a crown. So here’s the whole machine, then the case for the woman who won it.
The final Venus Games board, Bureau LAFW (Oct 16-17, 2026):
- Ava Kortman. 16 points. Nightlife Report Model of the Year.
- Emily Sophie Christine. 12 points.
- Kyla Dodds. 10 points.
Full board: Final Results: Bureau LAFW, Oct 2026. The head-to-heads: The Venus Games: Comparison Round.
The judges
Four seats, one board. Three of them are invented. We’ll say that plainly.
| Seat | Judge | Real or fictional | What they watch first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Head Judge | Anthony Perlas, Editor, Nightlife Report; founder, Otte Models / Otte Agency | Real | The professional standard: a clean turn, end-of-runway control, and a garment that holds in a still from the pit. His picks win. |
| The Edge | Rhea Colburn | Fictional panel persona | Precision on the walk and the turn. The look has to read as one idea from exit to end mark. |
| The Spotlight | Willa Kester | Fictional panel persona | Posing, nerve and recovery under pressure. Names the strongest moment before the note. |
| The Front Row | Remy Talcroft | Fictional panel persona | Garment presentation that makes the room react, and presence that holds a still. |
Rhea Colburn, Willa Kester and Remy Talcroft are original fictional personas written for Nightlife Report. They aren’t real people, and they aren’t based on, named after or voiced like any real TV judge or industry figure. Their seats give the panel its voices and its arguments. The final call belongs to the one real judge: Anthony.
What we score
Editor’s note: the panel scores performance, not looks.
Every judge fills in the same Runway Points card: four categories, 0-10 each, max 40. Every criterion we care about lives inside one of those four boxes.
| What we watch | Where it counts on the card | What it means on the runway |
|---|---|---|
| Runway walk | Walk | Pace, line and stride, first step to exit. |
| Posing and turns | Walk | The turn, and control at the end mark: does she hold the pose, or rush it? |
| Presence and charisma | Presence | Does the room watch her? Does she own the space? |
| Overall presence and presentation | Presence | How the whole look is carried as one performance. |
| Garment presentation (selling the look) | Styling and Camera | Does the garment get its moment? Does it hold up in a still from the pit? |
| Styling and hair/makeup execution | Styling | Hair, makeup, accessories and fit, and whether the look reads as one whole. |
| Crowd reaction | Presence | How the room answers. We count it only when we logged it. |
Every judge uses the same scale. 0-2 didn’t land. 3-4 below the room. 5-6 solid professional. 7-8 bookable, stands out. 9 best of the show. 10 best we’ve seen this season.
What we never score: faces, bodies, height, weight, measurements, age, or anyone’s attractiveness. No body rules, ever.
How the points work
This is the part everyone screenshots.
The criterion scores don’t add up to 16. The 16, 12 and 10 are placement points. They’re borrowed from college wrestling’s championship scale and written into Runway Points from day one.
| Place | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placement points | 16 | 12 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
The formula: your place sets your points. 1st = 16, 2nd = 12, 3rd = 10. So Ava = 16, Emily = 12, Kyla = 10. The points follow the place, not the person. When Emily moved up to second, the 12 moved with her.
How the place gets set:
- The panel score is the average of the judges’ cards that were actually filed, out of 40. A card that’s still pending gets left out. It never counts as a zero.
- The Head Judge sets the order. The panel informs it, the comparison round tests it, and Anthony makes the call. If the cards ever disagree with his pick, his pick stands. We recheck the cards and publish the disagreement.
- No negative points. If we didn’t see it, we don’t score it. “Not seen” isn’t a loss.
- Pending means pending. We never fill a blank with an estimate. At Bureau we published no numeric cards. The comparison round was marked in words, not numbers (see below), and places 4-8 weren’t filed.
Model of the Year 2026 is a season title: Anthony’s pick, named Oct 17. The season ladder sits on a separate table, adding +2 for each Model of the Event. The Bureau board above shows placement points only.
Tiebreakers
When two looks score within half a point, we break the tie in this order:
- Higher Camera average: does the still hold?
