Modeling in the #TimesUp Era

In January, ahead of the first New York Fashion Week after the #TimesUp social revolution began, the Council of Fashion Designers of America sent out its regular preshow missive.

For the first time, it encouraged fashion houses to, among other things, create private changing areas, the better to guard against models being effectively naked in front of the many makeup artists, hairstylists, photographers, journalists and other random people who work behind the scenes of a show, where the making-of aspect has become as public as the event itself.

Most designers tried to comply. Nevertheless, at one show, as at many other shows over the following month in the other fashion cities, the private changing area was more of an ideal than a reality. “There was a male photographer there taking pictures while girls were getting undressed!” said Edie Campbell, a model.

In February, a model from Minneapolis who met with a photographer to work on her portfolio reported him to the police after, she said, he forcibly touched her near her breasts and genitals. Four other models’ accounts were also described, on Facebook, involving coerced nude photo shoots and suggestive personal commentary with the same man.

And in late May, a model from Nashville, Tennessee, who had come to New York to attend a casting was invited to a nightclub by the director of her agency, where, she said, he bought her shots and then groped her.

On Thursday, as New York Fashion Week begins, all eyes will once again be on the industry to see how much has changed since multiple scandals involving sexual assault and harassment ensnared some of fashion’s top photographers and prompted a patchwork of measures to prevent further mistreatment.

Interviews with dozens of models, agents and others in the fashion supply chain show that at the very visible top of the fashion pyramid, where brands are global and reputational risk is high, attitudes have shifted (at least when it comes to female models). But the change has not necessarily trickled down into the industry at large.

Condé Nast, LVMH and Kering, three industry leaders that have publicly established their own codes of conduct regarding the treatment of models and have implemented hotlines to report violations, said there had been no calls to those hotlines.

Yet the Model Alliance, a research and policy organization focused on modeling rights, received more than 100 calls between October 2017 and July 2018 reporting sexual harassment and assault, according to the group — an increase of 40 times over the year before.

“It’s been the lawless Wild West, and now we are rebuilding,” said Karen Elson, a longtime model and Model Alliance board member who spoke to The New York Times last year about her experience of harassment early in her career. “Is it changing for the right reasons? Or out of fear? I’m not sure. But even I — and I’m in a privileged position — am still scared to name names.”

She noted that it was a far cry from an experience of a year ago, when a photographer had persuaded her to be totally nude for a series of images in bed and used the opportunity to massage her against her will.

Jess Cole, a 24-year-old model from England, characterizes the changes as: “We’re not just clothes hangers anymore. You are a person.”

And there have also been logistical changes, including, at LVMH and Kering, contractually preapproved nudity, limiting hours and making sure no model is left alone with a photographer.

Condé Nast and Condé Nast International have committed to not using models under the age of 18. As a rule, guardians accompany models who are between 16 and 18 on set, and agencies such as IMG Models and DNA are dedicated to enforcing this.

The British Fashion Council helped create the British Fashion Model Agents Association, which meets four times a year and acts as a bridge between agencies, models and brands to “identify areas for positive change,” according to the chief executive, Caroline Rush, and to assess and identify bad actors.

But the lack of consistent global standards, and the debate about the best way forward, has created a sense of ambiguity that has left models in real doubt about the depth of the commitment.

While Kering and LVMH approached other companies in Europe and the United States to join their model charter, for example, none signed on. (Lagardère, the publishing house, recently agreed.)

At the same time, other big brands, including Phillips-Van Heusen, the group that owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and Oscar de la Renta are working on their own versions of the charter. And Ralph Lauren has extended its employee protections to cover contract employees, which includes models.

But not one of these companies has publicized the changes, and the differences between them (and why there are differences) are unclear.

As a result, there remains no consistent bar for professional conduct or agreement as to who adjudicates it. At Condé Nast, for example, a violation of the code was recently reported not via the hotline but directly to Helena Suric, the co-director of the talent group and the bookings director at Vogue.

“I thought it was a great sign because it showed someone felt confident enough about the code to contact us directly,” Suric said. She said that the violation was investigated and that a decision was made that Condé Nast would not work with the bad actor again. The company declined to specify the person or the violation or elaborate on the decision.

When stylist Karl Templer was accused in The Boston Globe of intrusive physical approaches with models (accusations he vehemently denied), Dior stopped using him to style its women’s runway shows, issuing a statement saying that it had never seen Templer acting inappropriately but that given the current situation, and Dior’s commitment to women, it had decided to suspend its relationship with the stylist.

But the brand continued to use Templer for ad campaigns, most recently the fall 2018 womenswear, although it declined to elaborate on the decision-making process beyond the earlier statement. Coach no longer works with Templer on its shows, but Alexander Wang used Templer to style its June precollection runway; neither brand responded to requests for comment.

