Two Minutes, One Shot: Inside the Runway Walk at Bureau LAFW | Nightlife Report

A designer’s season can come and go in two or three minutes. Here’s who decides which faces get those seconds, and what a model does with them.

By Anthony Perlas, Correspondent, Nightlife Report
nightlifereport.app · Instagram: @perlasunum · @lillithmagic
Oct. 17, 2026

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Blink and you missed a collection. Our camera caught Sewreffic between 7:10:30 and 7:12:16 p.m. Friday, and Saint Fortuna was up on the wall by 7:14. Call it two to three minutes of runway for a label’s whole night. Every model in that segment got one pass, one turn and one shot at the pit. So how do you win a race that short?

Step one: get cast

Before anyone walks, someone matches bodies to looks. At the Bureau, co-founder Krissy King leads “model casting” among other duties, per L’Officiel Monaco, and Christina Weeks is Talent and Production Manager, per the Bureau’s Oct. 13 press email to Nightlife Report. The Bureau says its designer packages include “professional models.” (Bureau designer FAQ) What models are paid at the Bureau isn’t public. Across the industry, reported runway pay ranges from nothing, or a dress, to a few hundred dollars a show. (BuzzFeed, 2022)

Step two: get found

Scouting used to mean an agency booker spotting a face. Eileen Ford built an empire on that, taking 10% from the model, per The Times, 2012. Now the trail is public and digital. Emily Sophie Christine’s Instagram bio (@emilysophiechristine) lists her as model and actress with non-exclusive management. Ava Kortman (@avakortman) has one public credit we could pin down: a Miami Living Magazine swim-week feature. Her agency, hometown and other credits are unconfirmed.

Step three: own the walk

Break the walk down and it’s simple physics with a lot of nerve on top: a straight line, a steady pace, a stop at the end mark, a turn, and out. The stop is the money moment, because it’s the only time the garment holds still for the pit. Eileen Ford called the extra something “an X factor.” (The Times, 2012) Nightlife Report’s Runway Points scores five things, 0 to 5 each: Walk, Fit, Styling, Crowd and Camera.

Nightlife Report analysis: Ava Kortman, walking for Krown Kink, is our Model of the Event and Model of the Year. From our stills, the case is control: the look reads clean at the end mark, the red satin catches the wall light, and the frame works without a caption. Emily, walking for Sewreffic, is our runner-up in the final placings, for the same reason in a busier print. Kyla Dodds takes third. We graded from stills, not video, so we don’t score pace or the turn.

The bedrock

Nightlife Report analysis: Casting is a matching problem with a deadline. Scouting is search. The walk is a two-minute audition that ends in one still. Win the still and you win the week. As a team, Deborah Beaumont Designs owned the most of those seconds Friday: our Best Overall Modeling Team, for depth across the whole lineup.

Labels on this page: “Nightlife Report analysis” marks opinion and inference. “Our photos” and “our camera” mean Nightlife Report’s own Day 1 frames (timestamps from the camera clock, not independently checked). Everything else is sourced and linked, or marked unconfirmed. Runway Points titles are Nightlife Report editorial picks, not Bureau results; the Bureau announced no winners.

— Anthony Perlas, Nightlife Report

More from the Bureau’s LA Fashion Week

• Ava Kortman steals the show: Opening Night through the Eileen Ford lens
• Ava Kortman vs Emily: The Colosseum of Day 1
• EXCLUSIVE: Inside Krown Kink with Casey Lee Parker
• Best Overall Modeling Team: Deborah Beaumont Designs
• How a fashion week really works: money, labor and the Ford standard
• Runway Points: the Day 1 scoreboard

Updated Oct 18: Emily Sophie Christine second, Kyla Dodds third (Krissy King).