RealFashionLover
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I would love to see her in Fendi's next campaign! And I hope she has an Amazing 2015, she deserves it!!
rosiecheeks
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A Dutch newspaper (Volkskrant) just ran an interview with Sarah Keller where she is primarily interviewed as Doutzen's mother agent. (What an awesome woman by the way!) She was quoted saying Doutzen was quite bummed out by getting back in shape so quickly after giving birth to Mylena Mae. After three weeks, without working out her stomach was flat again.
source: http://www.volkskrant.nl/mode-en-mooi/doutzens-agent-sarah-keller-ik-ben-haar-b*tch~a3898512/
I might translate the interview, but if you use google translate in the meantime do not be alarmed by the title,
literally it might translate to "I am her b*tch" but she means she's the one reminding clients of Doutzens boundaries (no fur etc.) and she can come accross as bitchy but that's because Doutzen has a lot of (demanding) clients nowadays.
source: http://www.volkskrant.nl/mode-en-mooi/doutzens-agent-sarah-keller-ik-ben-haar-b*tch~a3898512/
I might translate the interview, but if you use google translate in the meantime do not be alarmed by the title,
literally it might translate to "I am her b*tch" but she means she's the one reminding clients of Doutzens boundaries (no fur etc.) and she can come accross as bitchy but that's because Doutzen has a lot of (demanding) clients nowadays.DutchHomme
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Yes, please post it. I can't read it because you must be a subscriber to read the entire piece.
BTW If she scores the FW 2015.16 Fendi campaign .. she might also end op in a Chanel campaign because almost every girl that did the Fendi campaign also got a Chanel campaign
(Saskia, Cara, Joan, Lindsay, Asleigh, Binx etc.)
BTW If she scores the FW 2015.16 Fendi campaign .. she might also end op in a Chanel campaign because almost every girl that did the Fendi campaign also got a Chanel campaign
(Saskia, Cara, Joan, Lindsay, Asleigh, Binx etc.)
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rosiecheeks
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She’s the one who discovered her, and in her own words, her watchdog. Sarah Keller talks about Doutzen Kroes, the modeling world and her agency Paparazzi.
By: ANTOINNETTE Scheulderman 14 maart 2015, 02:00
Her assistant walks into the bright, sparsely decorated office – big windows overlooking the busiest area of de Singel in Amsterdam. She puts down a glass with two boiled eggs for Sarah Keller and takes her dog Beertje (little bear) out for a walk. Keller has just come back from New York a day ago, her suitcases still packed, and she has to hit the road again in two days to go on to Milan. Keller: “Doutzen has been booked last minute for the Fendi show. She hardly does any shows, but this was a special request from Karl Lagerfeld. You don’t say no to Karl Lagerfeld.”
Keller was the first in the Netherlands to give meaning to the word “mother agent”. She took care of everything for her models, from accompanying them to castings abroad, to helping them with their yearly taxes. “Nowadays everyone does that, at the time it was not at all like that.”
For her star, Doutzen Kroes, she picked out an apartment in New York, helped select a nanny for her two young children when she has a shoot, was the wedding planner for her wedding to DJ Sunnery James and even booked their honeymoon.
Doutzen has been a model for over ten years now, can’t she do a show like that on her own by now?
“ No, she is so sought after, people are so happy when they can book her that she needs someone to be there to tell them off. For example: Doutzen doesn’t do fur. And Fendi always has a lot of fur in their collections. So if I’m not there the stylist is going to say: “Okay darling here’s your outfit.” And it will be head to toe fur. It is not a good thing if Doutzen then declines to wear something. She has to stay that nice, pretty, cooperative girl. So I am the one to b*tch about it. Most contracts are for a working day of eight hours. But once they have Doutzen in front of the camera they always try keep going and going. Literally: al-ways! She doesn’t want to be the one saying she’s tired, that she can’t keep going. That’s where I come in.”
She takes a bite from her boiled egg. Cartier watch around one wrist, Tiffany-bracelet around the other. Hair cascading down, remarkably light eyes, a big grey cardigan. “ I don’t like to be seen as the b*tch. Doutzen’s agent in New York is a guy. He’s kind of feisty. But he is called “businesslike”. They never talk about him and say: that *******. I know that a lot of magazines, and here in the Netherlands as well, think I’m a pain in the ***. But they forget at times that models pay us a commission to watch out for them. I work for the model, not the magazine.”