That diversity of approach and lack of clarity are two of the reasons that all of the models spoken to for this article said they would be unlikely to complain to a brand about a code-of-conduct violation but would be more likely to go to their agent or to a fellow model. When asked if she had told the executives at Sies Marjan, the brand involved, about the male photographer in its private changing room, Campbell said she had not because she was concerned about getting a reputation as a “troublemaker.”

(A spokeswoman for the company said that “the safety and protection of everyone who works with Sies Marjan is of the utmost importance to us” and that the brand would be increasing security at its coming New York Fashion Week show.)

Many brought up the fact that Teddy Quinlivan, who recently appeared in a Louis Vuitton campaign and who spoke up about being transgender last fall, was dropped by her New York agency shortly after she posted a statement on Instagram about being aggressively and intrusively touched on a shoot, and complained to her agents about the perpetrator.

The post was in April, and she was dropped in June — an almost unheard-of act for someone included in the list of “Top 50” models in the world on models.com. Quinlivan said she could not know for sure why she was dropped (and the agency, Women Management, did not respond to requests for further comment on the subject), but she noted: “When I talked about being trans, they were very supportive. They were much more hesitant when I talked about assault.”

When she first raised the issue, “they shrugged off my concerns and told me that this type of behavior was typical of this individual,” she said. Later, when Quinlivan continued to be upset, “My bookers responded to my claims with compassion, but they offered no solutions other than suggest that I not work for the many brands my assailant also worked for.”

Sergio Leccese, the chief financial officer of Women, said that Quinlivan first mentioned the assault to her agent two months after it had taken place and that “management expressed sympathy immediately and recommended two options: to report to the police immediately and/or to stop working with the party in question on projects going forward.”

Whether the models who assumed a connection between Quinlivan’s complaints and being dropped by her agency are correct, the fact they made it is indicative of the continuing anxiety around what is and is not acceptable in fashion. And that climate allows for additional transgressions. Morgan Allen, a 20-year-old from Minneapolis, was contacted last November by a photographer named Haythem Lafhaj via Instagram, a relatively common way for new models, especially those outside fashion centers like New York, to network with image makers.

Allen met with him a few times to work on photographs for her portfolio without incident, but at a shoot in February, she said, she found herself alone with him. In the middle of the shoot, she said, “he started to grab me and pushed me back on a table and continued to touch me around my vaginal area.”

Shaken, Allen left. Later she connected with Casey Pearson, a makeup artist who had previously posted on Facebook about Lafhaj; Pearson said she had also been sent descriptions of negative experiences other models had had with the photographer, which she also posted. (There were additional models who left comments under the post attesting that they had never had a problem with Lafhaj.)

Pearson persuaded Allen to report her own assault to the police, and when Allen said she was scared, Pearson went with her to file a complaint.

Lafhaj said in a statement via email, “with respect to the allegations of Ms. Allen, I was never aware of any police report or allegations of inappropriate sexual touching or activity. The police never contacted me. I have never been charged with any crime, and most importantly, the allegations are untrue.” He also said he was not in Minneapolis at the time of the alleged incident.

Sarah Gant, a 19-year-old model from Nashville who came up to New York to attend a casting for the Alexander Wang show in June, had been in the city only a week or so when Kevin Fitzpatrick, the executive director of Silent, her New York agency, invited her to a get-together where she could meet other models and photographers.

That later turned into a trip to a nightclub with him and another model who had arrived in the city from Europe the day before (and whose visa was tied to the agency).

At the nightclub, Fitzpatrick “immediately started pushing shots on us,” Gant said. He began to touch them in ways that both women felt crossed a line. Gant said he was “grabbing my ass” and calling her “baby.”

Gant reported him to her original agent, who told her not to return to Silent and arranged for her to move to a different agency. The other model, who confirmed Gant’s story but asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisals, likewise left the agency and then had to leave the country because she lost her visa, which was sponsored by Silent, in the process.

In a statement, Fitzpatrick said, “to be clear, there was zero physical contact between me and Sarah Gant. I did not touch Sarah at all, nor did I make any attempt to do so. I did not call her ‘baby,’ speak to her in an inappropriate manner.”

He added that he blamed the incident on Gant’s being “unhappy” at Silent, and “as a result needed an excuse to break her contract and manufactured these baseless lies.” Fitzpatrick described it as “sad that a model would stoop to character assassination and weaponize the MeToo movement just to get ahead in this industry.”