- Higher Presence average.
- The ride-out: the finale walk, if there was one. It counts only for breaking ties.
- The Head Judge’s call, published with a one-line reason.
The comparison round
A board that can’t be corrected isn’t worth reading. So before a board is final, the top three go head-to-head: Ava vs Emily, Emily vs Kyla, Ava vs Kyla.
Each judge gets three views of the same model. Front: posture and line. Side: stride and pace. Back: the turn. Then come the pose at the end mark, the garment presentation, how the look is carried first step to exit, whether the still holds, and how the room answered.
Marks come in words, not numbers. Edge means best of the three on that line. Strong is next. Present means on the record but not deciding. Then there are two honest ones. Not scored means we only had stills, and stride and the turn don’t live in a single frame. Unconfirmed means we didn’t log it, and crowd response was unconfirmed for all three.
That round is why the board changed in public. On Saturday night at 10:19 PM PT we filed Kyla second. After the head-to-heads, Emily moved up to second and Kyla to third. Read every round: The Venus Games: Comparison Round.
The Winner’s Report: why Ava Kortman nailed it
Hold the front page, darlings. The throne didn’t move all weekend.
Friday: the look that set the bar. At “The Opening” on Fri Oct 16, Ava Kortman (@avakortman) walked in a black lace top and red satin wide-leg trousers, under the LED wall. At the end mark it reads clean. The satin catches the wall light, and the frame works without a caption. That’s garment presentation done right: the look gets its moment, and nothing fights it. In Bureau LAFW: Day One to Day Two, Anthony called her the one he “couldn’t look away from: presence, poise, and a total command of the camera.” By Friday night she sat on top of the overnight board, named our Model of the Event.
Saturday: she did it again. Per our editor, Ava came back in the closing segment of “The Finale” on Sat Oct 17. This time it was black-and-gold feather wings, a gold top and a jeweled bottom, against the mermaid screen, in frames P1001097 and P1001100. In P1001100 the black wings sweep to the floor with gold-tipped feathers, and the whole look sits squarely in the frame. Wings are the hardest garment on the floor to present. They’re wider than the walk. She presented a second big look at the same standard, a night after the first. (The Day 2 identification is per our editor.)
The head-to-heads.
- vs Emily Sophie Christine: dead even on camera on Friday. Presence was the line that never swung, and Ava had two nights to Emily’s one. Edge: Ava.
- vs Kyla Dodds: wings against wings on the same closing bill. Kyla brought one strong look to one night. Ava brought a second look at the same level. Edge: Ava.
Her scorecard, line by line.
| Line | Ava’s mark |
|---|---|
| Front view: posture and line at the end mark | Edge |
| Pose at the end of the runway | Edge |
| Garment presentation | Edge |
| How the look was carried, first step to exit | Edge (two nights; Day 2 per our editor) |
| Camera: does the still hold? | Edge (even with Emily on Day 1) |
| Side view: stride and pace | Not scored (stills only) |
| Back view: the turn | Not scored (stills only) |
| Crowd reaction | Unconfirmed |
| Styling and hair/makeup execution | Unconfirmed (no separate line was marked) |
What we’re not telling you, because we don’t know it. Crowd reaction to her walks: unconfirmed. Her stride and her turn: not scored, because we shot stills, not video. A word from Ava herself: unconfirmed. Our notes hold no story or caption from her this weekend, and we won’t quote what we haven’t read.
The verdict. Presence at the end mark. A look presented clean. Then a second, harder garment carried at the same standard a night later. Nothing on either night’s slate took the throne. First place, 16 points. Nightlife Report Model of the Year. Bow down, darlings. It’s earned.
Editorial scoring: The Venus Games and Runway Points are Nightlife Report editorial picks by head judge Anthony Perlas. They aren’t official Bureau awards, and the Bureau announced no winners. Rhea Colburn, Willa Kester and Remy Talcroft are fictional panel personas. We judge the walk and the presentation only: never faces, bodies or attractiveness. Anything we couldn’t confirm says “unconfirmed.”
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