She herself never got to the top, Sarah Keller was a model with an odd face during an era (the eighties) that beautiful, blonde Claudia Schiffer-like types were all the rage. She shrugs “maybe I’d have been more successful now”.
But by now she’s the owner of the modeling agency Paparazzi, that she herself founded, and as such is the one booking the odd-faced models. Keller: “You have the Barbie-faced types to whom everyone says they should model. Well that is not the girl I’m looking for. They are beautiful, but they don’t have the sparkle. In this business it’s not just about the looks. There is always someone who’s more beautiful, taller, thinner, younger. A girl should have something special. Like Doutzen: everyone falls in love with her.”
In 2003 Keller finds some simple holiday snaps of Doutzen Kroes on her desk. She immediately saw her potential but for a long time she – and her right hand Mo Karadag – are the only ones to see it that way. Keller: “I had a little folder with polaroid snaps of new girls, ready for photographers so they’d know what they could work with. They all skipped her. When I almost begged them to do a test shoot with her they’d be offended. Doutzen was far too beautiful. At the time that was not trendy at all.”
In the end Doutzen did get asked. For a worldwide Guess campaign, which was to be shot by Ellen von Unwerth. “I had put her with Women in New York, and deliberately so, because they also have Kate Moss and Stella Tennant, more stand-out faces. Everyone agreed Doutzen had potential to become a good commercial model, but once you did commercial work, you’d never be asked for a top editorial again – let alone land a Vogue cover. Despite being with that agency she was asked by Guess. I said: we’re not doing it. The agency thought I’d lost my mind. Von Unwerth called me personally, she was seething. What was I thinking, as a Dutch woman, I had completely lost it. “I made Claudia Schiffer a big star!! “ she yelled.
Did you take a change there, or did you know what you were doing?
“I have a powerful instinct. Luckily Doutzen was prepared to follow that. I thought she could do more”
It was a long-term move then?
“Definitely. For that campaign they would have paid her hundreds thousands of dollars. A Vogue shoot pays 150 dollars, regardless of the model. Even Doutzen, even now. It’s the treatment that changes: a beginning model does not get a chauffeur to pick her up, she doesn’t stay in a five star hotel. Doutzen gets that treatment by now, but for the payroll it doesn’t matter to these high end magazines who you are.”
Keller turned out to be in the right when Steven Meisel wanted to photograph Doutzen for the Italian Vogue. From that moment onwards her editorial and commercial career soar towards the sky. Keller: “the big commercial jobs she’s getting now, like Samsung, Rivella and C&A Brazil, you can only get these once you are editorial wise at the top. Now we’re trying to make Doutzen into a household name. So she’s no longer just known as a top model, but as a celebrity.”
Paparazzi gets at least fifty new applications every week. Only ten girls a year are put on their board. Keller: “There is always a little spike in these numbers when Doutzen is on the news a lot, or when there’s a fashion show on TV, and during school holidays, when they have the time to apply. But with us they really have to finish school first. At sixteen they are really too young to become full-time models.
She herself was also sixteen years old when she was scouted for the first time. This was in New York, by the then owner of the famous Ford Models agency. Her grandparents, with whom she grew up partially said no. Keller: “ I still think that was such a sensible choice of them.”
Keller was born in Colombia, in the American State Missouri. Her parents were all “sex, drugs and rock-‘n-roll” in the late sixties. “My mother would mostly tour poetry festivals and my father worked as a photographer. But he also had a bipolar disorder. When the situation became unsafe my mother left him. I was two at the time and never saw him after that.”
By: ANTOINNETTE Scheulderman 14 maart 2015, 02:00
Her assistant walks into the bright, sparsely decorated office – big windows overlooking the busiest area of de Singel in Amsterdam. She puts down a glass with two boiled eggs for Sarah Keller and takes her dog Beertje (little bear) out for a walk. Keller has just come back from New York a day ago, her suitcases still packed, and she has to hit the road again in two days to go on to Milan. Keller: “Doutzen has been booked last minute for the Fendi show. She hardly does any shows, but this was a special request from Karl Lagerfeld. You don’t say no to Karl Lagerfeld.”
Keller was the first in the Netherlands to give meaning to the word “mother agent”. She took care of everything for her models, from accompanying them to castings abroad, to helping them with their yearly taxes. “Nowadays everyone does that, at the time it was not at all like that.”
