By HaeMee Lee, Editor-in-Chief
“Mom,” exclaims senior Nikki Datta, “It’s Ms. Wo! She’s in a magazine that has Donna Karan on the front cover! Prada buys ads in the magazine! She looks amazing!”
Nikki is in awe as she spots her 11th grade AP English teacher, indeed, in the Capitol File, a Washington, DC magazine, in a Neiman Marcus ad for the Fall 2014 Fall Faces of Neiman Marcus’ beauty campaigns are contests that allow women to be featured as the next season’s Faces of Beauty. Six empowered women, chosen from over 700 entries, became Neiman Marcus’ 2014 Fall Faces of Beauty, including River Hill High School’s Danielle Wojcik, a 10th and 11th grade English teacher that passionately teaches and easily brightens the classroom with her spirited personality.
Entries for the Faces of Beauty were nominations, whether they were self-nominations or by someone the nominees knew. Ms. Wojcik’s mother nominated her without her knowledge. One day, her mom was forced to mention that she won the contest. “They loved that my mom nominated me,” Ms. Wojcik explains, “My mom just loves me. She always quotes Jesse Mccartney’s ‘Beautiful Soul’ to me.”
Her mom, also, nominated Ms. Wo because of her love for fashion. Most of Ms. Wo’s students know, if not stalk, her fashion blog. “My closet had too many things and I had nothing to wear. This is when I started reading fashion blogs,” she says, “Soon, I began chronicling what I wore on my own blog. I now walk in my closet and say, ‘I don’t know what to wear’ instead of ‘I have nothing to wear’ because I have so many options.”
This past May, Ms. Wojcik and the five other women won the opportunity to fly to the Neiman Marcus flagship office in Dallas, Texas, for two days to sample beauty products and experience fittings, photo shoots, and film interviews, an itinerary torn from a model’s or celebrity’s planner.
When Ms. Wojcik landed in Dallas early morning on the first day, a camera crew was already waiting in front of the hotel for a few shots. She met the other women and the assigned beauty department managers for each woman, and the remainder of the day consisted of eating dinner together and relaxing.
After a relaxing first day, the second day was a “whirlwind,” as Ms. Wojcik describes it, packed with hair and makeup, photographs and videos of trying beauty products, and interviews about what beauty is and what it meant to the women. Being continuually called to appear, Ms. Wojcik could not properly eat. She comically notes, “After that day, I understood why models are so skinny.”
Though, the coolest part of the Neiman Marcus experience was meeting other people and forming relationships, just as she does on her fashion blog. “The best part about blogging is the community of people with the same interests,” she continues, “Over the summer, I met up with a teacher fashion blogger, like me, in Virginia.” In Dallas, Ms. Wojcik met the head doctor of Paul Walker’s Foundation, Reach Out Worldwide, in California, as well as a children’s psychology researcher in Hawaii who has been traveling to many parts of the world.
The theme for the Fall campaign is “Be You, Be Beautiful.” Neiman Marcus searched for women beautiful on both the inside and outside, women who are not just beautiful in the eyes of others but also in the eyes of the world as they make it a better place. These campaigns promote women’s empowerment of inner beauty. As described on Neiman Marcus’ blog, “At Neiman Marcus we believe beauty is meant to make women the best they can be.”
The Fall 2014 Faces of Beauty campaign features video is currently on Neiman Marcus’ blog, as Neiman Marcus now accepts nominations for the Spring 2015 Faces of Beauty.