ON FEBRUARY 17th London’s spring fashion week begins. Across the capital, young women in vertiginous shoes and skimpy dresses will be teetering along catwalks. And thousands of young doughnut-dodgers will be inspired to queue outside agents’ offices for the slim chance of becoming the next Kate Moss.
Careers in modelling are typically short-lived, badly paid and less glamorous than pretty young dreamers imagine. Yet the business is changing. For one thing, educated models are in. This may sound improbable. In the film “Zoolander”, male models are portrayed as so dumb that they play-fight with petrol and then start smoking. But such stereotypes are so last year.
Lily Cole, a redheaded model favoured by Chanel and Hermès, recently left Cambridge University with a first-class degree in history of art. Edie Campbell, a new British star, is studying for the same degree at the Courtauld Institute in London. And Jacquetta Wheeler, one of Britain’s established catwalkers, has taken time out from promoting Burberry and Vivienne Westwood to work for Reprieve, a charity which campaigns for prisoners’ rights.
Natalie Hand of London’s Viva model agency, who represents Ms Campbell, says there has been a shift away from the “very young, impressionable models”, who were popular in the past ten years, to “more aspirational young women”. “There is an appetite now for models to be intelligent, well-mannered and educated,” says Catherine Ostler, a former editor of Tatler, a fashion and society magazine.
This is new. The best-known models of yesteryear often led rags-to-riches lives, courtesy of the rag trade. Twiggy, a star of the 1960s, was a factory worker’s daughter. Ms Moss’s mother was a barmaid.
But the big fashion houses and leading photographers are tiring of the drama that comes with plucking girls as young as 15 from obscurity and propelling them to sudden stardom. Too often, models were showing up to photo-shoots hours late or drug-addled. This wasted a huge amount of time and money. Fashion houses are now keen to avoid trouble. Many find that educated models show up to work on time and don’t go doolally as often.
Trends in the modelling business also follow those in the global economy. From the 1960s to the 1990s, America reigned supreme. The hottest “supermodels” were Americans such as Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington. They were figures whose glossy confidence mirrored America’s. They never woke up for less than $10,000. They were cultural icons, too, celebrated in songs such as Billy Joel’s “Uptown girl”, the video of which starred Christie Brinkley, who became his wife.
As in so many fields, the rewards for a handful of stars have shot up. Contracts are wrapped in secrecy, but sources say that a one-off deal for a shoot with a top model can begin at $75,000, rising to $1.5m for a global advertising campaign. For advertisers, the right face is lucrative. Procter & Gamble’s campaign featuring Gisele Bündchen is said to have raised sales of its Pantene shampoo in Brazil by 40%.
The stars pull in more from sidelines such as franchising goods in their own name (Elle Macpherson’s underwear, Kate Moss’s lipstick). Heidi Klum, a German model, serves as a judge on “Project Runway”, a televised fashion-talent contest.
Pay for lesser models has fallen sharply, however. This is partly because the labour pool has globalised and therefore grown much bigger. International agencies now scout for talent in emerging economies. In the 1990s they hired hordes of high-cheeked Slav teenagers. Now the hottest hunting-ground is Brazil, which produces Amazonian height and athletic looks.
Ashley Mears, an American sociologist and author of “Pricing Beauty”, a study of the economics of modelling, says that although the industry has grown in the past decade, individual contracts have shrunk. Too many faces are chasing too few lenses.
Television fees have fallen, not least because technologies like TiVo allow audiences to skip commercials. One British model told your correspondent that rates for the major fashion shows have roughly halved in recent years, and that many careers are now over in two seasons (a calendar year) rather than around six. The Model Alliance, an outfit that agitates for higher wages, estimates that the average regularly-employed model makes $27,000 a year. Part-timers and men make less.
The juiciest prize is to become the face of a luxury brand such as Dior or Burberry. To have any chance, a model must first have magazine shoots under her designer belt. This fact allows fashion magazines to pay peanuts, even for a cover-shoot.
There remains an iron divide between “editorial” models, who appeal to the expensive designers, and “catalogue” models, who are often slightly larger and more conventionally pretty. The catalogue models pose in normal clothes, which is less glamorous. But they earn a steadier income, and are less likely to be dropped by the time they reach their late 20s.
Agents take around 20% of a model’s fee, plus another 20% from the client. Despite these high levies, agencies struggle. Since the financial crash, clients have been scrimping. And agencies must find models whose faces somehow capture the Zeitgeist, as defined by the big brands and their capricious artistic directors.
Large agencies are competing with a crowd of smaller upstarts, such as Viva London and DNA in New York. The giant Elite Model Management agency lost an American antitrust case on price-fixing in 2004 and drowned in a sea of recriminations. It has since been refounded under new ownership, though its Dutch branch faces a fresh lawsuit, brought by the winner of a contest who claims the agency sacked her for putting on weight.
The sheer randomness of fashion makes it a tough business. Change is more predictable in other industries. IT firms, for example, can safely assume that computers will keep getting faster. But foreseeing next year’s hot look is impossible. No one could have anticipated Kate Moss’s early “grunge” look, which set a fashion for tangled long hair, boyish hips and pale complexions. Now the fashion is for models who look a little healthier, such as Doutzen Kroes, a former speedskater.
The exquisitely sensitive Karl Lagerfeld
Despite angry campaigns against the cult of “Size 0”, skinny models are still in demand. This is partly because designers think clothes look better when there is no distracting flesh beneath them. Ms Mears adds that the industry keeps models thin to “signify elite luxury distinctiveness”. Rough translation: if normal women have curves, then the elite want something different. This infuriates those who blame fashion for fostering eating disorders among the young. But the attitude shows little sign of shifting. Karl Lagerfeld, a designer, made headlines this week by describing Adele, a pop singer, as “fat”.
Power in the fashion business depends on fame. “Super-brands” such as Gucci and Burberry don’t hesitate to throw their weight around. Gucci flustered London’s fashion week last autumn by ordering a clutch of the “mega-girls” to leave London early and fly to Milan for a more commercially important show.
Marc Jacobs, a prominent New York designer, caused a further shortage of models for British shows by detaining some prospective bookings in New York. Agents complained, but Mr Jacobs is bigger than any of them. “Where’s the camaraderie?” asked Carole White of Premier Model Management, a London agency. On the catwalk, you walk alone.