For her star, Doutzen Kroes, she picked out an apartment in New York, helped select a nanny for her two young children when she has a shoot, was the wedding planner for her wedding to DJ Sunnery James and even booked their honeymoon.
Doutzen has been a model for over ten years now, can’t she do a show like that on her own by now?
“ No, she is so sought after, people are so happy when they can book her that she needs someone to be there to tell them off. For example: Doutzen doesn’t do fur. And Fendi always has a lot of fur in their collections. So if I’m not there the stylist is going to say: “Okay darling here’s your outfit.” And it will be head to toe fur. It is not a good thing if Doutzen then declines to wear something. She has to stay that nice, pretty, cooperative girl. So I am the one to b*tch about it. Most contracts are for a working day of eight hours. But once they have Doutzen in front of the camera they always try keep going and going. Literally: al-ways! She doesn’t want to be the one saying she’s tired, that she can’t keep going. That’s where I come in.”
She takes a bite from her boiled egg. Cartier watch around one wrist, Tiffany-bracelet around the other. Hair cascading down, remarkably light eyes, a big grey cardigan. “ I don’t like to be seen as the b*tch. Doutzen’s agent in New York is a guy. He’s kind of feisty. But he is called “businesslike”. They never talk about him and say: that *******. I know that a lot of magazines, and here in the Netherlands as well, think I’m a pain in the ***. But they forget at times that models pay us a commission to watch out for them. I work for the model, not the magazine.”
She herself never got to the top, Sarah Keller was a model with an odd face during an era (the eighties) that beautiful, blonde Claudia Schiffer-like types were all the rage. She shrugs “maybe I’d have been more successful now”.
But by now she’s the owner of the modeling agency Paparazzi, that she herself founded, and as such is the one booking the odd-faced models. Keller: “You have the Barbie-faced types to whom everyone says they should model. Well that is not the girl I’m looking for. They are beautiful, but they don’t have the sparkle. In this business it’s not just about the looks. There is always someone who’s more beautiful, taller, thinner, younger. A girl should have something special. Like Doutzen: everyone falls in love with her.”
In 2003 Keller finds some simple holiday snaps of Doutzen Kroes on her desk. She immediately saw her potential but for a long time she – and her right hand Mo Karadag – are the only ones to see it that way. Keller: “I had a little folder with polaroid snaps of new girls, ready for photographers so they’d know what they could work with. They all skipped her. When I almost begged them to do a test shoot with her they’d be offended. Doutzen was far too beautiful. At the time that was not trendy at all.”
In the end Doutzen did get asked. For a worldwide Guess campaign, which was to be shot by Ellen von Unwerth. “I had put her with Women in New York, and deliberately so, because they also have Kate Moss and Stella Tennant, more stand-out faces. Everyone agreed Doutzen had potential to become a good commercial model, but once you did commercial work, you’d never be asked for a top editorial again – let alone land a Vogue cover. Despite being with that agency she was asked by Guess. I said: we’re not doing it. The agency thought I’d lost my mind. Von Unwerth called me personally, she was seething. What was I thinking, as a Dutch woman, I had completely lost it. “I made Claudia Schiffer a big star!! “ she yelled.
Did you take a change there, or did you know what you were doing?
“I have a powerful instinct. Luckily Doutzen was prepared to follow that. I thought she could do more”
It was a long-term move then?
“Definitely. For that campaign they would have paid her hundreds thousands of dollars. A Vogue shoot pays 150 dollars, regardless of the model. Even Doutzen, even now. It’s the treatment that changes: a beginning model does not get a chauffeur to pick her up, she doesn’t stay in a five star hotel. Doutzen gets that treatment by now, but for the payroll it doesn’t matter to these high end magazines who you are.”
Keller turned out to be in the right when Steven Meisel wanted to photograph Doutzen for the Italian Vogue. From that moment onwards her editorial and commercial career soar towards the sky. Keller: “the big commercial jobs she’s getting now, like Samsung, Rivella and C&A Brazil, you can only get these once you are editorial wise at the top. Now we’re trying to make Doutzen into a household name. So she’s no longer just known as a top model, but as a celebrity.”
Paparazzi gets at least fifty new applications every week. Only ten girls a year are put on their board. Keller: “There is always a little spike in these numbers when Doutzen is on the news a lot, or when there’s a fashion show on TV, and during school holidays, when they have the time to apply. But with us they really have to finish school first. At sixteen they are really too young to become full-time models.
