Arina Maksimova has let nothing stand in the way of her modelling ambitions.
As the face and founder of the Petite Models Movement, Arina Maksimova is fighting the fashion industry’s reluctance to use shorter models.
Arina Maksimova for Perfect Issue 11.
Photographer: Dan Jackson
Fashion Editor: Katie Grand
Writer: Murray Healy
Arina Maksimova was born in Russia, in a small town near the border with China. The place is largely unremarkable save for the fact that it serves as a hub in the movement of models across the fashion world: agencies send their clients from former Soviet countries here, to wait for modelling assignments in China and East Asia. ‘We had so many tiny local model agencies,’ says Arina, ‘literally every second building. So I grew up watching all these beautiful girls travelling out into the world and coming back with some cash. And I thought, “Oh my God, I want to be one of them.”’
This ambition seemed perfectly plausible to the young Arina, and to those around her too. At 10, she was the tallest girl in her class. ‘Everyone was saying, “Wait until you’re 14 and we will send you out to China and Japan.” No one realised that I wouldn’t add a single centimetre to my height.’ Fourteen years later, Arina is still 158cm, or five foot two.
According to the local agencies, she was too short to be taken seriously as a commercial prospect in modelling. ‘Everyone was saying there was no way this was going to happen,’ she says. Fashion’s preference tends to skew significantly higher than average – globally, the median height for women is 5ft 3in – and a model is considered ‘petite’ if she is below 5ft 9in. Big names in this category include Sara Sampaio and Cara Delevingne (5ft 8in), Kate Moss and Emily Ratajkowski (5ft 7in), Iris Law (5ft 5in) and Lily-Rose Depp (5ft 3in), who appears to stand at the very limit of what the industry deems acceptable.
‘But becoming a model was the only dream I had. Imagine saying to a teenager, “Sorry, you have to choose another dream”? I had this feeling: “I want to prove you all wrong.”’
Arina quietly set about working her way into the industry by other means. At 14, when girls in her neighbourhood started being sent to China on modelling assignments, she snuck along on the bus that took them across the border and slept in the apartments where they were housed. ‘My plan was to follow them to every single shoot; I thought someone would notice me and give me a job. Which was very naive of me, obviously! I learned pretty fast that that’s not how the industry works.’ Instead, on set she offered to help the production crews prepping the shoots.
She thought she would stay in China for a week; that quickly stretched to a month. ‘I had the feeling that something will happen if I stay a few more days.’ Such was her tenacity that she managed to persuade her school back home to grant her extended leave as long as returned to sit her exams. Her academic scores remained excellent, and this arrangement continued: taking the bus back to Russia each month for her tests, she managed to spend the best part of a year in China. ‘And the second year, I did the same thing in South Korea – doing these backstage jobs, collecting all the phone numbers I could get and texting stylists, make-up artists, lighting assistants, whoever, like, “If you need anything, I can help you for free.” And the third year, I did the same again in Japan.’
Finally she started getting chances to model too. “You know how everyone is all about a healthy lifestyle these days? Ten years ago everyone was partying hard, and there were so many cases when models weren’t able to make it on set. Whereas I don’t drink, I don’t smoke – no one in my family does. So they knew, “OK, we can call Arina.” Everyone knew your height doesn’t really make a difference. They pin the clothes at the back on the tall girls too; those clothes don’t really fit anyone.’
Many of the world’s most successful pop stars are shorter than Arina – Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga – and their height hasn’t stopped them from being major fashion icons. So why are the requirements any different for models? There is no logical reason, Arina says; there is nothing backing the industry’s preference for tall models. ‘You know, the favourite phrase of designers is, “Oh, honey, don’t take it personally. It’s all about sample size. A sample is made for tall girls. That’s why you can never do runway.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but you just made the sample-size sample in front of me with your own hands. It’s not a law of nature that you can’t change. You are the one deciding the size!”’
Until recently, there was little incentive for the industry to review this arbitrary convention. ‘They don’t want to put effort into changing things that remain profitable. Like, “If people keep buying it, we will keep doing it.”’ For the situation to change, ‘Someone has to get mad and open their eyes to this problem.’ And that someone is Arina.
Where did it come from, this determination, this sheer force of will, that propelled her around the world to chase her dream and change the rules? I get glimpses of it when we meet, on a sunny afternoon in a smart café in Mayfair, London. Halfway through our conversation, the café owner informs us that they’ll be closing in 15 minutes. But no, Arina counters – calm, assertive and entirely correct – the opening times advertised online give us another couple of hours. Suffice it to say, we don’t leave the now-empty café until we’re good and ready.
Arina attributes much of her unwavering self-belief to the wholehearted support she received from her parents. ‘They genuinely could not understand what the problem was. They told me, “Listen, there are no gods in any industry, including fashion. If some random man has decided it’s easier to tailor clothes on tall girls, that doesn’t mean someone else can’t come along years later and change it. These are people, and people’s minds can be changed. You can be the first.” They never said, “Be realistic” or “Go find a proper job” like parents always say. They couldn’t help me financially, but the level of emotional support they provided was just insane.’
