Casey Ehlers-Parker wasn’t exactly sure how she got here.
She knew how she ended up in Redondo Beach after the long, strange, and surpassingly fun trip that she embarked on as a kid from Georgia who became a worldwide fashion model, traveling, partying, and posing everywhere from Singapore to South Africa and all glamorous points in between. When the world stopped spinning, she simply came to the beach.
But the pink tutus with the matching furry slippers? That part was less clear.
Or at least was until a few months ago, when the crew of the Style Network’s How Do I Look? show took apart Ehlers-Parker and her recent fashion choices – which included various tutus, lots of boas, a few tiaras and even a Big Bird dress – and put her back together again, somewhat more sleekly stylish and even elegant.
Ehlers-Parker had a moment of clarity when she was being fitted with new clothing. She kept apologizing when something didn’t fit. Finally, somebody asked her: why are you apologizing?
“I was really, oh my god, why do I apologize when something doesn’t fit?” Ehlers-Parker recalled. “It’s not my fault. But it’s like drilled into my brain, ‘I am not the model you are looking for…’ When they put a tape measure around me I wanted to die. You know, being an ex-model – you puke in your mouth and wish you were dead.”
“I totally feel like that puppy that peed on the floor just waiting, waiting, waiting, because you’re in trouble. Then they find you, and you are like, ‘Okay, what’s up?’”
They call it model damage, and after eight years as an Elite agency model – her images appeared in magazines such as Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar – Ehlers-Parker left the modeling world six years ago as she entered her 30s and her body began to change. She’d always loved to dress somewhat outlandishly, but now it became her go-to look. It got to the point that when friends found some particularly crazed article of clothing, they’d bring it to her.
“I’m like the ‘Mikey will eat it,’” she said, “I’m the ‘Casey will wear it.’”
And everybody enjoyed it. At her favorite haunts – Pat’s Cocktails, the bar near her home in Riviera Village, or at Starboard Attitude on the Redondo pier – everybody came to expect the unexpected when Casey walked through the door.
Her clothes, however, had become a defense mechanism.
“I’d rather have you laughing at me, and enjoying my clothes, then to tell me I’m not good enough,” she said. “If you can make people laugh, it’s at least less pressure. Because I was lying about my age from the start of my modeling career, and even though I was skinny, I was never skinny enough. I always tried to be entertaining; it takes the edge off things. But then it went over the edge because people encouraged me to be a complete freak.”
Her makeover began with a letter from her husband, Scott Parker, a hair stylist with an upscale and celebrity clientele in Beverly Hills. He nominated his wife for How Do I Look?, the Emmy-nominated “fashion intervention” show hosted by style guru Jeannie Mai. Parker wrote that he and his wife frequently found themselves at fancy events – movie premieres, dinners at mansions – at which Casey’s clothes stood out, and not in a good way.
“She was getting too old to be a cute little rave girl,” Parker said. “She is so pretty, so I thought she could put on something as pretty as she is naturally pretty. We’d be drinking champagne at Barron Hilton’s house and she’d be wearing a circus outfit instead of something nice.”
How Do I Look? contacted Casey and interviewed her and some of her close friends. She didn’t really expect to be chosen. “I thought I’d be too weird,” she said. When she got the call that she’d been selected, Ehlers-Parker was standing in line at the DMV. The “accomplices” chosen for her makeover were her boss, Steve Dixon, and her longtime friend Jason Godwin.
Dixon, the manager of Rumba Hair Studio in Redondo Beach, where Ehlers-Parker works as a receptionist, said that he sometimes worried that her wild outfits scared clients away.
“I thought it would be something fun to do for her and help turn some things around for her, put her in a more positive position in her life and reflect a better image, for herself and the general public – being in a salon, it might be nice for her to be a little bit more polished,” Dixon said. “Tutus sometimes don’t cut it.”
Godwin said he didn’t think Casey needed to change so much as just diversify her look.
“I saw it as Casey just being Casey, just being herself, but also not wanting to grow up and kind of hiding from herself a little bit,” he said. “I love it when she dresses crazy. I think it’s funny and hilarious and I think there is always a time for her to wear a tutu. I definitively don’t want her to give that up – that is totally her. But there are times she doesn’t have to wear that kind of thing – she can be the 37-year-old she is.…I don’t want to use the word professional, but just fit in a little more. She doesn’t always have to stand out. As you get older, some of those extremes can go away. You don’t have to go do that on a daily basis. Save it for that certain day or event.”
Over the course of a week, with the help of her accomplices, Jeannie Mai and the How Do I Look? crew undertook the transformation of Casey’s look. First, they came to Redondo, where Jason and Casey were filmed dancing at midday on a Tuesday at Pat’s Cocktail Lounge. Scott and Casey were filmed on one of their favorite jaunts, bicycling to the pier, and their dog, Poops, even got his 15 minutes of camera fame.
