Jamil Shoemaker Gotcher was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jamil Shoemaker was a shy student in high school that excelled in Art, Photography and English at Tulsa Memorial High School. Jamil’s high school boyfriend met a woman who was a local model and he told the woman that he thought his girlfriend could be a model. The woman gave him the number of a local modeling agent and the agent signed the skinny, 5’ 10” teenager. Jamil immediately started winning fashion modeling auditions with the professional model portfolio photos her Dad, John Shoemaker Sr., a professional photographer shot. In Jamil’s first modeling jobs, she was selected to runway model for top fashion designers that came to Tulsa to put on formal fashion shows for the clients of Tulsa’s Legendary Upscale Women’s Fashion Retailer, Miss Jackson’s and later Saks 5th Avenue, Dillards and Abersons.
High Fashion Modeling Career
Jamil was the first model from Tulsa to model internationally for top designers in the Official Paris Haute Couture Fashion Shows for Fashion Designer Jean Louis Scherrer, Torrente and Lecoanet Hemant. Jamil modeled for Italian designer Alberta Ferretti on the runway in Florence, Italy. Jamil also walked the runway for Official Tokyo Fashion Week for many top legendary designers including Yohji Yammamoto, Kansai Yammamoto and Hanae Mori. Pretty glamorous job for someone who was also a wife and mother based out of Dallas, Texas and later Plano, Texas.
Legacy
After Jamil's success in modeling Jamil's local modeling agent in Tulsa asked her to speak on the phone to a teenage Amber Valletta and convince her to get into modeling rather than go on to college. The phone conversation/consultation worked! Jamil had paved the way for international modeling work for Amber and Jamil was the reason an international model scout even stopped in Tulsa to scout for models. Jamil had put Tulsa on the map as a place to discover models for the international level of modeling where as before they flew right over Tulsa.
Model Daughter
“Jade Gotcher followed in her Mother’s high heeled shoes” (Tulsa World Newspaper) and went from walking the halls of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Memorial High School to walking the runway internationally for top high fashion designers at Official New York Fashion Week and Official London Fashion Week. Jade has also modeled in Dallas for Neiman Marcus, Barneys and Stanley Korshak. Aspiring models who get started in modeling in small markets like Tulsa did not have anyone with firsthand international fashion modeling career experience to gain guidance about a career in modeling until Jamil created a blue print for how a young aspiring model from Tulsa can get into fashion and commercial modeling safely. When you become a Model you become a business and YOU are the product. Every business has expenses and modeling is no exception.
Jamil utilized her firsthand connections she made from her modeling career to get her daughter signed with Ford Models New York and IMG New York, IMG London and Kim Dawson Agency in Dallas. Jade Gotcher walked the runway for well known designers like Cynthia Rowley and on national tv walking in Project Runway's finale fashion show at Official New York Fashion Week and at Official London Fashion Week for Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell's Fashion For Relief Charity Fashion Show. Because of Jamil's professional modeling career, her daughter was able to have an edge over other models and this helped her hit the ground running instead of the months it can take a new model to learn the ropes. Jade Gotcher has modeled at New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week for designers, Cynthia Rowley, Reyes, Barbara Tfank, Mary Ping, Claire Tough, Anne Sophie Back, Jasper Conran, Fashion For Relief show in London, a show produced by Supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss.