Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women

by Gross, Michael

  If they act like chosen people, it’s because they are. They’ve been chosen by the hand of fate to have chic bones. And they’ve been chosen by the agents in a never-ending process that leads from one young girl to the next and the next and the next….

  Take Elite’s John Casablancas. He is here, of course, a man in his element, beaming a satisfied, proprietary grin at his long table filled with long-legged women. His back is to the wall, so despite the presence of his mortal enemies, no one can stab him in the back here. Casablancas’s arm is draped around the shoulder of his adoring third wife, eighteen-year-old Aline Wermelinger, a Brazilian Baptist whom he met when she entered Elite’s Look of the Year model search contest. She isn’t his first model, not by a long shot. His second wife was a model, too. And by his own admission, he’s loved several others and bedded countless more. He is past fifty. But it shows only in his belly, which creeps out over his belt. It is doing that now as he leans back and puffs on his cigar and swigs some champagne and the kittenish Aline curls against him.

  A new song starts playing on Nepenthe’s dance floor. Hearing it, Casablancas starts lustily singing along. “We are the champions,” the song goes. “We are the champions … of the world!”

  CINDY CRAWFORD

  Cindy Crawford taps her foot and tsk-tsks impatiently. She’s clocked into photographer Patrick Demarchelier’s studio twenty minutes earlier—a mere six minutes late for a 9:00 A.M. modeling job. Crawford is prompt and expects as much from those she works with in fashion’s photo factories. But Demarchelier isn’t in sight. Nor are the day’s editors from British Vogue. Nor hair and makeup artists. Finally Demarchelier, a bearish fellow, drifts in, but after saying hello, he drops into a chair with the Times. A woman enters and gets on the phone. She’s an editor, looking for several stray bathing suits, which, she announces, will be the focus of the day’s shoot. Crawford is under the impression she’s been booked for a cover, and she isn’t pleased. Besides the loss of the prestigious cover, there’s the fact she has been booked under false pretenses. And bathing suit photos require … certain preparations.

  “Somebody should have told me,” Cindy mutters. “I didn’t shave.”

  Just then the rest of the crew, including Mary Greenwell (makeup) and Sam McKnight (hair) arrives. Crawford eyes her watch; it’s nine-forty.

  “What time were we supposed to be here?” Greenwell asks innocently.

  “Nine,” Crawford says. A pause. “I’m ready whenever you want to start.”

  At last the studio stirs. Demarchelier rises and begins hulking around, muttering in incomprehensible French-accented English. The phones—and the British editors—chirp. Crawford settles at a makeup table under a wall of blown-up old Vogue covers. They look down as Greenwell, barefoot, circles Cindy, smearing foundation on her face. Sarajane Hoare, Vogue’s fashion editor, approaches. “I’m so glad I got you,” she says with a sigh.

  Though she’s since been replaced in fickle fashion hearts by waifish models like Kate Moss, Beri Smithers, and Amber Valletta, Cindy Crawford (then twenty-three) was the model of the moment that fall day in 1989. She was the top du top des top models, according to French Vogue, one of the “divine,” according to Francesco Scavullo, who shot her sexy Cosmopolitan covers. She had the look, and the perks that came with it: her own show, House of Style, on MTV; appearances in lucrative Japanese soda pop commercials; sexy Playboy, GQ, and Sports Illustrated layouts; a best-selling swimsuit calendar and posters; proposals by mail from men in prison; and a Prince song, “Cindy C,” written just for her. She’d been dating Richard Gere for more than a year and would soon marry him, and Hollywood had already beckoned, although only with parts for bimbos and babes.

  Crawford was and is neither. And that summer she’d first proved it when she grabbed modeling’s brass ring and was named the latest in a languid line of Revlon models, a series of fabulous faces dating back to 1952’s Fire and Ice face, Dorian Leigh.