She herself was also sixteen years old when she was scouted for the first time. This was in New York, by the then owner of the famous Ford Models agency. Her grandparents, with whom she grew up partially said no. Keller: “ I still think that was such a sensible choice of them.”
Keller was born in Colombia, in the American State Missouri. Her parents were all “sex, drugs and rock-‘n-roll” in the late sixties. “My mother would mostly tour poetry festivals and my father worked as a photographer. But he also had a bipolar disorder. When the situation became unsafe my mother left him. I was two at the time and never saw him after that.”
rosiecheeks
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Is he still alive?
“I don’t have the faintest idea. I called him once, when I was fifteen. He had a new family, but he wanted to see me. He was going to call me back but he never did. When I called again he had changed his mind.”
The family company of her grandparents was the biggest producer of Plexiglas in the world. Keller: “The displays in the Rijksmuseum (famous museum in Amsterdam red.)? They come from their company.” They taught me to do business. My grandparents were hoping I’d take over the family business of course. When I was living with them my life was stable and predictable. I would go to the country club in Chicago in my Laura Ashley dress. Life with my mother took place in a house that had been completely painted black and there would always be musicians around. Maybe that is why I can get along with such different kinds of people easily.”
In her early twenties she is working at Lehman Brothers when she is scouted again, this time by a Spanish agency. She works from Madrid, takes on jobs in mostly Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. “In Greece I did hundreds of commercials. From washing up liquid to wodka brands.” In Spain she meets Jaap from Gorinchem and visits the Netherlands for the first time. “I worked for Cosmopolitan here, as well as Marie Claire and Dutch Magazine. But I didn’t want to live in the Netherlands, too cold and rainy.” Years later she does follow Jaap – but it turns out she is actually “more in love with Amsterdam than with him.”
Once her booker from Factory Models (which later becomes Elite) starts his own photographers agency he offers Keller a job. “I didn’t have money nor a visa, so I needed this stepping stone.” Through the photographers she gets to know a lot of models. “Nowadays everything is digital, but then the girls had to do castings and go and sees. All day long I would hear models complain about their agencies. They said they had to find out everything by themselves and that they were being thrown right off the deep end. I thought: I could do something better than that.”
She starts from her own tiny living room and through her friends in the business she soon gets all the good models. “Other agencies immediately saw I was trendy and tried to stop me. They’d await the girls at my front door, telling them I was an untrustworthy American. Very nasty things.”
Almost twenty years later Keller has one of the most well known agencies in the country, with top models like Doutzen Kroes, Saskia de Brauw, Cato van Ee, Dewi Driegen and Marte Mei van Haaster – but still no permanent residency permit. A painful topic. “I have to go to the IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) once every five years and convince them to let me stay. Every five years I have to hire an expensive lawyer, publish all my financial details, of both my company and my private funds. If Paparazzi would go bankrupt I would have to leave the country. I will only get a Dutch passport if I give up my American one. Or marry a Dutch citizen. It is so strange here. At the IND I was sitting next to people who didn’t speak a word of Dutch and they did get the double nationality. I taught myself the language through subtitled soap operas and the eight o’clock news: why not me?!
Are you, being Doutzens agent, also immediately the most powerful woman in the Dutch fashion industry?
“This is the Netherlands eh, how much power can one have here?”
I heard that you boycott magazines who don’t fulfill all of your demands
“Here at the Paparazzi offices we call that the “Jackie-gate” affair. That magazine once published an interview that had some off the record quotes in them. Well then you’re out. It happened with other magazines as well. These models are still children, and I demand they treat them as such. Just like you don’t do nudity if it has not explicitly been agreed on beforehand. In cases like these I am very very strict.
Her black pomerian Beertje jumps onto her lap. Two weeks ago Beertje was front row at the Dries van Noten show. “He was getting cuddles from all the models.”
Her jetlag is to be blamed on the dog. Usually Keller flies business class – when with Doutzen first class – but with KLM dogs are only allowed in economy. “Not even economy comfort!” Keller grimaces. Then to Beertje: “Can you imagine how much I love you.”
She never had children. “I thought: at some point I will meet the man of my dreams and with him I’ll have a family. There were men enough, but not the one.”
Her success proved to be quite a turn off. Keller: “I once devised a test when I was out with a friend who didn’t believe me. If I told men who would come up to me that I had my own business they would turn around immediately. But when I told them I was a stewardess they would stick around. It was quite astonishing.”
What are the trends in the modeling world?
