Fashion Update: Hot tips for supermodels

'THE MOST planes I've flown in a month: 40' - Tatjana Patitz. 'With the size of my mortgage at the moment, I'm afraid I'm looking at another 50 years in this business' - Yasmin Le Bon. 'How do you get to the top in this business? It helps if you're blonde, have big tits and sleep with all the photographers . . . just kidding' - Helena Christensen.

These hard-luck tales of life at the top are just a taste of what's inside Arthur Elgort's Model Manual (see left), the Vogue photographer's how-to guide to modelling, launched this month in the US.

Printed in scrapbook format, Elgort, (the first photographer to spot Christy Turlington's potential), has compiled a jumble of 'off camera' snaps; snippets of conversations with model stars past and present, plus some pretty basic but indispensable bite-sized advice on what every aspiring model should know but rarely does: 'Don't be lazy. Don't complain. Learn to act like someone else, but also be yourself. Be on time.'

Designers, agents, editors and actresses all get a look-in. But the book is far from being hollow gloss - it's a refreshingly realistic view of a world that all too often trades in ego.

(Photograph omitted)