  These are pointedly different times, and Crawford is their girl. She may have lost the fashion flock’s ardor, but she’s won the admiration of the world. “There are lots of beautiful girls,” said Marco Glaviano, who photographed her swimsuit calendars. “But you need to have the brains to manage it. A lot of these girls don’t use them because they’ve been told models are supposed to be stupid. And it’s not a very stimulating business. They spend the day—poor girls—wearing lipstick and changing clothes. And look who they’re with. Photographers—and I include myself—aren’t noted for their intellectual attainment. And editors! Models spend their formative years with people who worry about skirt lengths. Even if they start smart, they can become stupid. Cindy’s not afraid of being smart. That’s a change.”

  Models and modeling have in fact undergone an extraordinary change since 1923, when an out-of-work actor named John Robert Powers opened the world’s first agency for pretty faces in New York. Back then models earned $5 an hour. Today a day’s work can ultimately reap a five- or six- figure harvest. For a mere twenty days of Crawford’s work, Revlon anted up nearly $600,000 in 1989. And she probably made more based on escalators in her original three-year contract (since renewed) that govern how and how often her image is used. Add to that all she’s done since—her contract renewals, her Pepsi commercials, her celebrity endorsements, her continued modeling, and her ever-rising profile—and you end up with a lucrative lifetime career.

  It’s a far cry from the first models, whose working lives usually ended by age thirty and left them with little except, if they were lucky, rich husbands and stable lives outside the limelight. They really were mannequins: nameless, affectless two-dimensional creatures in twin sets, pearls, and white kid gloves, whose only purpose was to draw the eye, most often in drawings made by commercial illustrators working for magazines or product manufacturers selling various goods to women. Nowadays models still sell, but they are the primary product. The “clothes hanger,” as one of the greatest models of all time, Lisa Fonssagrives, often called herself, has become more important, better known, and more sought after than any mere lipstick or designer dress. She is frequently not only better paid than the people who make those things but richer than those who buy them. More and more, the tail wags the dog. The fascination with models shows no sign of abating.

  Cindy Crawford photographed by Marco Glaviano

  Cindy Crawford by Marco Glaviano

  So as Crawford sat around Demarchelier’s studio that day, she wasn’t just a model but a supermodel. The term itself wasn’t new (it had first been used in the 1940s by Clyde Matthew Dessner, the owner of a small model agency), but the phenomenon was. Crawford’s predecessor Dorian Leigh had led a similar jet set life, living footloose and free among the international set, making headlines and scandals almost everywhere she went. But Crawford and Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Stephanie Seymour, and Paulina Porizkova have become something much greater than the sum of their body parts.

  They are the visual projection of the dreams of millions, the contemporary repositories of glamour, as powerful, sought after, and celebrated as the movie stars of Hollywood’s heyday. The supermodels of the nineties are icons, emblems of an industrial society that is ever more accomplished in the replication and use of selling imagery. Though they exist in an apparently superficial milieu, models are metaphors for matters of cultural consequence like commerce, sexuality, and aesthetics. Through the work of the image merchants who manipulate them in photographs and advertisements (and sometimes in their real lives), today’s models hawk not only clothes and cosmetics but a complex, ever-evolving psychology and social ambience, a potent commercial fiction that goes by the name lifestyle. Designers and photographers and fashion magazines create stories to sell products. Models are the stars of those stories. In the same way that young boys worship and want to be sports stars, today’s adolescent girls want to be like Cindy, Claudia, and Naomi and live the life the supermodels appear to in the pages of glossy magazines.
“Every girl wants to be Cindy,” says model scout Trudi Tapscott. “She’s not only beautiful, but smart, she went to college, she transcended the business, and she married a guy they think is the greatest. She’s a symbol of the empowerment of women.”

  Unfortunately for the many, only the few are genetic accidents of precisely the right kind. And even then good looks, a certain height, and a photogenic arrangement of features aren’t all it takes to succeed in this sometimes viciously competitive sphere. Indeed, it’s not so much her looks as her outlook and her drive to succeed that made Crawford the first supermodel and then an international celebrity. She’s the living proof that it takes more than a pretty face to scale modeling’s Mount Everest.