“A new face stops being new after five minutes. Here in the Kalverstraat (a famous high street in Amsterdam) there are at least ten other model scouts. By now top casting directors also come to Amsterdam to scout. If they find a girl in June and book her for the Prada-show in September they will call in September if there isn’t a newer face. The use-by-date of models is becoming shorter and shorter. Every year RTL Boulevard and the fashion magazines run articles about “the new Doutzen” or the girl that did a hundred and fifty shows during fashion month. But the season after that that girl is gone and you’ll never hear from her again. She’s no longer “hot”.
What about that obsession, that everything has to be new?
You can compare it to the lines in front of the Apple Stores when they release the new iPhone. People want a new bag, a new phone, a new face, every season. We try to be picky. Our girls do a maximum of fifteen shows per week. A model has to stay in demand. Overexposure is killing.
She opens a window, lights a cigarette, “There are exceptions. Saskia de Brauw got her big break at thirty and is now Karl Lagerfelds muse. That too is possible nowadays.”
She exhales the smoke and says: “Our creative director, Mo, was at fashion week in London the other day. He was genuinely shocked by the sizes of the models. I was hoping it was balancing out, but the trend is veering towards the razor thin yet again. Our girls have a hip size of 89 or 90, that is very skinny. But the models there had 85, 86 at most. And all of them as young as can be.”
“It often has nothing to do with anorexia” she adds quickly. “I used to be such a toothpick too. Models are simply skinnier than other people. But there’s healthy skinny and then there’s too skinny. At the Victoria’s Secret show the models are getting skinnier and skinnier too lately.
But you are contributing to that. Barely six months after giving birth Doutzen was walking down that catwalk herself, in tip top shape. And she was getting praise from all over the place because she did such a “great job” getting back in shape so quickly. “Trust me: Doutzen was almost upset she got back in shape like that. Three weeks after giving birth her stomach was almost flat again. Without having worked out even one minute. But yeah, that’s why she is a top model.”
Dutch Glamour devoted their December issue to Doutzen, as “Woman of the Year.” Dutch Vogue is currently running its Doutzen-special in honor of her 30th birthday. The accompanying stories read like a Nelson Mandela story instead of a pretty girl that can pose like the best. She laughs.
The editor in chief of Vogue NL had to blink away a few tears at a Late Night TV shows when the cover photo of Doutzen was shown. “Yes, that surprised us too. But at the same time it shows what Doutzen does to people. She touches you.”
The image you like to put forward of her is that of a down to earth Frisian woman, so normal despite her mega-success. “Yeah well, with everything that she has accomplished Doutzen could have been a mega b*tch. Snotty, someone who has an assistant for every tiny thing. Through Doutzen I met a lot of celebrities. Often they are b*tches. Doutzen is so pure, you can’t fake that. But hey: of course she doesn’t know what the real world is like. She is still that Frisian woman, but at the same time she’s living the life of a star. She is no longer flying business class, but first class. Beyoncé and Jay-Z greet her in the nicest way at parties. She is used to people doing everything for her. Last Christmas she went to buy a Christmas tree in the streets. The seller offered to bring the tree to her house. When she goes grocery shopping there is always someone taking her bags to her car. When I talk to her she says: “People here are SO nice!” but she doesn’t realize that that guy would never have brought the tree to my house. Because since she was sixteen this is the way it has been. At times is hilarious to see really, how people react to her. She says something and it is taken care of – but she is not playing a game.”
Forbes calculated that Doutzen is the second best earning top model in the world (after Gisele Bundchen) with an estimated income of 5,5 million euros in 2014. Posing for brands like L’Oreal, H&M, Samsung, Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein and Tiffany’s. When asked if that means that Keller – her agency gets 20% commission – also has quite some money, she answers with a stern look. “A typical Dutch question” she says. “I think it is important to have a nice life. I have nice apartments here on de Singel and in New York, a nice car and I was able to buy a house for my mother. But I am not obsessed with materialistic matters.”
Doutzen would like to land an American Vogue cover, by herself. Why didn’t she get one yet?
Because they mostly pick famous actresses for these covers. Stars that are known to nintety percent of their target group. But the other day they had Kim Kardashian on the cover, she became famous without any noteworthy talents. That did surprise me. Is a reality star like that a good example for the readers? Back in the day young people would look to older people to learn from them. Nowadays they only check how many likes and online friends they have. I read the comments on Doutzen’s instagram selfies. It seems like every girl wants to be a model nowadays. Or famous at least. Apparently it is possible to do so without any talent to speak of nowadays. Or with a sextape.”
