Fashion week photographs of Kate Moss or Agyness Deyn sashaying down the catwalk in the latest season’s designs appear in magazines and on front pages around the world. Yet look more closely and it appears that few of these images are taken at London Fashion Week.
Many of the most talked-about models of the moment — some household names, some the next big thing — will appear at fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan, but not London. Some fly in for a day or two, others skip London completely. Industry figures say London has a lot going for it: creativity, innovation, cool. But compared with the other capitals, it doesn’t have the financial clout to attract the “hottest” models.
Is this damaging London’s fashion reputation?
Photo: Reuters
“A lot of things have gone wrong with fashion weeks,” says Carole White, the founder of Premier models. “It’s causing a problem for the British fashion industry. London designers are not realistic about what they pay. Their rates have not moved on since 1983.” She says London offers models only a fraction of the fees they can command elsewhere.
White knows what she is talking about. The workaholic, outspoken star of Channel 4 TV’s fly-on-the-wall documentary The Model Agency is the woman Naomi Campbell called “mum” for years (until they had a big falling out). She has represented the likes of Claudia Schiffer and Christy Turlington as well as famously turning down Kate Moss for being “too short.”
The London “squeeze” has been debated since New York, due to start tomorrow, moved its position in the schedule. New York is traditionally seen as more powerful than London, which is how the change was pushed through two years ago. “Since New York got moved to the first slot, all the fashion weeks butt up against each other. It’s crazy.” White warns that some of the most in-demand models may struggle to make it to London, which opens on Sept. 16.
It makes more sense for them to jet straight from New York to Milan. “There is a lot of politics going on here. They seem to think it helps the buyers. But it doesn’t help the models.”
Aidan Jean-Marie, creative director of Premier and one of White’s bookers, says: “Big names like Kate Moss or Stella Tennant, they make their guest appearances elsewhere. We don’t have the money in London any more.”
Last season one of the most memorable photographs from the shows was Kate Moss swishing down the runway in a rare catwalk appearance. That was for Louis Vuitton in Paris. But this isn’t so much about household names (many of these models no longer do catwalk work anyway as advertising is so much more lucrative). It’s about the young women who suddenly become “the latest big thing” on the eve of these shows. The model bookers argue that these “hot girls” (as they call them) are what creates the noise around a collection.
“The buzz of London is the creativity,” White says. “And you want the best models to showcase that. They don’t have to be the most famous, but they have to be the coolest. If a girl is really tired and looks like she’s going to have a really good show season in Milan, the agents will say, ‘Let’s skip London.’ It tends to lessen us as a market.”
For the models, London is apparently not that appealing: “Most girls are not avaricious. They want to cover their costs and make a little profit. But in London they can leave with a debt and have to return the next season to clear it.”
Models will pay US$400 a day for the use of a car, which eats up their earnings, she says. They arrive straight from New York and head off to up to 20 castings. They can hope to get US$160 a show from a new designer. “Maybe we can get US$800. Or up to US$8,000 on a really big girl [a ‘hot’ model]. But on some of the big shows in Milan and Paris, you can get US$16,000.”
Milan, which comes straight after London, calls the shots. Last season Gucci asked for models to fly in and out of London for castings. If you wanted even a chance at the catwalk for Gucci, you’d have to miss a day’s work in London.
London’s status has long been the subject of heated debate in the industry. Recently the respected fashion writer Sarah Mower, also ambassador for emerging talent at the British Fashion Council, wrote a passionate defense: “The foundations of London fashion are on a better footing than they’ve been for 25 years, certainly since I’ve been reporting its critical ups and mortifying downs.”
Mower notes that London has just been named “world’s top fashion capital of 2011” by Global Fashion Monitor, which tracks Internet mentions. Online chat about the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Duchess of Cambridge’s wardrobe has pushed London to the top of the ratings. But does it keep London Fashion Week on the map? Last week Mower was defiant: “The schedule squeeze didn’t happen. And since then London has grown hugely in stature not just in shows but in designers who are making [clothes] in the UK and exporting.”
But in the world of the models, Jean-Marie says the squeeze is a fact of life. “It is a problem and it has been for a couple of seasons. We have been squashed between New York and Milan. The girls [the models] tend to leave in the middle of London because the castings start too early for Milan and some of the key shows in London are over the last couple of days. It creates a lot of chaos. We now have Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week to deal with. It’s the same dates as London and it pays really well because it’s subsidized by the Spanish government. It’s a serious competitor. A lot of the more commercial models, they go straight to Spain after New York. We’ve got some key girls getting US$14,000 a day in Madrid and it’s not very stressful for them.”
London is seen as “stressful” as often models have to travel between venues all over town.
From a fashion insider’s point of view, though, London is still the most exciting week, Fashion buyer and TV presenter Brix Smith-Start says. Erdem, Peter Pilotto and Mary Kantrantzou will be big draws the week after next. “I don’t even go to New York. Controversial! I find it sanitized and boring. It never changes. I can look at it online. The energy of London is what is so special and you don’t get that as much anywhere else.”
Lucy Yeomans, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, says: “There are some potentially big names looking at coming back in the next few years. I know it’s tough for the models at the moment. But maybe if we have those bigger talents come back we will be able to have more muscle. People talk a lot about Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. They both show in Paris. Those are the two people we would love to come back. And, prior to the Dior episode, people really wanted to see John Galliano back in London.”
Although Burberry, Matthew Williamson and Temperley have all returned to London in recent years, it’s still not easy for London to hog fashion’s fickle spotlight. Yeomans says: “American editors tend to come once a year or once every two or three seasons, and that brings an injection of excitement. I know Glenda Bailey [of US Harper’s Bazaar] is coming this year.”
US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, however, does not always attend the London shows. “I don’t know what Anna Wintour’s plans are,” Yeomans says. “If we had Stella and McQueen showing here, you’d see her here every season.”
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