Anyone who thinks strutting on a runway looks easy should walk a mile in the shoes on show at Melbourne Fashion Week.
Even making it to the end of the runway and back wearing towering heels in front of 1000 people takes real skill, according to modelling agency founder Chelsea Bonner.
"It's terrifying - unless you're really extroverted naturally it's not easy," she told AAP.
"You have to have whatever that grit is deep down inside to push through the nerves, get out there and look really calm."
Bonner runs the size-inclusive agency Bella Management, which is holding a national Unsigned Model Search as part of Melbourne Fashion Week.
This year, the fourth for the event, more than 200 hopefuls are competing for a full contract with Bella and showing off their runway style.
A model's posture must be correct, their gait in time with the music and every movement must show off a designer's clothes to their best advantage, Bonner said.
A former plus-size international model herself, she reveals heels are the most feared element of the job for every model, no matter how experienced they are.
The hope is always to wear "low" six-inch heels and walk on a carpeted runway.
"That's the dream because you feel safe and you can walk and perform without fear of falling," she said.
But runway surfaces can be made from glass or painted concrete - even plastic over a swimming pool - and things can quickly go wrong.
So, when Bonner held her first size-inclusive runway show at Australian Fashion Week in Sydney earlier in 2022, her first instruction to stylists was "no crazy heels".
"I want every woman to be able to walk down that runway and own it with complete confidence," she said.
"I do not want anybody terrified they're going to fall over."
A specifically size-inclusive show - after 26 years of Fashion Week - is a sign things are slowly changing in the industry.
And there's every chance the winner of Bonner's model search might be, well, more the size of most people who actually buy clothes.
Her only real criteria for finding the winning model is having something worthwhile to say about the world and, of course, being photogenic, regardless of size.
"It's impossible to get anybody work if the camera doesn't like them," Bonner said.
The Unsigned Model Search is on at Venue Alto in Melbourne's GPO building on Thursday.
© AAP 2022