A lot of agencies are scouting through social media nowadays. “We don’t do that. We get enough offers as it is. Social media have become a business to us however. We have a whole team helping Doutzen with her Facebook-, Instagram- and Twitter-accounts. And if a client asks if Doutzen can plug their brand on social media they are required to pay. Doutzen has millions of followers, that is worth something.”
The day before we conduct this interview news breaks of Doutzen taking off her wings as an Angel for lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret – one of the industries most wanted jobs. The fashion press immediately suggests that Victoria’s Secret is not paying its brand ambassadors enough, but Keller stays correct: “Victoria’s Secret demands that their models are always ready to go, it’s all very last-minute. That’s not a problem when you’re nineteen years old, but once you have a family life with two kids and you’re looking for some more consistency it is not that convenient.”
Then, with a mocking smile: “It was crazy yesterday. RTL Boulevard called, SBS Shownieuws, RTL Late Night, Grazia, de Telegraaf (all gossip-y news outlets/papers/magazines). But also the NOS News (like the BBC). There is Syria, ISIS, real problems, and they call us: why is Doutzen quitting as a Victoria’s Secret angel. That’s what I found shocking. We are becoming more and more American over here.”
Cv Sarah Keller
22 november 1967 Born in Colombia Missouri, grows up in Chicago and Toronto.
1984 Does not finish high school, but gets her diploma later through night schooling.
1984 First time she is scouted in New York.
1988 Works as a nanny, a trader at the Chicago stock exchange and at Lehman Brothers.
1991 Scouted again and this time leaves for Madrid.
1997 Ends her own career and starts her own agency Paparazzi Models.
2003 Discovers Doutzen Kroes.
2015 Paparazzi Models now has six people on their payroll for around 25 full time models. Ten other developing faces are finishing school first. Sarah Keller is single and is living in Amsterdam.
“I don’t have the faintest idea. I called him once, when I was fifteen. He had a new family, but he wanted to see me. He was going to call me back but he never did. When I called again he had changed his mind.”
The family company of her grandparents was the biggest producer of Plexiglas in the world. Keller: “The displays in the Rijksmuseum (famous museum in Amsterdam red.)? They come from their company.” They taught me to do business. My grandparents were hoping I’d take over the family business of course. When I was living with them my life was stable and predictable. I would go to the country club in Chicago in my Laura Ashley dress. Life with my mother took place in a house that had been completely painted black and there would always be musicians around. Maybe that is why I can get along with such different kinds of people easily.”
In her early twenties she is working at Lehman Brothers when she is scouted again, this time by a Spanish agency. She works from Madrid, takes on jobs in mostly Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. “In Greece I did hundreds of commercials. From washing up liquid to wodka brands.” In Spain she meets Jaap from Gorinchem and visits the Netherlands for the first time. “I worked for Cosmopolitan here, as well as Marie Claire and Dutch Magazine. But I didn’t want to live in the Netherlands, too cold and rainy.” Years later she does follow Jaap – but it turns out she is actually “more in love with Amsterdam than with him.”
Once her booker from Factory Models (which later becomes Elite) starts his own photographers agency he offers Keller a job. “I didn’t have money nor a visa, so I needed this stepping stone.” Through the photographers she gets to know a lot of models. “Nowadays everything is digital, but then the girls had to do castings and go and sees. All day long I would hear models complain about their agencies. They said they had to find out everything by themselves and that they were being thrown right off the deep end. I thought: I could do something better than that.”
She starts from her own tiny living room and through her friends in the business she soon gets all the good models. “Other agencies immediately saw I was trendy and tried to stop me. They’d await the girls at my front door, telling them I was an untrustworthy American. Very nasty things.”
Almost twenty years later Keller has one of the most well known agencies in the country, with top models like Doutzen Kroes, Saskia de Brauw, Cato van Ee, Dewi Driegen and Marte Mei van Haaster – but still no permanent residency permit. A painful topic. “I have to go to the IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) once every five years and convince them to let me stay. Every five years I have to hire an expensive lawyer, publish all my financial details, of both my company and my private funds. If Paparazzi would go bankrupt I would have to leave the country. I will only get a Dutch passport if I give up my American one. Or marry a Dutch citizen. It is so strange here. At the IND I was sitting next to people who didn’t speak a word of Dutch and they did get the double nationality. I taught myself the language through subtitled soap operas and the eight o’clock news: why not me?!