  “Cindy’s incredibly aggressive,” says her friend Mark Bozek, a fashion executive turned television producer. “She always wants to be challenged.” And she constantly challenges others to meet her standards. “If I’m giving a hundred percent, I expect everyone else to,” she says. So she second-guesses everyone from photographers to cabdrivers. And when, inevitably, they don’t live up to expectations, she gets downright irritated. But then, this child of a broken blue-collar home will say, “I always felt I had to take care of everything myself.” It’s all made Crawford a candidate for an ulcer. “I internalize a lot,” she said that day. “I didn’t have an operation, but I take Xantac.” Sitting at Crawford’s side, fashion editor Hoare defends her perfectionism. “All the photographers love Cindy,” Hoare says. “She’s not tricky, no bad vibes, no headaches. She’s so professional, so thoroughly reliable, so kind. And here bang on time.”

  “But some people don’t appreciate my bossiness,” Cindy says.

  “You’re not bossy,” Hoare replies, dropping her voice in conspiracy. “Most models, when they get to Cindy’s stage, become prima donnas. They treat you like shit.”

  McKnight looks up from a magazine. “Who’s this?” he demands.

  “Girls in their prime,” says Hoare.

  “Really?” Cindy asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m gonna start,” Cindy says.

  Cindy Crawford is unlike the demure white-bread blondes who dominated modeling for about thirty years before she came along. “I wouldn’t have been a model ten years ago,” says the olive-skinned brown-eyed brunette with the distinctive beauty mark near her mouth. “I would have been a freak.”

  That’s not the only rule of modeling Crawford has turned on its head. Once, models would rarely pose seminude and then only if their faces were hidden. Crawford turned down star photographer Bruce Weber’s request that she pose nude for designer Calvin Klein’s hosiery and perfumes precisely because her face wouldn’t be seen. When she did pose nude for a new ad campaign for Revlon’s Halston perfume, the headline read CINDY IN HER HALSTON. Her careful insouciance about showing off her form has always been a part of her model’s marketing arsenal. A young man arrived at Demarchelier’s studio to give her a copy of Max, an Italian magazine with her photo—bare-breasted—on the cover. “I can’t believe they put a nipple on the cover,” she says, delighted. Later the subject of her many nudes comes up again. “It’s my choice,” she says. “I’m not going to let other people’s stereotypes and problems influence me. On a practical level, sometimes it’s harder to say no. And when I’m fifty, I’ll be so happy I did those pictures. I’ll go, ‘Remember when?’”

  Crawford always looks out for number one in a game where she knows “no one else will.” In the past such an attitude would have put a model on a collision course with her agents, but no more. “Aside from the fact that she’s extremely beautiful, she is professional to a fault,” said Monique Pillard, director of Elite Models, who was then Crawford’s manager and coconspirator in the plot to make her famous. “It’s a pleasure to deal with her in my business. You know what I mean?” Pillard cocks her head. She means that despite the changes heralded by Crawford’s success, her business remains full of the self-absorbed, the self-abusive, and the self-deluding. “Modeling has changed a bit,” Pillard continues. “The economy in fashion is not that great. People are watching their budgets. They can’t take a chance on someone not performing—on not getting the picture. With Cindy, there’s no chance. I can put my hand in the fire.”

  One model with Crawford’s earning power can make a modeling agency. And an agency can make a lot of money. In recent years modeling has become an international business. Crawford’s agency, Elite, is the world’s largest, with branches all over the world, some in partnership with strong local agents, an association with the franchised John Casablancas Center modeling schools, a scouting network, and the annual Look of the Year model search, which serves as both a promotional vehicle and a recruitment system. Elite is said to have annual gross sales of about $70 million. Other major agencies include Ford Models, arguably the best known and most respected in the world, with branches in Paris, Miami, and Brazil; IMG, which is associated with sports agent Mark McCormack’s International Management Group; Metropolitan, which books the world’s highest-earning model of the moment, Claudia Schiffer, who reportedly grosses about $12 million a year; and Wilhelmina, which is owned by Dieter Esch, who served eight years in a German prison for negligence and fraud.

