A Bermuda girl is sashaying toward the glamour of an Italian fashion runway, after winning a recent modelling competition held locally.

Danielle Smith, 22, was crowned Miss Sasch Bermuda 2007 Modella Domani at a special fashion show and competition held at Splash Nightclub last March. Prizes included participation in a larger Sasch fashion show in Florence, Italy and [EURO]5,000.

Sasch is a local clothing store that sells exclusive Italian fashions.

“I have been modelling since I was 13,” Miss Smith told The Royal Gazette, shortly before leaving for Florence. “This is the first competition I have entered into and won. So I was excited with that.”

Miss Smith works in the accounts department at Digicel. She fell into the Sasch fashion show and competition almost by accident at the recommendation of a colleague.

“One of the girls I worked with was asking me if I was going to take part,” Miss Smith said. “I said, ‘okay’. I went there. They asked me if I was doing the competition.

“I just thought it was a fashion show, I didn’t know about the competition. I entered in both, and went from there. I went to all the practices which were held at Ariel Sands.”

The show and competition was held in several parts stretching over several days. The first part was on March 28 and consisted of a Sasch fashion show where girls had to model bathing suits. Later that evening, the girls modelled Sasch bags at Silk Restaurant.

“The second night was at Splash nightclub,” she said. “There were 14 of us. We had to wear a bronzey-gold dress with Sasch across the front. We just walked in front of the audience and judges. It was a private party. Then they called us all out again, and they were just debating who was the winner.”

Miss Smith later found out that there was a slight twist to the competition that the models didn’t know about.

“What I found out after the competition was that they had guest judges all over Splash,” she said. “They were looking to see if we just smiled in front of the judges that we knew of, and then didn’t smile at people we didn’t think mattered.”

At the end of the competition, Miss Smith was crowned Miss Sasch Bermuda 2007, and another girl, Christina Troja was chosen to represent Bermuda in the ‘Miss Italia Nel Mondo’ competition held in Italy earlier this month.

Miss Smith was very excited about her impending trip to Florence.

“I am going there to take part in a fashion show,” she said. “There will be 60 models, but organisers will only pick 35 to be aired live on television. So I am hoping that I am going to be in the 35 picked. I will get to do photoshoots out there and fittings and get to meet all kinds of different people and designers.”

She planned to travel by herself, but would be met by two people from Sasch Bermuda after she arrived in Italy.

“I am a little but nervous to go all that way by myself,” she said. “I have travelled by myself before, but not such a long distance.”

She would like to eventually become a full-time model, and has always dreamed of going to Paris.

“I still intend on going there,” she said. “Some day I want to go there, but this was just the first step.”

She said the hardest thing about modelling is preparing for photoshoots, many of which can be demanding and tiring.

“Sometimes the photoshoots are first thing in the morning so you have to get up really early, have your hair and makeup done and then go out,” she said. “I was in this one photoshoot for Jakoma that was held on the beach.

“We were up at 5.30 a.m., and had to leave the house at 6.30 a.m. We had to pose in the ocean. The water was extremely cold because it was in December, but we had to look happy. We were freezing and shivering, but we had to look happy like the water didn’t bother us.”

She said this was a good experience that helped to bolster her self-confidence.

“I thought, ‘if I can do this, I can do anything’, basically,” she said.

Miss Smith said it was particularly important for a fashion model to get her beauty sleep, because sometimes fashion shoots can run far over their projected timeframes.

“I enjoy runway and print modelling,” she said. “With runway modelling you are your own person and you try different things. With print work, I just love to take pictures. The photographer who did my portfolio was Troy Jennings.”

She said going to Jakoma’s modelling school on the corner of Cedar Avenue and Victoria Street has been a great help to her.

“We had to do photoshoots, runway, speech, and drama,” she said. “We had to have an interview which was just voice stuff. We had to get to know other girls that we never met before. The school just opened in January. I enjoyed it, it was very fun.”

Miss Smith is the mother of one son, Daeshun who is two years old.