On Modeling, Old Friends & New Beginnings...
Prior to modeling, Maggie had the typical teen's interest in fashion, but not a fashionista's obsessive interest in collecting every available scrap of information about their favorite model or designer. "I wasn't really aware of fashion as far as magazines and such and only knew about Kate Moss from the Calvin Klein ads because all the kids were into her." Instead, she scoured the Salvation Army for vintage clothes, and her Mother's old clothes from the 1960's. ( A bit of a sixties fan, she thought it would be "cool" to someday work with Twiggy, that icon of the time.)
Nowadays, she dresses according to her mood but keeps to sporty basics such as baggy pants from Abercrombie. Generally, she prefers a dressed-down look but will wear "something fabulous" to go out. Her favorites are items from her Prada shoes and bags collection.
MAGGIE'S FREETIME Maggie is startlingly wholesome, in fact, almost squeaky clean - a refereshing change from the image models have as being chain smoking, drug taking divas. Maggie counts a love of chocolate and movies and TV as her vices. After a long day on her feet, she loves to order from Cosmo.com - they deliver Ben and Jerrys' ice cream and movies and magazines. To unwind, she likes to hang out with her friends, go watch a movie, go running or biking, and walk her golden retriever, Philip in Washington Square Park. A perfect day would include having lunch with friends at Tartine or Tortilla Flats, doing some shopping at ending up at the Hog Pit in the trendy meat packing district for a few games or darts and their fried chicken and corn on the cob.
IS THERE LIFE AFTER MODELING? A model's career lifespan is not unlike that of a professional athlete. Many girls have their "15 minutes" and fade into the sunset, never to regain that peak experience again. Some of them turn to drugs, alcohol, and some resume a "normal" lifestyle - get married, have children. A very few, such as Joe Namath(football player) and Cindy Crawford use their 1st career as a springboard to the next thing.
Maggie is a model who likes what she does but is unusual in that she really doesn't seem as if she would be devasted if it all ended tomorrow. She admires Crawford's business acumen and ability to successfully take her audience with her as she's grown older, becoming involved in advertising projects such as Kaye Jewelers, Special K cereal ads and Pepsi Cola. Ideally, she would love to market herself in a similar fashion. "If I could market myself as Cindy did and keep it going, it would be fantastic. I'll model for as long as people want to use me." At the top of her list of what mattered to her about modeling was being appreciated by those she works with. This, she says would be the hardest thing to walk away from.
When questioned about if there was life after modeling, the answer was a resounding "yes". Thus far, Maggie has purchased a summer house on Lake Ontario, and is currently looking for a place to buy in Manhattan. Although she is staunchly loyal to her old crowd of friends back in Watertown, when pressed, she admits that it would be difficult to move back after all of the experiences she's had over the past two and a half years. She co-habits two worlds, that of a small town in upstate New York and the nomadic one of a high fashion model - with more time spent away on location trips than at her home base in downtown Manhattan. Upstate, there is her Mother, Maureen Breen, possibly her most enthusiastic supporter, and her boyfriend of seven years who she met at Genesco University. Her family has been extremely supportive and visits regularly and her Mother (read our interview with her "Mom, Maggie & the Internet") goes on the internet and clips out runway shots of her