A runway cast is assembled through a division of labour between the house's casting director and the models' agencies: the casting director builds a wish list for the show's look, agencies submit their boards, go-sees and fittings narrow the pool, and the final lineup is confirmed only days before the show, per standard casting practice described across industry trade coverage. Casting is its own discipline inside fashion — the people who do it shape, season after season, which faces and bodies the runway normalizes.
The explainer below follows the process from first submission to final show order. The site publishes information, not career or professional advice.
What is a show package?
The basic unit of casting. Each agency assembles a season package — the models it is putting forward for the upcoming week, with digitals, measurements and recent work — and distributes it to casting directors before the season. Casting directors review hundreds of packages, request go-sees (short in-person meetings where they assess a model against the show's needs), and hold options on favourites. A house may see hundreds of candidates to book a single show's lineup; large shows typically cast dozens of models for one collection.
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What is an exclusive?
The season's highest-stakes arrangement. An exclusive commits a model to one house for the season — she walks only that show — in exchange for the campaign and profile value that come with it. Houses use exclusives to anchor a debut or a new creative direction with a face nobody else shows; agencies trade short-term income for the prestige premium. A confirmed exclusive removes a model from every other casting conversation weeks out, which is why exclusivity news often leaks a show's plans before the lineup is published.
How are the final choices made?
Against the clothes, as late as possible. Models return for fittings as garments are finished, and the casting director with the designer and stylist decides who walks which look; a model whose fit or presence mismatches a garment is cut even at the last fitting. The show's opening and closing slots — the walks reviewers cite most — are assigned in this final pass. Measurement and fit requirements are practical, not decorative: samples are cut in a single size, and the cast must fit the samples that exist, a constraint covered in detail in a separate piece on sample sizing.
What has changed in recent seasons?
Scrutiny and structure. Agencies and houses now operate under model-welfare codes adopted after industry abuse investigations in the late 2010s, with age minimums and working-condition rules enforced unevenly but formally in place, per published codes from trade bodies and the main markets. Casting itself has also become part of a show's public narrative: a diverse or unexpectedly cohesive cast is read as a statement about the house's direction, and reviewers credit or fault the casting as deliberately as they do the clothes. The discreet job has become part of the design.