ELITE MODEL MANAGEMENT
The Elite Modeling Agency is without a doubt the sleaziest and slimiest agency in the world. Don’t be fooled because they have a big name. Read the following 2 stories and if you’re a mother or father and let your daughter even THINK about modeling with them after reading this, you should have your head examined.
The owner married a 17 year old model when he was 50, and lived with Stephanie Seymour when she modeled and was only 14. Now they’re involved in a major coke bust and have been exposed by the BBC as racists (used the n’ word referring to blacks on an undercover tape) and talked about having sex with underage models at their model contests.
They are filth. They are pornographers. They just do it under the cover of being a legit agency.
One mother's mission to protect her catwalk girl
Burhan Wazir
Sunday November 28, 1999
The Observer
Viv Brown worries about her daughter. Hollie, a 14-year-old five foot eight blond is signed to Select, a leading model agency in London. She has been modelling for around a year - already, she has appeared in several magazines, including Italian Vogue. Her mother accompanies her to fashion shoots, and oversees Select's suggestions for Hollie's career.
`There is the worry that men might try and take advantage of my daughter,' says Brown, of Ravensworth in Gateshead. `I've never come across it, but that doesn't mean it never happens. But perhaps that's why I always make sure that I'm there. And we've made sure that none of the girls at Hollie's school know she is modelling: they might get a little jealous and try to bully her.' Brown says her daughter has yet to express any intention to make a career of modelling. `But if she did decide to do it, I would make sure it was the right decision. Young girls can get really carried away - Hollie knows that not everyone can become a supermodel.'
The fashion industry neatly escapes all notions of morality. In the past decade alone, the industry has glorified heroin chic, anorexia, racial stereotypes and increasingly younger models. But over the next few weeks, photographers, model bookers and agency bosses will be forced to re-evaluate the way the industry acquits itself.
Two senior executives at Elite - one of the industry's leading agencies - last week resigned in the wake of a British television documentary showing one soliciting sex with young women, and the other making racist comments. Elite, which boasts clients such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, revealed that its Europe Chairman Gerald Marie and Xavier Moreau, head of Elite Model Look, had voluntarily stepped down from their positions.
Both Marie and Moreau were among four Elite staff investigated by the documentary. Filmed in secret, Marie - ex-husband of supermodel Linda Evangelista - was seen saying to an undercover woman journalist: `I'll give you one million lire (£300) if you go to bed with me.' Moreau, a close confidante of Naomi Campbell, was shown remarking to friends over dinner: `Africa would be okay if they were all white.' He later adds: `I don't like black girls.'
Elite is widely regarded as the blueprint for modern modelling - it ushered in a wave of corporate thinking previously unseen in the industry. Since it opened in 1971, the agency has discovered and managed several generations of supermodels. `Elite invented the whole modern modelling business,' says Roger Tredre, Editor-In-Chief of Worth Global Style Network, the fashion industry's online bible. `They brought in professional people who turned modelling into the corporate and professionally run business it is today.'
But Elite has long attracted accusations of seedy impropriety on the part of its male management. Its chairman John Casablancas serves as a fitting metaphor for the fashion industry's fickle moral standards. At over 6ft 2 inches, he cuts an imposing figure - almost professorial in his treatment of his models. In 1994, then aged 50, he married for the third time. His bride was a 17-year-old Bible-reading Brazilian high school junior called Aline Wermelinger - they met when she was competing in the regional heat of Elite's `Look of the Year' contest in Rio De Janeiro. Casablancas, who was one of the contest's judges, voted Wermelinger the winner.
Interviewed the same year, Casablancas explained his rationale for marrying such a young model: `Look, I was 24 and the models were 18,' he said, almost without irony. `I was 35 and the models were 18. I was 45 and the models were 18. And now I'm 50 and the models are still 18. It's not that I try to date the models that I work with. It's that everybody socialises with the people with whom they work all the time and so the possibility that that would happen was enormous.'
'John Casablancas, founder of leading model agency Elite and the father of Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas, has been named in a sex abuse lawsuit by an aspiring model who claims he made her pregnant at the age of 15, and then arranged an abortion -- all more than 15 years ago.
John Casablancas, 60, whose Elite agency has represented supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, is accused of sexual abuse of a minor. The plaintiff, whose name was not made public, is seeking substantial damages. Lawyers for Casablancas said the allegations were fabricated and were confident the case would be dismissed.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that Casablancas began sexually abusing the girl in 1988 when she was a finalist in Elite's prestigious 'Look of the Year' competition for fresh new faces. The former model said she traveled with Casablancas to New York later that year when it was discovered she was pregnant by him. She alleges she was driven to a doctor's office and an abortion was arranged for her at the behest of Casablancas. '
http://www.efanguide.com/~thestrokes/news/
Sorry it took me some time - this is a picture of John Casablancas, founder of model agency Elite, 'judging' a candidate in the 'Look of the Year' contest. Casablancas is the one with glasses.
He is now accused in Los Angeles of sexual abuse of a minor. The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, alleges that Casablancas began sexually abusing the girl in 1988 when she was a finalist in Elite's prestigious 'Look of the Year' competition for fresh new faces.
The former model said she traveled with Casablancas to New York later that year when it was discovered she was pregnant by him. She alleges she was driven to a doctor's office and an abortion was arranged for her at the behest of Casablancas.
Casablancas set up the Elite agency in New York in 1970 and made it into one of the world's leading model agencies, guiding the careers of Linda Evangelista, Andie MacDowell and Kelly Emberg and rivaling the long-established Ford Models Inc.
The name of the plaintiff in the Los Angeles lawsuit is being withheld but her lawyer said she was now in her 30s, married with two children, and living in San Diego.
'What happened to me should never happen to any little girl. I hope that by coming forward I can protect other minor boys and girls working for Elite or any other agency,' the plaintiff said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Casablancas denies the charges. He left Elite in 2000 and now runs the John Casablancas Modeling and Career Center in New York.
Elite was at the center of another sex storm in 1999 when a British television documentary caught the chairman of Elite Europe soliciting sex from an undercover journalist who was posing as an aspiring model. Two senior Elite executives were forced to resign.
Casablancas was accused in Michael Gross' best-seller 'Models' to have taken advantage of several minors, including supermodel Stefanie Seymour.
He is regularly accused of milking would-be models, asking for 'registration fees', 'book expenses' etc. More about that here .
A federal judge has ruled that a proposed class action lawsuit against several major New York modeling agencies can go forward because their actions may have violated federal law.
The order, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, dismissed the models' state law claims but allowed their federal claims to proceed.
'As a result of defendants' alleged unlawful agreement to fix prices on commission and charges to models, plaintiffs have been damaged and continue to be damaged by having to pay inflated prices in a non-competitive setting,' Judge Harold Baer, Jr. wrote. (Click here to read the order.)
The class action suit was filed by models working for New York modeling agencies including Wilhemina Model Agency, Ford Models, and Elite Model Management. The models alleged that the agencies conspired to set fees charged to models, charged fees in excess of those allowed by New York state law, and did not look out for the plaintiffs' welfare. The modeling agencies allegedly fixed the prices at monthly meetings of the International Model Management Association.
Baer found that despite the defendants' protestations that the plaintiffs' 'bare-bones' complaint lacked detail, the allegations meet minimum standard for antitrust claim. 'Taking the allegation of uniform pricing, participation in a trade association to facilitate the price fixing, and other uniform features of the contract…I am persuaded that plaintiffs have met their burden, at least for now,' Baer wrote.