Major coincidences in global events also assisted Arina on her mission. The first came when she was 17, as she was preparing to apply to university. The body positivity movement, which had been gaining traction in the fashion industry throughout the 2010s, reached a tipping point at the end of 2019, when Victoria’s Secret cancelled its catwalk show following criticism for the lack of diversity in its casting. ‘In the US, brands started saying that they support women in all forms. And I thought, maybe this is something I can apply to my case.’ Because she noticed the conversation was only going so far. ‘Whenever there was a conversation about size diversity, it was always about weight, never height.’ Determined to get to the US, Arina applied for scholarship schemes at universities there, securing a place studying international business in Seattle.
On her way out, she stopped off in New York – somewhere she had long dreamed of visiting, having grown up seeing it mythologised on screen, and in Gossip Girl in particular. This happened to coincide with a second seismic global event: the beginning of the Covid lockdowns. ‘Manhattan was empty. But I fell in love with the city immediately.’ Then she got a notification from her college in Seattle: the campus would be closed for the academic year due to a Covid outbreak and students would have to study online instead. ‘Which meant I could stay in New York.’
Now ensconced in a major fashion capital, Arina started to reach out to fashion magazine editors – ‘by DM, LinkedIn, in the comments section. “Oh, hi! I’m Arina. I’m very short, but I heard that you guys support the body positivity movement now. So don’t you want to work with me as the petite representative?” No reply, nothing.’
Then she changed tactic. ‘I realised that what they are most afraid of is being called out for discrimination. So I got back to the same people, but this time I was like, “Hi, I see that you didn’t reply. Do you want to say that it’s because you discriminate against me based on body features that I can’t change? Because I’ve started a new social movement, the Petite Models Movement, and I’m telling people the truth about magazines who are screaming about body positivity when their diversity stops at promoting obesity only. But I’m sure you’re not one of them. So do you want to collaborate?” And surprise, surprise, people started getting back to me.’
In May 2022 she landed her first magazine cover, for Grazia Serbia, with an accompanying interview in which she told readers about her Petite Models Movement. ‘And then I made it to my first cover of Vogue’ – Vogue Mexico, in August 2023, soon followed by the Czech and Portuguese editions. ‘And things kind of started working out, finally.’
As editorial work started coming in, she was presented with a new challenge. Arina was acting as her own agent – as she does to this day – without the legal department of a model agency behind her. ‘I was signing big contracts with magazines, but had no idea what I was signing.’ So she decided to transfer to a law degree in London. ‘And it was very helpful, actually. It gave me a general understanding of how I should be working on contracts. It’s useless now, though, because we have ChatGPT to do that! I think it’s a good part of the AI boom, because the girls who are starting now have more tools to protect themselves.’
The exclusion of shorter models is not the only injustice she is seeking to right; protecting her fellow models through collective organising is another of Arina’s objectives. ‘I always wondered how it is that Hollywood has its own union that fights for every single penny, for every single issue, but we don’t have the same thing in the modelling industry. That seems insane. Until a big player steps up to instigate this, it probably won’t happen. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a hope.’
Meanwhile, the success of models like Jillian Mercado and Amina Blue notwithstanding, the industry’s reluctance to use shorter models has still not been resolved. ‘That’s why whenever I shoot for a magazine, I always ask to do an interview. Because it’s still a problem.’ And despite her success in editorial, Arina has yet to secure any runway work – although she says she is currently in touch with a high-profile brand with a view to possibly walking in a forthcoming collection.
Progress is slow, then, but awareness is shifting in the right direction. ‘I’ve been talking about this movement since 2021, and I’ve done so many covers and so many interviews. But it’s only now that I’ve started getting people recognising me in the street. That’s the biggest compliment for me, getting the attention of strangers – not for myself, but for the idea that I’m promoting.’
For now, her editorial assignments continue to take her around the world. She travels so much that she doesn’t really have a base these days. ‘I prefer not to, because I don’t know when I will ever be as free as I am now, and I want to use this freedom.’ However, New York feels like the closest thing to home: ‘It is honestly the only city that I miss. I have my little routine there – my favourite coffee shops, my Pilates studio, my tennis studio.’ What’s the appeal for her? ‘I just feel the rhythm of life in the city matches my own inner rhythm, which is very fast.’
And if she weren’t a model, she’d be probably pursuing a career somewhere on the frontiers of scientific research. At school she always loved maths and remained top of the class despite being abroad most of the time from the age of 14 – ‘I was such a nerd,’ she laughs. ‘I still am!’ – and although modelling was always dream number one, she did also yearn for a career in aerospace engineering. She has had side jobs in new technology – in financial tech, for example, and for a while she was working with researchers in China, developing ‘skin for humanoid robots’. ‘But in order to get into those industries properly, you need a relevant diploma. And why would I want to tie myself to a university, to be stuck in one particular location? You never know what might happen. World War Three might start tomorrow!’ The mutability of life was impressed upon her back in March, when a stopover in Dubai coincided with the start of the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, closing airspace over West Asia. ‘And I got stuck in Dubai for a month. I was like, “And you guys want me to plan out the next year? Are you kidding me?!”’
‘If you enjoy your life so much right now,’ Arina continues, ‘why change it? Just keep enjoying it. If one day I feel like settling down, then I’ll get that diploma. For now, I live my dream.’