Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women (3 page)

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 give 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.

Top model agents like the Fords or John Casablancas live very well on what they take out of their businesses. To support their glitzy images, they fly the Concorde to Europe, stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris or the Four Seasons in Milan, wear Rolex watches, and own multiple houses. Agencies have few expenses: rent, staff, and champagne. Models pay for everything else, from composites to messengers to “model” apartments. They often even pay to appear in an agency’s promotional “head” book.

But back to Chandra’s job. The $1,000 is just for one kind of use in one geographical market for a specified period of time. Use Chandra’s picture longer, use it on a tag as well as a bag, use it in Europe as well as in America,
or buy it out for all uses for all time all over the world, and a one-day job has become an annuity.

Still, that’s not enough to explain why men like Esch, Cornfeld, Bob Zagury (a playboy backer of Elite), Thierry Roussel (the pharmaceutical heir and ex-husband of Christina Onassis), Carlo Cabassi (the younger brother of one of Italy’s most important real estate developers), and sundry lesser-known Wall Street types, Middle Eastern businessmen, and others get into the relatively small-time modeling game.

The obvious reason is money. “The modeling world is driven by a powerful fundamental force,” says Foster-Fell. “But it’s rather hard to escape sex as a motive, a power to influence. Men are fascinated and envious of men who have power over women. Would he spend the same amount for a diaper company? I doubt it. Most men looking to get into this business have an ROI complex, and I’m not talking about Return on Investment.
Roi
is French for ‘king.’”

It is ten-twenty, and Cindy Crawford has been transformed into what Sarajane Hoare calls a Cindy doll. Blemishes are banished. Eyelids are a dusky gray. For the finishing touch, Greenwell picks up a pot of bloodred Chanel lip gloss. She is supposed to use only Revlon products, but Crawford doesn’t seem to notice. Still, though she’s already appeared on two hundred magazine covers (“and counting,” said Pillard), Crawford is hardly blasé. She eyes herself in the mirror. “It looks like I have no top lip,” she says. “And I think the cheeks are a bit too much.”

“Cindy Crawford, shut up your mouth,” Greenwell says. Then she does what Crawford wants.

“I look sort of like a tart,” Crawford says when she’s satisfied.

“You can write that down,” Greenwell tells me.

Crawford quickly agrees. “Sultry Cindy,” she says. “Vixen.”

Finally, around noon, the missing swimsuit surfaces. Cindy is ready to dive into work. “
Uh
, Pa
treek
,” she says to Demarchelier in a broad French accent. “
Uh
, maybe we should
work
today?”

Finally the team piles into a location van and heads for SoHo. “Where is he going?” Crawford demands of the driver. “You’re way out of your way. Take a right at Houston.” To herself she adds, “This
isn’t
my job.” But at last it is time for her job. McKnight removes her rollers, and she sits at a mirror as he combs her hair into masses of Cindy doll curls. Crawford studies the mirror again. “I did my hair like this every day in high school,” she says dreamily.

As he exits, Demarchelier leaves the van’s door open. “We’ve got fans,” Cindy warns as three young girls approach. She signs autographs. They giggle. As they leave, one cries out, “I saw her mole!”

“I come from the Midwest, and I’m just a normal girl.”

Cindy Crawford was the second of three daughters born to a blue-collar family in 1966. “We never had any extras,” she says. Her father worked variously in a pizza parlor, as an electrician, and as a glazier. He separated from his wife when Cindy was a freshman in high school. “We were angry,” she says. Crawford had a happy childhood but admits she was driven. She was a straight A student who, in junior high, fantasized about being the first woman President. “I was rebelling against what my mother was at the time,” she says. “I loved her, but I didn’t respect her.”

Though she’d always been pretty, she’d never worn makeup, looked at fashion magazines, or considered modeling until her junior year, when she was asked by a local clothing store to be in a fashion show. “Some people got jealous, but it was worth it,” Crawford recalls. “I was still buying on layaway. We got a discount on clothes.” Soon afterward a local photographer asked her to pose as the “Co-Ed of the Week” for a college newspaper and introduced her to a local makeup artist, who suggested she volunteer as a model for a hairstyling demonstration Clairol was sponsoring in Chicago. Lured by the promise of an all-expenses-paid weekend in nearby Chicago, Crawford agreed. A Clairol representative gave her the number of a local model agency.

Though its scouts arranged test photographs, they couldn’t see past Cindy’s mole, and she returned to De Kalb, Illinois. But one of her photos stayed in Chicago in another makeup artist’s portfolio. “It was a funny-looking picture,” recalls Marie Anderson, an ex-photographer’s assistant who, in 1982, was just starting out as a model agent. “She had her hair up like a palm tree, a kooky dress, a parasol, and a pucker.”

Anderson looked up Crawford’s parents and “tried to explain Cindy wasn’t average.” The Crawfords weren’t enthusiastic. “They thought I was a cute kid, not a model,” Cindy says. She also had a summer job, working with all her friends detasseling corn for minimum wage in the seed cornfields of De Kalb Ag. “Sort of like my job now,” Cindy says jokingly. “Worms, snakes, slugs, and bugs in your hair.”

Still, the Crawfords decided to let Cindy take a chance. “They gave me five hundred dollars—all they could afford to lose,” she says. “I paid them back with my first check.” That didn’t take long. A photographer down the hall
from the agency shot a composite, carefully hiding Crawford’s mole in shadows, and she went out looking for work. When potential clients turned her down, suggesting she have her mole removed, Anderson supported Crawford’s inclination to keep it. “Someday they’ll know you by that,” she advised.