Elite, the agency that has represented such top models as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, apologized last week to models and their families after a BBC documentary showed a top Elite executive soliciting sex.
The agency's Milan office said that its worldwide chairman, John Casablancas, had issued a statement offering the agency's "unconditional apologies" for the "shocking, unacceptable and totally incorrect" behavior of some agency executives.
The BBC documentary, which aired late last month, used a hidden camera to follow a female reporter as she went undercover in Milan for six months pretending to be an aspiring model.
Hundreds of young girls come to Milan each year looking for work and end up victimized by unscrupulous agents and public relations agencies that ply them with free drugs, send them to nightclubs and encourage them to have sex with "clients," sometimes for payment, according to the documentary.
Four executives at Elite appeared in the film and have since been suspended by the agency pending an investigation.
"They will see the documentary and will have the chance to justify themselves before being disciplined," the agency said in a statement.
Elite Europe chairman Gerald Marie appears in the documentary saying to an undercover journalist filming him with a hidden camera: "I'll give you one million lire (US$525) if you go to bed with me."
Elite also said it would re-examine the chaperone system that has been used to protect under-aged models "so that cases like those revealed by the documentary won't be repeated."
The program has caused an outcry in London, where the documentary has reportedly been passed on by its director Donal MacIntyre to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government for consideration.
A spokesman for Blair's office said the documentary "will be examined carefully," the Italian daily La Repubblica said.
In Milan, fashion houses and modelling agencies either brushed off the documentary as sensationalist or blasted it as biased and unfair.
Modelling agency Riccardo Gay, like Elite, says it keeps close tabs on the models who work for it and forbids the under-age models from going out at night.
Both agencies noted, however, that smaller modelling agencies might not have the same strict standards.
While there was outrage at what was seen as the BBC team's deception in making the documentary, there was also widespread recognition among public relations firms and agencies that younger aspirants ran the risk of being victimized.
Italian knitwear maker Angelo Missoni, for example, said his family-owned company refused to use models aged below 16.
"Actually the subject (of using under-age models) is part of a broader question that should also involve the world of sports," Missoni told the Italian news agency ANSA. "There's no law that says that the entertainment business can't use minors -- it should be the business itself that won't permit it."
By Thursday, a local politician was demanding rules that would bar under-age models from the catwalks, and Milan's chief public prosecutor, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, had promised an investigation if necessary.
"It's not up to me to decide whether or not the documentary was accurate," Italian papers quoted Borrelli as saying. "I only want to underline the fact that an attack on the world of fashion -- and the Milan fashion world in particular -- is unjustified ...
"Regarding the eventual legal consequences of the contents of the programme ... it is up to the prosecutors' office to decide whether to take the initiative," Borrelli added.
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