Then came the serious part: throwing away Casey’s clothes. Jeannie Mai did the honors with the show’s infamous “Eww Tube”, a big suction tube that literally sucked away the grossest offenses from her wardrobe.
“That was kind of hard,” Ehlers-Parker said. “I am proud to say my tutus clogged their ‘Eww Tube.’”
Kate Richter-Green, the producer and director of the show, said both Casey and Redondo Beach made this episode special.
“Casey was really fun because she was quirky and silly and has so much personality and vivacity and such gusto for life,” Richter-Green said. “What she brought to the table was genuine fun. Her happiness is contagious. She is such a sweet and happy person, she made it easy and fun to do this show….and honestly, everyone down there is so nice, it was just a pleasure to see a day in her life.”
Ehlers-Parker said she was almost shocked at how kind everybody involved with the show was. Her only complaint was how large she felt – she is 5 ’11 — next to the petite Jeannie Mai on camera.
“Jeannie Mai is super nice and super cute, but she is like five feet tall, and I look like Sasquatch next to her,” she said. “One scene I actually carry her on set, because I already feel like a giant mammoth.”
The show, which airs this Saturday night at 8 p.m. on the Style Network, culminates with a “grand reveal” on a stage at the plaza at the Hollywood & Highland complex. Nobody involved wanted to say too much about “the reveal” because it is intended to be a surprise when it airs on television. Suffice it to say the transformation startled even her friends.
“They didn’t let any of us know what she was going to look like,” Dixon said. “I was kind of shocked, because I have never seen Casey made up that way before, to look so feminine – I didn’t know she had a figure like she has. She just looked beautiful. Like, ‘Wow, our little girl has grown up. She has come out of the cocoon.’ It tickled me to see her like that – I think she was trying to hide behind what she was wearing.”
Godwin said that his friend doesn’t need to use her clothing to make people laugh.
“She is witty and smart and she does that with the things she says,” he said. “She doesn’t have to do that with her looks. It doesn’t have to be some stupid boots she is wearing to make me laugh. She does it with the words she chooses and the topics she brings up.”
Ehlers-Parker was a little shocked herself. She obtained a whole new wardrobe and found herself surprisingly comfortable in her new clothes.
“It was cool to feel beautiful again,” she said. “I am not skinny anymore – I’m not fat, but I’m not a runway model anymore. I felt loved.”
“Now I have clothes that are good for me, but I still might wear a feather sometimes. They enhanced me. I can be awesome and eccentric at the same time. They taught me that no matter how eccentric I am, I own it. Everybody is unique and you should rock who you are. That is the big thing I did learn from this show.”
Richter-Green said that these kind of transformations are the reason she does the show – particularly with subjects like Ehlers-Parker, who are resistant to change.
“Clothes are the fabric you put on your body,” Richter-Green said. “They are not the most important thing in the world, but they can really pull people back. Some people have so much potential and can be held back by something so silly as clothes, and you just have to show them. It’s really not about the clothes. It’s about changing, inside and out.”
As for her “model damage,” Ehlers-Parker has absolutely no regrets. She applied to become a model at the age of 23 – she lied and said she was 18 – and over the next eight years had more adventure then she ever could have dreamed. She walked runways in Milan, modeled for the Sultan of Brunei, was a sensation in Asia (where she sold herself as part-Asian) as well as the Deep South and drank champagne in the wee hours in the swankiest parts of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.
“You just show up at rich lady’s lunches and walk around in these dresses,” she recalled. “The hard part is being able to say how much the dress costs without spitting up, laughing…’Oh yes, this dress costs $35,000.’”
She wore $200,000 necklaces and woke many mornings to stumble bleary-eyed to the newsstand to see herself in print. “I got to travel a lot because I was more of an editorial model,” she said. “Commercial models made more money and got to stay in America, but I was never that blue-eyed, blonde girl running around the beach eating grapes. I was more the rock n’ roll drugged-out look that was in when ‘heroin chic’ was popular.”
She met her husband in Beverly Hills and together they escaped the madness and came to the beach.
“Scott is the one who kind of sorted me out,” she said. “For a hair dresser to be the most normal person you meet is kind of deep.”
As a parting gift, How Do I Look? gave the couple a vacation to Patagonia and a journal for her to write about her experiences – and to publish them on the Style Network’s websites. It’s a new look, and a new lease on life for Ehlers-Parker (who is also an occasional contributor to the Easy Reader). She’s ready to fly again.
“I’m stoked,” she said. “I just got my passport renewed ….It’s going to be awesome. I don’t want to sound like some beauty pageant girl, but I am truly honored anybody wants to hear what I have to say.”
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