Death of the supermodels

They should have stolen the show. It was the second day of London Fashion Week, and designer Ben de Lisi might have expected all eyes to be on his 1930s-inspired evening gowns as they drifted down the catwalk. Instead, the front row were engaged in a game of Chinese whispers. "We simply couldn't believe it," said one fashion stylist. "No one was paying any attention to the show. Some fashion editors didn't even notice it was taking place."

The news that upstaged the opening days of London's autumn/winter 2004 shows was momentous: New York's Elite model agency, which launched not only the careers of Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista but also the very notion of the "supermodel", was on the brink of collapse.

As the most prestigious agency in the world for some 30 years, Elite Model Management of New York was the driving force behind the rise of the "super" in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Founded in 1977 by playboy businessman John Casablancas, Elite was the pinnacle for young girls eager to make their name. In the past few days, however, Elite has filed for protection against bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in a final attempt to stave off disaster.

"A decade ago, it would have been unimaginable," says one booker at a top London agency. "Elite was the sexiest name on the catwalk, it attracted the top models in the world. Girls would have done absolutely anything to be associated with it. The fashion world will never be the same again if it falls."

SO how could it have gone so wrong (although we have to point out the bankruptcy petition does not affect the parent company in Switzerland or any of its affiliates, including Elite Management of London)? The answer is not straightforward and, like most American falls from grace, involves lots of legal shenanigans.

The agency faces a long-running class-action suit by a group of disgruntled former models. This revolves around the exploitation of the very people on whom the agencies trade - naive young hopefuls. The suit names Elite, along with several other leading agencies, including Ford Models and Next Model Management, and alleges the agencies fixed their commission on models' earnings at 20 per cent - twice the level allowed under state legislation. (Top models, including Campbell and Claudia Schiffer, had been exempt.)

One litigant is former Elite model Justin Klentner, 41, who now lives far from Elite's slick Manhattan headquarters in the Hollywood Hills, designing custom-made homes for the likes of Friends star Matthew Perry. Klentner was discovered at 22 by the photographer Herb Ritts and had a successful career throughout the Eighties working for the likes of Calvin Klein and Versace. He recalls a sweatshop regime where young men and women were forced to work long hours and were driven into debt.

"My agency took 20 per cent from me, and 20 per cent from the client," he says. "They flew us to assignments as cheaply as possible and booked us into the worst hotels. We were treated like a commodity, it was disgusting. Theatrical agents are obliged to set up pensions and health care for their clients, while my modelling friends have ended up with no money, no security for their future. Yes, I travelled the world, but I did feel taken advantage of. Like athletes, the career of a model lasts only five to 10 years, so they need proper financial advice. Models who complain about the commission cut from their pay packets are told they will be blackballed. It was too easy for agents like Elite to take advantage of 15-year-old girls and 18-year-old boys from the back hills of Ohio, and that's exactly what they did."

Michael Gross, who in 1995 wrote Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, an exposé of the seedier underbelly of the fashion industry, confirms that Elite once seemed invincible. "Johnny Casablancas redefined the modelling business with Elite," he says. "He injected sex into what had for decades

been a rather prim and proper business. During the Eighties and Nineties, models were the biggest celebrities in the world, and Elite was the top agency in the world."

Indeed, during Elite's heyday Linda Evangelista remarked she would not get out of bed for less than $10,000. She went on to marry and divorce Elite's current head, Gerald Marie (now married to a 23-year-old model).

In 1993, the agency was so powerful it dumped Naomi Campbell. Casablancas called her manipulative, scheming and rude, saying: "You cannot imagine the pleasure I had in sacking her. She was odious." (They later air-kissed and made up, with Casablancas taking her back on his books.)

The current lawsuit aims to stop

agencies, including Elite, churning out models decade after decade, discarding them when they become too old or merely unfashionable. " Modelling often attracts the most vulnerable people in society," says one former magazine editor. "Yes, the Lindas and Naomis make huge sums of money, but they are the exception. The average salary of a working model in Britain is still less than £21,000."

Perhaps the biggest blow to Elite, though, has been the death of the supermodel. The group of girls who included not only the triumvirate at Elite of Evangelista, Campbell and Crawford, but also Christy Turlington and Tatjana Patitz became household names, appearing on the Versace catwalk, on the cover of Vogue, and even in a George Michael video. They became more powerful than the photographers and eclipsed the designers whose clothes they were paid to promote.

Even the most successful of the current crop of models, Brazilian Gisele B¸ndchen, has never got too big. She was discovered by Elite when she was 14, but left the agency in 1999, defecting to IMG; Casablancas called her a "monster of selfishness". But, says the former editor who has worked with her, "she is always professional, cheerful and flexible. She has never really acted like a super".

Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, agrees that the day of the supermodel is long gone. Yes, Kate

Moss is still, after 16 years, landing lucrative advertising contracts, but that is a rarity for a model. Vogue's current cover star is the 21-year-old Russian model Natalia Vodianova; huge in fashion circles, but hardly a household name. "It's a different time from the Eighties," says Shulman. "There are top models who are earning a lot, but they are not supermodels in the same sense."

The final nail in the coffin of the supers, says another insider, has been the inexorable rise of the celebrity. "Look at all the covers of the glossies," she says. "Bar Vogue, they all feature celebrities - the Beyoncés of this world." It follows that, as the model has gone the way of the dinosaur, so the agency that created them looks set to follow suit.

Michael Gross believes Elite simply became too big for its own boots. "Elite had become very, very powerful," he says. "A lot of models felt that it had also become corrupt." He recalls the allegations made by the BBC five years ago in the documentary MacIntyre Undercover. Elite took legal action, which the BBC settled with an admission that no sexual exploitation was proved. It also accepted that the agency sought to protect its models from drugs.

Nevertheless, the programme left a bad taste. In an interview with Gross in 2000, Casablancas announced he was about to sell his shares in Elite and belatedly expressed his horror at the debauchery of the profession. He declared that he had never knowingly slept with a model under the age of 16.

Last weekend, a handful of models still on Elite's books spoke out to support the agency. Lauren Bush, niece of President George W Bush, said: "It was absolutely the right move for Elite to take a proactive approach on this. I'm sticking with Elite."

Elite called the lawsuit "outrageous", insisting that it is business as usual.

Gross believes that the agency - reported to have just $4.5 million in assets, against $7 million in liabilities - might re-emerge, but will never return to its former dominance. "The ball bounced away from Elite a long time ago," he says. "But even as one of their harshest critics, I find myself feeling that the modelling world would be poorer without Elite, simply because it would be a lot less fabulous."