There is a general acknowledgment that more work needs to be done. “Not everything is perfect, but it’s going in the right direction,” said Antoine Arnault, head of group image and communications at LVMH and the driving force behind the model charter there.

Arnault noted that the lack of calls to the hotline made the group wonder if models were reluctant to come forward, and so they have now added a psychologist backstage at every show to provide alternative recourse.

Meisha Brooks, a model who experienced multiple financial problems with an agency, including unreliable payments that were not clearly linked to any job and lack of accounting transparency for what she did receive, believes that the financial relationship between models and agencies needs to be addressed in the various codes. Fear about their paychecks means models will do almost anything to secure their career, she said, which fosters an environment where sexual abuse can flourish.

Condé Nast is on a campaign to get other stakeholders to sign on to what Anna Wintour, the company’s artistic director, calls its “18+ initiative” (the pledge not to use models under 18) and has issued a call to arms in the September issue of Vogue.

“It’s our flag, our stake in the ground,” Wintour said, noting that by 18 most models have stopped growing (and hence are more normal size) and are more emotionally mature. The CFDA has joined with Condé Nast in urging brands to follow suit for fashion week and not use models under 18 on the runway.

Not everyone is so convinced, however. Elite World Group and DNA, both prominent agencies, have pledged cooperation, although DNA has made an exception for those under 18 who have already walked for one season. But while IMG, another influential agency, is considering it, the company is not yet committed. It believes that those years are important to the development of a model’s career if handled properly, according to Ivan Bart, the president of IMG Models and IMG Fashion, which is the administrator of the official show spaces of New York Fashion Week, where the company has ensured private dressing areas.

Arnault of LVMH agreed and said he felt strongly that the charter contained meaningful protections for models between 16 and 18 and that to deprive them of those years in what are generally very short careers was to put them at a disadvantage.

Besides, he said, it did not prevent models from working with companies that had not signed the charter and might treat them less responsibly.

This lack of alignment is why Elson believes such measures leave too much to individual discretion. “This is a first step,” she said. “The next step needs to be taking it from piecemeal to an industrywide mission.”

This is the goal of the two most ambitious solutions being developed. One, which originated in Britain with Elizabeth Peyton-Jones, a master herbalist and naturopath, is entitled Responsible Trust for Models.

It involves a short educational curriculum for models and puts the onus for protecting models on their agencies. It would use the British Standards Institute (which is recognized in 120 countries) to administer and audit a certification system, currently being constructed, for agencies.

The other is the Respect program from the Model Alliance, a set of comprehensive industry standards developed by models to govern behavior, rights, payment and recourse, as well as a detailed list of consequences and processes. It is inspired by worker-driven nongovernmental industry agreements like the Fair Food program and the Bangladesh Accord, both of which were created to address crises and regulate policy in industries populated largely by contract or seasonal workers who are unable to unionize. (This is also true for modeling, since federal law prohibits unions for independent contractors.) Respect was introduced in May with the support of more than 100 models.

Both are slowly gaining traction, though neither can claim official industry support. “No one wants to be the first one to jump,” said Sara Ziff, the founder of the Model Alliance and a model herself.

But then, fashion has never been good about centralization. “I’ve had people say it’s going to rob the industry of creativity,” Elson said.

Legal differences among countries are often cited as a potential impediment to creating a global standard. Ziff doesn’t accept that. “We don’t have to wait for governments to get involved,” she said. “We can create a better world through contract law.”

Until then, the industry may remain in this risky, fuzzy zone — one perfectly, if unintentionally, captured by a new eight-episode documentary series from E! that will have its premiere just in time for fashion week. (Review copies of the first four episodes were made available to journalists.)

Titled “Model Squad,” it features nine models at varying levels of success in New York. They try out for the Victoria’s Secret show and the Sports Illustrated swimwear special issue; they attend go-sees, walk during fashion week and party in the Hamptons.

It’s replete with Ubers and Champagne, high heels and bikinis, discussions of racism and body issues and endless judgments. It’s reality TV, after all.

But there is a moment in Episode 4 that stands out. A model named Ashley Moore, in New York for the first time, goes on a test shoot with Yu Tsai, a photographer who is identified in an earlier episode as holding the keys to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

First he jokes about Googling her and says, “Am I going to see pictures of you with hot guys, naked?”

Later, after a few shots of her in a jacket, he tells her it’s time to do lingerie.

“Are you comfortable being naked?” Yu Tsai says.

“I think so,” Moore says.

“'Think so’?” the photographer asks, looking skeptical. Moore seems uneasy, as if she just realized she picked the wrong answer on a test. She quickly amends her response.

“Yes,” she says. At no time on the shoot are they alone. But after everything that has gone on, the fact that this scene is in the show is telling.