Are you, being Doutzens agent, also immediately the most powerful woman in the Dutch fashion industry?
“This is the Netherlands eh, how much power can one have here?”
I heard that you boycott magazines who don’t fulfill all of your demands
“Here at the Paparazzi offices we call that the “Jackie-gate” affair. That magazine once published an interview that had some off the record quotes in them. Well then you’re out. It happened with other magazines as well. These models are still children, and I demand they treat them as such. Just like you don’t do nudity if it has not explicitly been agreed on beforehand. In cases like these I am very very strict.
Her black pomerian Beertje jumps onto her lap. Two weeks ago Beertje was front row at the Dries van Noten show. “He was getting cuddles from all the models.”
Her jetlag is to be blamed on the dog. Usually Keller flies business class – when with Doutzen first class – but with KLM dogs are only allowed in economy. “Not even economy comfort!” Keller grimaces. Then to Beertje: “Can you imagine how much I love you.”
She never had children. “I thought: at some point I will meet the man of my dreams and with him I’ll have a family. There were men enough, but not the one.”
Her success proved to be quite a turn off. Keller: “I once devised a test when I was out with a friend who didn’t believe me. If I told men who would come up to me that I had my own business they would turn around immediately. But when I told them I was a stewardess they would stick around. It was quite astonishing.”
What are the trends in the modeling world?
“A new face stops being new after five minutes. Here in the Kalverstraat (a famous high street in Amsterdam) there are at least ten other model scouts. By now top casting directors also come to Amsterdam to scout. If they find a girl in June and book her for the Prada-show in September they will call in September if there isn’t a newer face. The use-by-date of models is becoming shorter and shorter. Every year RTL Boulevard and the fashion magazines run articles about “the new Doutzen” or the girl that did a hundred and fifty shows during fashion month. But the season after that that girl is gone and you’ll never hear from her again. She’s no longer “hot”.
What about that obsession, that everything has to be new?
You can compare it to the lines in front of the Apple Stores when they release the new iPhone. People want a new bag, a new phone, a new face, every season. We try to be picky. Our girls do a maximum of fifteen shows per week. A model has to stay in demand. Overexposure is killing.
She opens a window, lights a cigarette, “There are exceptions. Saskia de Brauw got her big break at thirty and is now Karl Lagerfelds muse. That too is possible nowadays.”
She exhales the smoke and says: “Our creative director, Mo, was at fashion week in London the other day. He was genuinely shocked by the sizes of the models. I was hoping it was balancing out, but the trend is veering towards the razor thin yet again. Our girls have a hip size of 89 or 90, that is very skinny. But the models there had 85, 86 at most. And all of them as young as can be.”
“It often has nothing to do with anorexia” she adds quickly. “I used to be such a toothpick too. Models are simply skinnier than other people. But there’s healthy skinny and then there’s too skinny. At the Victoria’s Secret show the models are getting skinnier and skinnier too lately.
But you are contributing to that. Barely six months after giving birth Doutzen was walking down that catwalk herself, in tip top shape. And she was getting praise from all over the place because she did such a “great job” getting back in shape so quickly. “Trust me: Doutzen was almost upset she got back in shape like that. Three weeks after giving birth her stomach was almost flat again. Without having worked out even one minute. But yeah, that’s why she is a top model.”
Dutch Glamour devoted their December issue to Doutzen, as “Woman of the Year.” Dutch Vogue is currently running its Doutzen-special in honor of her 30th birthday. The accompanying stories read like a Nelson Mandela story instead of a pretty girl that can pose like the best. She laughs.
The editor in chief of Vogue NL had to blink away a few tears at a Late Night TV shows when the cover photo of Doutzen was shown. “Yes, that surprised us too. But at the same time it shows what Doutzen does to people. She touches you.”
The image you like to put forward of her is that of a down to earth Frisian woman, so normal despite her mega-success. “Yeah well, with everything that she has accomplished Doutzen could have been a mega b*tch. Snotty, someone who has an assistant for every tiny thing. Through Doutzen I met a lot of celebrities. Often they are b*tches. Doutzen is so pure, you can’t fake that. But hey: of course she doesn’t know what the real world is like. She is still that Frisian woman, but at the same time she’s living the life of a star. She is no longer flying business class, but first class. Beyoncé and Jay-Z greet her in the nicest way at parties. She is used to people doing everything for her. Last Christmas she went to buy a Christmas tree in the streets. The seller offered to bring the tree to her house. When she goes grocery shopping there is always someone taking her bags to her car. When I talk to her she says: “People here are SO nice!” but she doesn’t realize that that guy would never have brought the tree to my house. Because since she was sixteen this is the way it has been. At times is hilarious to see really, how people react to her. She says something and it is taken care of – but she is not playing a game.”
