Maggie Sands

Elmhurst model makes a splash on the world stage

Peter Cameron, Special to the Tribune

Maybe you've seen the ad before in a salon, the one of a long, thin girl wearing a backless pine tree dress, her hair braided in cornrows.

That's Maggie Sands, 24, from Elmhurst, now an international model based out of Manhattan who's simultaneously trying to complete a degree in international relations at the City University of New York. The photo shoot for that ad went long, making the contractually obligated Sands late for a final exam on constitutional public policy. The 5'11'' Sands showed up 90 minutes into the three-hour exam period, still in cornrows.

"I told the professor I had a family emergency, but I don't think he really believed me," she said.

She still finished in time and got an A. This hectic schedule is typical for the college student and top model who has worked in cities like London, Vienna and Paris. She spends the rest of her time volunteering for the nonprofit Seeds of Africa.

Sands got her start when she was a lanky and girlish 14-year-old. Her grandmother had a friend who ran an agency, so they went in for an audition.

"She said, ‘yeah totally, but come back when your braces come off,' " Sands said.

Her first gig was at Carson's modeling prom dresses on a tiny runway in front of mainly friends and family. She moved on to print jobs for Kohl's, a billboard for Crate & Barrel, and a Chicago Magazine cover.

After graduating from York High School in Elmhurst, she enrolled at the University of Illinois and commuted to Chicago for jobs. But after sophomore year she left behind sororities and keg stands and moved to New York. To the dismay of her parents, she hasn't moved back.

For the first few years she lived in shoebox apartments and was used mostly at unglamorous fittings, where designers could see their clothes on a live person before a fashion show.

"She was basically a hanger," said Corey Bautista, her agent of two years and the director of the New York Model Management agency.

But her agency eventually promoted her to the "top board," a move Bautista likens to skipping the minors and "going straight to the major leagues." Sands has since been featured in national television commercials for Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences and Skintimate and worked personally with designers like Calvin Klein. She's now living in a $2,300-a-month one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. Tom Brady and Gisele are her neighbors, so paparazzi are often camped outside her front door.

Sands is working with the Seeds of Africa charity to start a new school for children in Ethiopia. She has raised money by organizing auctions and charity balls in New York and went to the East African country for the first time last summer to get it started.

"We spent 50 U.S. dollars and stocked the whole school," she said. "What's not easy is the bureaucracy."

Sands will spend her spring break there looking at possible sites for the school and navigating red tape. After she graduates this summer, she hopes to return to the capital city of Addis Ababa a third time to serve a fall internship, possibly with the U.N.

But even with all her international traveling, Sands is back in Elmhurst every few months to visit her family and grab lunch at Portillo's. Her mother, Susan, speaks to Maggie every day, and has learned to live with her daughter being away from home.

"I prefer if she stays in the country, though," she said.

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