  These stars of modeling—both bright and tarnished—do not quite outshine the countless smaller agencies in cities around the world. Some, like Next in New York and Miami, Karins in Paris, and Fashion Model in Milan, are joined together in informal networks. Others, like Company in New York, Riccardo Gay in Milan, and Marilyn Gaulthier in Paris, are strong and individualistic enough to stand on their own. In the international marketplace they play the field, entering and leaving informal associations with one another and the giant mega agencies, trading models like playing cards as they globe-hop from fashion centers to shooting locations as far-flung as Bali and the Seychelles Islands. “The world really is smaller,” says Kim Dawson, an ex-model who runs an agency in Dallas, Texas. “The ridges aren’t as high anymore. You can be a model in one place, but you have to be in transit all the time to get into the real big game.”

  It is a game played on shifting sands, however. All an agency owner really owns, says Jeremy Foster-Fell, “is the right to pay rent.” Even though they’ve sometimes tried to tie their assets down with contracts, agency owners—especially small ones like Foster-Fell, who says he’s “been gradually going out of the modeling business for twenty-five years”—have only the most tentative hold on their models and bookers, the key employees who field phone calls, negotiate jobs, and pass appointments on to their models. A model’s primary relationship is with her booker, who is at least a temporary employment agent and at best a cross between banker, best friend, and priest. Bookers leave. Models follow. With a lethal combination of insecurity and narcissism instilled by their business, they are incredibly susceptible to the question, Why aren’t you on the cover of Vogue this month? If you’ve got a big-name agency, though, it doesn’t matter. Even if established models—an agency’s prime assets—depart, new ones are knocking the door down, begging for the chance to be the next Cindy Crawford.

  Agencies (as they are known, although legally they are management companies) earn money in several ways. Often they have to spend it first. Take a hypothetical model named Chandra, who is discovered in Omaha, Nebraska. After her parents are convinced to let her model (a process that lately sometimes includes the payment of a cash “bounty”), she is given a round-trip airplane ticket, flown into New York, and put up in a “model apartment” with a chaperone and other girls who typically sleep in bunk beds, several to a room. In her first weeks she is groomed and remade with new clothes, makeup, and a chic haircut and sent out on “go-sees” with photographers and clients. If she is bound to succeed, she may be sent to top studios, but more often she sees only those at the bottom of the fashion food chain—assistant or neophyte photographers seeking to break into the business. If Chandra is lucky, one of those photographers will shoot “test pictures” with her and g
ive her prints for free, which she’ll put in her portfolio, typically a vinyl or leather binder stamped with her agency’s name.

  When Chandra has enough pictures in her book, sequenced in an alluring way, she will finally be sent out to the fashion magazines. Her goal is to appear in the influential trend-setting pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Glamour, or Mademoiselle. They pay badly—as little as $100 per day—but are considered on the cutting edge of creativity. Appearing in their pages functions as a sort of endorsement and leads to more lucrative commercial work. If Chandra is unexceptional, she will end up in unfashionable magazines and catalogs but nonetheless gross about $250,000 a year. The better the face, the better the paycheck. The biggest come from national marketers—the agency’s most valued clients after the star-making magazines—like Calvin Klein and Revlon. They’ll pay in the millions for exclusive rights to a model. That’s what Chandra wants.

  The agency cashes in on both sides. If Chandra gets a $1,000 one-day job, $1,200 actually changes hands. Clients pay a 20 percent service fee. The agency also collects a commission from the model. Typically that is another 20 percent, although the model’s commission can be negotiable. Stars are sometimes lured to new agencies that take no commissions from them. New models are now being asked to pay 25 percent until their careers are established. Sometimes a portion of the model’s commission is paid out to what is known as the mother agent—the company that groomed or discovered the model. A mother agency can claim a piece of the action for several years. But with her agency raking in $100,000 on Chandra’s $250,000 in bookings, that’s a price well worth paying.