Forbes calculated that Doutzen is the second best earning top model in the world (after Gisele Bundchen) with an estimated income of 5,5 million euros in 2014. Posing for brands like L’Oreal, H&M, Samsung, Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein and Tiffany’s. When asked if that means that Keller – her agency gets 20% commission – also has quite some money, she answers with a stern look. “A typical Dutch question” she says. “I think it is important to have a nice life. I have nice apartments here on de Singel and in New York, a nice car and I was able to buy a house for my mother. But I am not obsessed with materialistic matters.”
Doutzen would like to land an American Vogue cover, by herself. Why didn’t she get one yet?
Because they mostly pick famous actresses for these covers. Stars that are known to nintety percent of their target group. But the other day they had Kim Kardashian on the cover, she became famous without any noteworthy talents. That did surprise me. Is a reality star like that a good example for the readers? Back in the day young people would look to older people to learn from them. Nowadays they only check how many likes and online friends they have. I read the comments on Doutzen’s instagram selfies. It seems like every girl wants to be a model nowadays. Or famous at least. Apparently it is possible to do so without any talent to speak of nowadays. Or with a sextape.”
A lot of agencies are scouting through social media nowadays. “We don’t do that. We get enough offers as it is. Social media have become a business to us however. We have a whole team helping Doutzen with her Facebook-, Instagram- and Twitter-accounts. And if a client asks if Doutzen can plug their brand on social media they are required to pay. Doutzen has millions of followers, that is worth something.”
The day before we conduct this interview news breaks of Doutzen taking off her wings as an Angel for lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret – one of the industries most wanted jobs. The fashion press immediately suggests that Victoria’s Secret is not paying its brand ambassadors enough, but Keller stays correct: “Victoria’s Secret demands that their models are always ready to go, it’s all very last-minute. That’s not a problem when you’re nineteen years old, but once you have a family life with two kids and you’re looking for some more consistency it is not that convenient.”
Then, with a mocking smile: “It was crazy yesterday. RTL Boulevard called, SBS Shownieuws, RTL Late Night, Grazia, de Telegraaf (all gossip-y news outlets/papers/magazines). But also the NOS News (like the BBC). There is Syria, ISIS, real problems, and they call us: why is Doutzen quitting as a Victoria’s Secret angel. That’s what I found shocking. We are becoming more and more American over here.”
Cv Sarah Keller
22 november 1967 Born in Colombia Missouri, grows up in Chicago and Toronto.
1984 Does not finish high school, but gets her diploma later through night schooling.
1984 First time she is scouted in New York.
1988 Works as a nanny, a trader at the Chicago stock exchange and at Lehman Brothers.
1991 Scouted again and this time leaves for Madrid.
1997 Ends her own career and starts her own agency Paparazzi Models.
2003 Discovers Doutzen Kroes.
2015 Paparazzi Models now has six people on their payroll for around 25 full time models. Ten other developing faces are finishing school first. Sarah Keller is single and is living in Amsterdam.
DutchHomme
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Thanks a lot Rosie!
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Loreal Paris Bulgaria
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Loreal Paris Bulgaria
renatebloemen
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Doutzen was in london yesterday.
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Today Sunnery said to Shownieuws: I think it is not at all certain that she will stop with Victoria's Secret and that they are still in talks
I think they barely speak to each other because it's confirmed already weeks ago + I hope it's not true because I am VS tired
I think they barely speak to each other because it's confirmed already weeks ago + I hope it's not true because I am VS tired
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rosiecheeks
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... Ok that is odd. Especially since Ed confirmed. I can't imagine they don't talk about these kinds of things. And agree. VS never made her look good imo. But then again, I don't think any of the big brands make anyone look good. L'Oreal, Samsung, Maybelline, H&M etc.
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Backstage at a VS show
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Because her agency is so lazy giving her almost no new jobs .. here some good old Versace runway photos
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Belstaff
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+ Malo
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+ Malo
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Fendi
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Fendi
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Givenchy
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I forgot this season from Belstaff
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